Pharmacognosy deals with scientific study of crude drugs from plants, animals, microbes and minerals. It includes quality control, standardization, isolation & characterization of phytoconstituents and formulation development. The Pharmacognosy specialization of the department provides instructional and research training to the students in the areas of isolation of phytoconstituents, formulation development & standardization of herbal drugs and evaluation of biological activity of medicinal plants. Apart from classical Pharmacognosy the division is now diversifying itself in the frontier areas of phytomedicine.
Research Focus
The major areas of research being conducted under the Pharmacognosy specialization includes:
- Industrial Pharmacognosy
- Phytopharmaceutics,
- Ethnopharmacognosy, Phytochemistry
- Biological evaluation of Medicinal Plants
The details of research studies being conducted in the department are as follows:
- Drug discovery and lead generation from natural sources
- General quality control methods for crude drugs and protocol development for specific medicinal plant materials
- Development of chemical process/technologies for natural products involving extraction, isolation and quantification
- Development of formulation methods, standardization and stability studies of herbal drugs, herbominerals, nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals of natural origin
- Ayurvedic formulation development and standardization with novel approaches
- Biological evaluation and validation of medicinal plants in various therapeutic areas like antidiabetic, hypolipidemics, immunomodulatory, antioxidants, anti-gastric ulcer, wound healing, antidiarrheal, hepatoprotective, analgesic and anti-inflammatory.
Prospective newer dimensions of research and learning include:
- Plant DNA based molecular markers
- Nanophytomedicine
- Plant tissue culture and animal cell culture