15^th Asia-Pacific Pharma Congress

Biography

Biography: Dilip Ghosh

Abstract

A comprehensive review to be presented which shows the plant kingdom as an almost inexhaustible reservoir of potential drugs. The longstanding, successful use of herbal drug combinations in traditional medicine makes it necessary to find a rationale for the pharmacological and therapeutic superiority of many of them in comparison to isolated single constituents. As a result a new category, “Phytopharmaceutical” has emerged in several countries. There are many definitions but the core essence is “Phytopharmaceutical drug includes purified and standardised fraction with defined minimum four bio-active or phytochemical compounds (qualitatively and quantitatively assessed) of an extract of a medicinal plant or its part, for internal or external use of human beings or animals for diagnosis, treatment, mitigation or prevention of any disease or disorder but does not include administration by parental route” (CDSCO, Govt of India, 2016). In last decade we have seen the sluggish growth of Herbal/ Ayurvedic products and decrease in Pharma R&D output in terms of reduction in number of NCEs and increasing cost of new drug discovery.  Current allopathic practice is unable to meet the unmet needs of multicomponent drug for multi target diseases. A number of problems, such as usefulness of RCTs in herbal medicine which are connected with the search for new prototype drugs of biological origin is also described. Special attention will be given on role of natural products in therapy; as biologically active compounds as such, as starting materials for (semi)synthetic drugs and, also as source of inspiration or as models for the synthesis of new drugs with better therapeutic, chemical or physical properties than the original compounds.