Ayurveda medicine for Swine Flu- Research result

Chennai-based RRF launches Ayurveda remedy for swine flu 'Ayusrem'
Thursday, January 28, 2010 08:00 IST
Peethaambaran Kunnathoor, Chennai

The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) in the Union Territory of Pondicherry has granted licence to Chennai-based Ramoni Research Foundation (RRF), an institute conducting research in Ayurveda medicines, to manufacture and market an Ayurvedic antiviral medication Ayusrem, which is a potential drug to prevent and treat H1N1.

The scientists at the foundation claimed that the drug is a potential choice to prevent and treat H1N1 flu and will prove to be a boon to the people as it is being launched at a time when the entire world is stepping up efforts to tackle the H1N1 pandemic. According to the scientists, the drug is made of extracts from anti-viral plants and antipyretic plants like Andrographis paniculata, Curcuma Longa and Vetiveria zizanioides. Extracts of Immunomodulant plants like Zingiber officinale and Piper nigrum have also been included. The Analgesic ingredients in the formulation are from Andrographis paniculata, Zingiber officinale and Cyperus rotundus.

Claiming that the herbal product can contain the spread of swine flu and other strains of viruses, RRF has written to the Department of Ayush to take measures to evaluate the effect of medicinal plants and formulations for antiviral activity. The letter says that the potential of medicinal plants is well known for their antiviral activity and the Herbal Sciences Department of the Madras University has initiated several studies on it. The Centre has generated scientific data on 130 plants so far, which will help millions of sufferers of virus diseases, the scientists told Pharmabiz.

The foundation hopes that the permission by the US FDA will reap results in a way that it will help RRF to penetrate into the huge Indian Ayurvedic market and the growing global market of Ayurvedic products when viral diseases are spreading alarmingly and taking lives across the world. RRF’s Ayusrem is the outcome of a joint venture with the Herbal Science Research Centre of Madras University.

The scientists in the foundation said US FDA in Pondicherry is the first regulatory authority to certify and approve the drug for sales after its invention by Chennai based institutes six months ago. The inventors of the remedy have claimed that within this short span of time, the medicine could cure various kinds of viral diseases of about 2000 people including those affected with A H1N1 viruses.

RRF has invented the medicine Ayusrem, after years of researches associating with the Centre for Herbal Sciences at the University of Madras. When the drug was launched in September last year, it was a formulation of Ayurveda and Siddha preparations. Later, the formulation was completely restricted in Ayurvedic method only, said the inventors of the product, Dr K Balasubrahmaniam and professor Dr A Raaman.

Last week, in a function organized in Pondicherry Lt Governor Dr Iqbal Singh inaugurated the official launching of the medicine by handing over a strip of 10 tablets of Ayusrem to the Health & Family Welfare Minister E Valasaraj. Public health minister A Namasivayam was also present on the occasion.

After the invention of Ayusrem, Ramoni Research Foundation has bagged three Awards of Excellence. National Citizen Excellence Award from Intellectual People and Economic Growth Association, New Delhi for Outstanding Contribution, International Achievers Award for invention of Ayusrem by International Achievers Forum, Thailand, and Bharath Gaurav Award from India International Friendship Society for meritorious services.

D Balasubrahmaniam, the chairman of the foundation said RRF has signed an agreement with Pondicherry based Dr Milton’s Laboratories to manufacture the drug and inked another contract with Chennai-based Berjayaa Marketing Private Ltd for domestic marketing. They have also signed certain pacts with Leonex Systems of Malaysia to market the Ayurvedic antiviral remedy.

Source: PhamaBiz

India Grants Access to U.S. Patent Examiners for New Traditional Knowledge Search Tool

WASHINGTON – The Commerce Department’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)  today announced that the Government of India has granted the agency’s patent examiners access to a new digital database containing a compilation of traditional Indian knowledge. Access to the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) is important for both India and the United States to prevent misappropriation of traditional knowledge.

“The USPTO has long been concerned about attempts to patent traditional knowledge, not only because it may result in an incorrectly granted patent, but also because it removes knowledge from the public domain,” said Sharon Barner, Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the USPTO.

This database will be an important addition to the growing array of search tools on traditional knowledge from around the world that is already available to USPTO examiners. These tools include dictionaries, formularies, handbooks, and historical or classical works, as well as databases such as the TKDL. USPTO examiners use these tools to help prevent the patenting, and thereby misappropriation, of existing traditional knowledge. A listing of some of these publicly available traditional knowledge tools can be found on the USPTO’s Web site at: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/dcom/olia/tradknowledge.html.

“We have urged countries to create, and make available to examiners around the world, digital libraries of their traditional knowledge to prevent erroneous patent grants,” Barner said. “India’s TKDL is just such a library, and we are pleased that our examiners now have access to it.”

The new database, developed jointly by India’s Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH), includes over 200,000 traditional medicine formulations on Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha comprising 30 million pages. The TKDL contains text-searchable English-language translations of these sources, permitting USPTO examiners to search thousands of years of India’s accumulated traditional knowledge. The TKDL also contains translations into French, German, Japanese and Spanish, from these sources, originally written in Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian and Urdu.

The misappropriation of traditional knowledge through the mistaken issuance of patents has been a growing concern with the rise of the global economy and the increasing importance of intellectual property. A few high profile cases brought significant attention to this matter, prompting efforts by a number of countries to create digital traditional knowledge databases accessible to patent examiners around the world. If a patent application attempts to claim an invention within the existing traditional knowledge, a patent examiner will reject the application provided they can find evidence proving the prior existence of that knowledge. Searching the TKDL will provide access to just the sort of evidence needed by examiners to establish that proof.

Source: US Patent and Trademark Office - Official Press Release

AYUSH to take home remedies out to market

Aditya Dev, TNN 23 November 2009, 05:06am IST

CHANDIGARH: The department of ayurveda, yoga and naturopathy, unani, siddha and homoeopathy (AYUSH) is planning to put ‘trusted’ home remedies preached and practised by grannies in many households in the ‘tested’ category. The effort is intended as a way to get rid of present generation’s pill fixation.

AYUSH will invite people to tell it about the methods they use at home. If those are found effective in subsequent trials, the department will try to get the person forwarding it, the method’s patent and also devise ways to market the idea.

More importantly, any individual or institution can be part of this extramural research system.

Department’s officials said this was being done as India’s share in the global market was negligible when it came to traditional medicines. They stated that AYUSH also wanted to develop products having intellectual property rights (IPR) potential, which might lead to increase in exports.

Amarjeet Singh of PGI School of Public Health said, ‘The good thing is that this system is open to the public.’

His department has been in talks regarding at least three projects with AYUSH.

The projects are connected with efficacy of neem oil as mosquito repellent, use of ginger and garlic as cough syrup and developing exercises to control the problem of incontinence in women.

He added that preliminary drafts of the projects had been sent to AYUSH and discussions were in advance stage. ‘Going to the roots of alternative medical systems can prove a safe bet in the global market. It can also help people in avoiding hospital visits for simple ailments and make treatment available with minimum side effects,’ he mentioned.

All welcome

People participating in this system of extra mural research can range from eminent scholars to lay persons. Universities and educational institutions can also take part in it. The patent will be jointly applied for by the concerned research council working under AYUSH and the person who brings the method to it for verification.

Source: Times Of India

Ayurvedic, Unani drugs to carry expiry date on label

C.H. Unnikrishnan

Mumbai: Alternative non-allopathic medicines will soon carry expiry dates on their labels, and be drawn out of circulation at the end of their specified shelf life.

The ministry of health and family welfare, in a notification issued in the last week of October, said it has amended the Drugs and Cosmetics Act to include a rule that mandates Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani drug makers to display a date of expiry on the label of the container or package. The new law will be effective from April.

So far, alternative healthcare systems did not need to fix a shelf life for their medicines as is done for allopathic or modern drugs. These traditional medicines have been consumed irrespective of the date of manufacture and their potency to remain efficacious beyond a period.

The new rule allows a maximum life period of between one and five years for different Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani medicines.

The amendment also standardizes manufacturing, packaging and storage practices for the traditional drug industry, which caters to a market worth around Rs8,000 crore.

Its implementation will also force old inventory out the market in the next few months as part of a voluntary filtration the industry will initiate to recall outdated products.

“With no scientific validation of product stability and quality standardization ever insisted upon for traditional medicines earlier, there was misconception in the market that these drugs need not to be evaluated for shelf life,” said D.B. Ananthanarayana, an Ayurveda scientist and chairman of herbal products and crude drugs at the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission.

“But the new move is surely in the interest of the industry as well as consumer, though a guideline of how shelf life study of these medicines (is) to be performed while implementing the rules would have been very useful,” he added.

The ministry in the notification has specified the maximum shelf life on the basis of the formulation process, stability of active ingredients and the life period of the material that goes into formulations such as tablets, liquids, capsules and creams.

The expiry specifications are formulated on the basis of research and manufacturing process data submitted by the industry, as well as scientific validation of drugs by the Central Council for Research in Ayurveda and Siddha, a Union government body that publishes the pharmacopoeia for Ayurvedic and herbal medicines.

Ranjit Puranik, secretary general of the Ayurvedic Drug Manufacturers Association, or Adma, and chief executive of Mumbai-based Ayurveda firm Shree Dootapapeshwar Ltd, said the new rule is an effort towards modernization that would help the industry.

But, he added, some suggestions by Adma such as a longer shelf life for products based on the individual data furnished by manufacturers were not considered by the government.

“This suggestion, which will permit higher expiry date approval for export and domestic purposes on the satisfactory evidence provided by the manufacturer, was actually on the lines of the extended expiry for allopathic drugs and other types of products,” he said.

B. Anand, joint secretary, department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy, the agency responsible for implementing the quality regulation, could not be reached for comments as he was travelling.

“It’s a very progressive and positive step and is aimed at empowering the consumer,” said a spokesperson for Dabur India Ltd, which sells the Ayurvedic nutritional supplement DaburChyawanprash.

Not everyone agrees.

“Some units will be producing more than 500 products in different categories. But out of this, only 15% are income-generating products, whereas the rest 85% is prescription medicines or slow-moving products,” said D. Ramanathan, CEO of Kerala-based Sitaram Ayurveda Pharmacy and Hospital Ltd, and general secretary of the Ayurveda Medicine Manufacturers of India. “If these regulations are implemented, the slow-moving items will be hit hard, and slowly...will have to be withdrawn or stopped altogether.”

Source: liveMint

38 ayurvedic formulations identified for 8 disease conditions

38 ayurvedic formulations identified for 8 disease conditions under Golden Triangle scheme

Thursday, September 03, 2009 08:00 IST
Joseph Alexander, New Delhi

As many as 38 ayurvedic formulations have been identified for eight disease conditions and 20 of them have been provided to CSIR for pre-clinical studies so far under the Golden Triangle Partnership scheme set up for validation of traditional ayurvedic drugs and development of new drugs.

The CSIR has submitted the status report of 10 formulations. They are tagradi kwatha (insomnia), medhya (ADHD), ashwagandha churna (anxiety neurosis), haritkyadi churna (dyslipidemia), GTP-HN-1 (hyper tension), brahmi ghrita (ADHD), gokshuradi guggulu (BPH), lakshadi guggulu (osteoporosis), nirgundi tail (joint disorders) and singhanada guggulu (joint disorders).The pre-clinical studies of all other formulations were under progress in different institutions now, sources in the Ayush department said.

The scheme was set up as an integrated technology mission for scientific validation of traditional medicines for identified disease conditions for which the apex organizations like Department of Ayush, Central Council for Research in Ayurveda and Siddha, CSIR and ICMR have joined hands. The objective of the scheme is to bring safe, effective and standard Ayurveda, Siddha, Homoeopathy and Unani products and develop new drugs of national and global importance. The apex bodies also collaborate with other institutions and companies with this purpose.

"The project is going well and more new collaborations are in the offing. The idea is to bridge the gap between modern medicine and traditional medicine so that India can tap the vast potential in the arena. It is the triangle being built between modern science, modern medicine and traditional medicine, giving a golden opportunity to the country," an official explained.

The CCRAS has also collected the inputs for protocols of different diseases and submitted to the ICMR for further revision. The draft protocols of hypertension, dyslipidemia, HIV/AIDS, osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis were thus given to the ICMR.

Source: PharmaBiz