Beginning Of A New Era

Pharmacognosy in India is at a nascent stage. Industry experts comment on the need to reengineer the subject in India and ways to attract younger talent to pursue it more aggressively

- Usha Sharma

Build excitement in the learning process

From time immemorial medicinal plants have been the source of many new drugs and the discovery of new molecules. With the systematic organisation of these plants and their uses, besides trying to find the active ingredients that are responsible for their medical action, the subject of pharmacognosy evolved and had stood the test of time and continues to be one of the most important resources for new drug discovery. However, with the changing scenario to develop new drugs at a faster rate along with lower costs, the synthetic pathway to develop drugs evolved. The technology for delivering drugs in the human body also underwent a paradigm shift and the era of biosimilars and biologicals almost swept the pharma industry from its feet. In this changing and challenging environment, the subject of pharmacognosy did not respond in time to look at newer approaches of understanding the drug discovery process and the newer scientific emphasis that was required in validation of scientific and therapeutic claims of such medicinal plants. Further, the sources of such medicinal plants continue to come from natural reserves rather than organised farming process. Unlike the Chinese system of traditional medicines, pharmacognosy in India did not integrate enough with the Indian system of medicine in providing the level of support that was expected of it. All these factors resulted in pharmacognosy not being one of the preferred subjects of study at advanced levels and led to the decreased number of human resource in this segment of the pharmacy profession.