Green pharmacy: Emerging opportunities

The Indian herbal system being directed by ayurveda, which is a time tested system has the potential to dominate the global market, say Prof Ram Harsh Singh and Dr Vipin Bihari Gupta in the concluding part of the article

Amongst the specific papers in herbal technology are:

Paper I: Herbs used in ayurveda are aimed to give the students a heavy dose of important herbs mentioned in ayurveda including their pharmacodynamics described in terms of rasa, guna veerya, vipaka and prabhava.

Paper II: Advanced pharmacognosy focuses on scientific and modern aspects of herbs like extraction, isolation, purification and characterisation of therapeutically significant phytopharmaceuticals. Also included are genetics, plant tissue culture, agrotechnology and recent advances of pharmacognosy with special reference to anticancer, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, adaptogenic and immunomodulating drugs of plant origin, skin irritants and sensitising agents, marine products and plant sweeteners.

Paper III: Standardisation methods with great depth and width considers the standardisation of ayurvedic-herbal drug substances and products. The ones highly detailed are general methods of phytochemical and biological screening, pharmacopoeial methods, chromatographic techniques such as column, paper, TLC, HPTLC, GLC, HPLC and DCCC in the isolation, purification and standardisation of phytopharmaceuticals and applications of UV, IR, NMR, 1HNMR, 13CNMR and mass spectroscopy for structural elucidation and standardisation.

Job opportunities

The job opportunities for students having done these courses would be immense. There are three reasons to it. Firstly, the herbal market which is currently estimated to be around US $150 billion is poised to expand to US $5 trillion by 2050 as per WHO estimates. Interestingly, so far China is the world leader in this business, but it’s likely to get replaced by India as Indian herbal system is directed by ayurveda, which is a time tested system, unlike the Chinese system which is not considered to be dependable.

Secondly, currently there is no course available that adequately prepares the students for this huge and galloping industry. Contemporary courses available in ayurveda do not impart technical knowledge whilst the courses available in pharmacy do not carry the wisdom of ayurveda. The students having done this course would be in a unique position having the best of the ancient as well as of modern.

Thirdly, PG students are mainly prepared for R&D and academic activities. From next year, GATT would become fully applicable in India, hence, the country would enter the product patent regime and in such a situation only R&D intensive companies would survive. This fact is spurring the R&D activities, companies have already put their feet on accelerator and they are not just arithmetically adding R&D human resource, but multiplying geometrically. Not only this, India by virtue of its low cost technical manpower is likely to emerge as global R&D hub, further boosting the job potential.

Further another point worth mentioning here is that ayurveda is an area that offers the maximum possibilities for patent filings. In addition, academic explosion is already visible in the country.

RAU right from its inception has been taking initiatives to have strong academia-industry partnership. Amongst various schemes offered by RAU, one is PG Programme Partnership (PGPP). Under this scheme partnering company provides the M Pharm students a research assistantship of Rs 5000 per month for the dissertation period and in return the company becomes entitled for exclusive rights on the student’s dissertation. This scheme would benefit the student as well as partnering company, the partnering company would get its R&D done for a lesser cost and the student would get monetary help. Moreover, for companies interested in new recruits, this exercise would help study the assisted students as prospective recruit and impart him/ her the right orientation.

The writers are with Rajasthan Ayurveda University