Ayurveda for drug discovery: scientists hope to bridge gap
Indian Express
Anuradha Mascarenhas, Posted: Sunday , Jun 28, 2009 at 0002 hrs Pune

Pune scientists Dr Raghunath Mashelkar and Prof Bhushan Patwardhan hope their article will help create a positive environment for globalising ayurveda. Their article, 'Traditional medicine-inspired approaches to drug discovery: can Ayurveda show the way forward?’ was published online on Science Direct on Thursday. International journal Drug Discovery Today (DDT) is also scheduled to publish the paper in its ensuing issue.

For long we have been fighting for a rightful place for ayurveda. The scientific validation of ayurvedic principles has been close to my heart and hence it is satisfying that a journal like Drug Discovery Today has accepted our article,” said Dr Mashelkar, a Bhatnagar fellow at the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) and president of the Global Research Alliance.

The article says ayurveda can offer a strategy for new drug candidates to facilitate discovery process and also for the development of synergistic botanical formulations.
Patwardhan, a scientist at the Inter-disciplinary School of Health Sciences, University of Pune, said five out of six peer reviewers have strongly recommended the article. “We also consulted many top drug discovery scientists from global universities and pharmacy multinationals just to ensure that our review does not become counterproductive.”

Can ayurveda show the way forward? “Great traditions like ayurveda certainly offer sound rationale, valuable experiential wisdom and a large database of botanical resources. For several reasons, researchers involved in the modern drug discovery have started revisiting ancient traditional knowledge and ethno pharmacology, especially to develop new, effective synergistic drug combinations for management of difficult-to-treat conditions like cancer and dementia,” said Mashelkar.

Many promising leads like curcumins, withanoloides and others need to be taken to their logical conclusions as despite the vast potential, very few success stories have emerged from ayurveda. Most of the work in this field has remained within the clinics of traditional practitioners or confined to academic research laboratories and not taken seriously by industries, Mashelkar said.