AD-MTECH-10-007



"BIODIVERSITY AND BIOCHEMICAL PROSPECTING OF DRUGS OF NATURAL ORIGIN-A CASE OF phyllanthus niruri”
Srinivas Rajaram, M.Tech, 10, 140 pp.
Department of CTARA
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400 076.
Supervisor(s): Sameer R. Jadhav

Abstract


Health is one of the primary indicators of development in society. Diseases like Cancer, Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), and Malaria are widespread across the globe. Now with increase in pollution, climate change, unhealthy diet, smoking, and bad living style in developing countries, spread and emergence of more number of diseases is likely to take place. In the current scenario of drastic increase in health expenditure, it is very important to focus on complementary alternative medicines (CAM). Different types of CAM include ayurveda, unani, siddha, chinese medicine and yoga etc.

One of the CAM is effective utilization of natural resources (NR) around us for the health benefits. This study tries to look at the plant NR from the Western Ghats (WG). WG is the one of the Biodiversity (BD) hot spots of the world. Making strategies for sustainable utilization of NR especially, plant resources for the better health by using them as neutraceuticals and medicine has been considered this study. For this detailed literature surveys on medicinal plants, cultivation and bioprospecting and relevant lab experiments have been carried out. Thin layer chromatography (TLC) method was used to separate active ingredients from lignans crude compound extracted by soxhlet method. Further, structures were analyzed by Fourier Transmission Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and they are expected to be phyllanthin and hypophyllanthin which can treat various diseases.

Keeping in view of the possibility of setting the small scale entrepreneurship, an effort was made to find the viability of herbal industry model. The business plan was proposed for village of Gawand-wadi where this phyllanthus niruri growth is ample. Overall, report focuses on major steps involved in developing strategies for implementation in the rural areas or small scale entrepreneurship model for prospecting of drugs of natural origin with a proposed business model at the end.