Prof Pulok Kumar Mukherjee has taken charge as director of the Institute of Bio-resources and Sustainable Development (IBSD), an autonomous institute in Manipur of Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India.
The Institute of Bio-resources and Sustainable Development (IBSD), an autonomous institute of Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, headquarters at Takyelpat in Imphal will be headed by Prof Pulok Kumar Mukherjee, according to an official source.
Prof Mukherjee, director of the School of Natural Product Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata has taken over as director of IBSD.
Presently, IBSD which was established in April 2002, also has its centres at Gangtok, Sikkim; Aizawl, Mizoram and Shillong, Meghalaya.
Prof Mukherjee is working on traditional medicine inspired drug discovery and development from Indian medicinal plants with major emphasis on their validation, formulation and standardization, metabolomic profiling, safety documentation and related aspects.
He has made significant contributions on translational research in biomedical sciences for drug discovery and development through evidence-based validation and documentation of traditional medicine for their quality, safety and efficacy.
He has made several innovative and outstanding contributions in academics and research in the area of natural product studies, related to the bio-prospecting of medicinal plants leading to the development of safe and efficacious products.
He has contributed a lot on evaluation and validation of drugs and pharmaceuticals from medicinal plants including their chemo-profiling, quality evaluation, safety documentation, ethnopharmacology and evidence-based validation of herbs used in traditional medicine.
His multidisciplinary concerted efforts for drug development from Indian Medicinal Plants (IMPs) and their validation with special emphasis on quality control, safety-related quality issues, synergy, value-added formulation development, metabolomics, marker profiling and related aspects have been appreciated by several industries and products have been developed, technology has been transferred through University-Industry collaborations.
His works on systematic data mining for validation of Indian medicinal plants are useful bio-prospecting tools for developing safe and effective products with scientific evidence.
He is a fellow of the National Academy of Science, India (FNASc) and the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK (FRSC) and The West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology (WAST).
Prof Mukherjee is the President of International Society for Ethnopharmacology, Switzerland and Secretary of the Society for Ethnopharmacology, India (SFE-India), Kolkata, India.
Earlier he was working as Professor of Pharmaceutical Technology and Director of the School of Natural Product Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.