US Pharmacopoeia (USP), British Pharmacopoeia (BP) and European Pharmacopoeia (EP) are now keen to have strategic collaborations with the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) to source the monographs of certain drugs for inclusion in their respective editions.

These major Pharmacopeias of the world are impressed by the leadership status of IPC which has included the anti-AIDS drug, herbs and herbal formulations in IP. Such an interest in IPC by global Pharmacopeias was never heard in the past. One of the main reasons for this interest is the practice of safe usage of these herbs for centuries in India and availability of such information in IP. This is a good sign for the future of IPC, Dr D B Anantha Narayana, head: Herbals Research- Unilever Research India, Bangalore and chairman of the Herbs and Herbal Products Committee, IPC told Pharmabiz.

Herbal research scientists were reluctant to work for IPC which had no autonomy and has only one scientist on its governing body. But its chairman Dr Nitya Anand showed that scientists could achieve a lot by associating with IPC. In 2007, it brought out the IP 2007 edition. The Cabinet approved and issued notifications for IPC to be an autonomous body. These organizations are now called as IPC and Indian Pharmacopoeia Laboratory (IPL).

According to Dr Narayana, the scientists and biologists need to address economies of scale and look at effective DNA finger printing technologies for proper authentication of raw herbs. This is an area needing innovation as botanical identity confirmation of medicinal plants are not so easy. We do not have large number of trained botanists and taxonomists. Added to this is the difficulty of controversial botany of many plants known in Ayurveda, availability of many cultivars, differing DNA patterns in the same plants with varying degree of safety and parts of the plants used are available and not in its entirety for identification. However, there is a need to develop DNA fingerprinting techniques for about 120 most common used medicinal plants of India, he added.

Chemists also need to innovate and work on the 'secondary metabolites' in plants. Although a lot of analysis is already done in isolating individual compounds, identify their structures and testing of its biological activities, there is need to study the primary metabolites, or compounds of the plants like carbohydrates, proteins, sugars, amino acids, peptides, minerals, and other compounds. It is also important to expand their know-how in the chemistry of plants using techniques like infrared (IR) spectrometry, Ultraviolet (UV), High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography (HPTLC), High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), to put the data together and get an over all perspective of the plants. At least development of a single TLC or HPLC profile should stop and analysis with more than one separation method must be undertaken, Indian Pharmacopoeia would be ready to consider such data generated and if it can help strengthen the identification test of herbs, stated Dr Narayana.