National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Chandigarh is organising three-day 3rd Biennial International Conference on 'New Developments in Drug Discovery from Natural Products and Traditional Medicine' from November 22-24, 2012 at NIPER. This conference is designed for pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and traditional medicine researchers/academia.

Earlier the department of natural products at NIPER had launched the website www.naturalproducts-niper.com which is actively engaged in conducting drug discovery and traditional medicine programmes.

According to the theme of this third international conference, natural products have been regarded as mainstay of drug discovery programmes as they offer unmatched chemical diversity with structural complexity and biological potency. The old traditional medicine system of Ayurveda offers a unique opportunity to undertake rationalized drug discovery programme based on herbal drugs for the benefit of mankind, while research inputs will provide a scientific basis to Ayurveda by providing unique advantages for pharma industry to enhance drug discovery programmes in India.

This will provide advantages for pharma industry to enhance drug discovery programmes in India and searching for the natural products in untapped sources which can lead to new horizons wherein researchers can find novel, potent and selective drug leads.

Several international and national speakers will be present at the event to discuss various topics like methods and techniques, phytopharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals and functional foods, lifestyle and metabolic disorders, natural products chemistry, traditional medicines and formulations, discovery of new biological pathway, new/novel chemical entities as lead scaffolds, infectious and parasitic diseases, oncology, inflammation and immunological disorders and synthesis of bioactive molecules.

This symposia will provide a platform for networking national and international researchers and pharma industry to harness the hidden potential of Mother Nature's Combi-Lab.