Abstract

Formulation Development of Herbal Products to get Better Botanical Drug Product

Lal Hingorani, Chairman/Managing Director, Pharmanza Herbal Pvt Ltd

Natural products have drawn lot of attention worldwide as new synthetic molecules are practically drying up from pipeline of new molecules. Now companies have started looking into existing molecules for use in other ailments where expense for development goes down or developing alternately natural products. Natural products also if you are looking at pure single component it involves all similar expenses as that of new synthetic molecule more so if it is synthesized than extracted from natural source. A combined extract, if that is taken further for development as a drug that will be easily accepted with its history of use and can go through clinical trial easily. There is not much requirements of Toxicity study in this. Very little work is being done in this field and as such in India we do not have any law allowing these Kind of Phytopharmaceuticals to be taken as drug without going through high cost of Toxicity studies. Law is not very clear on this but once some companies come forward to submit for approval there will be clarity. There is another angle to herbal products, formulation development. In Ayurveda under heading of bhaishajya kalpana more than 16 types of formulation described to treat various disorders. Though in ancient time they have understood formulation requirements of different herbs and their efficacy, not much work has been done after that to check for absorption of actives from herbal products. Lately after discovery of non-absorption of Curcumin in body lot of work has been done on same. Even nano technology is used to develop lot of Curcumin formulations without understanding Regulatory requirements of same. More scientific work is to be carried out to check bio availability of actives from herbal formulations. This will lead to more active products which can compete with synthetic molecules and this can be achieved by integration of novel drug delivery system and Ayurvedic herbs.