Written records of the use of natural products as medicinal agents date back thousands of years. The oldest records come from Mesopotamia and date from about 2600 BC, however, it was not until the early 1800’s that the active Principals from plants were isolated. Natural products isolated from plants, animals and microorganisms have made an important impact on curing the dreadful diseases for example taxol, vinca alkaloids, podophyllotoxins camptothecin derivatives for cancer treatment; pencillins, streptomycins, tetracyclines as antibiotics; quinine and artemisinin for malaria treatment.

Our major research activities are identification of biologically active lead molecules through activity guided fraction and isolation work on the medicinal plants, marine organisms and microorganisms for metabolic diseases (hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia), parasitic diseases (leishmania and malaria), cancer etc., and chemical transformation of natural products of biological importance to improve their potency. We synthesize these biologically active lead molecules and their analogues in our laboratory. We have identified several lead molecules from the Indian medicinal plants for various disease areas as described below and further work is in progress to develop natural products based drugs.