Natural Products

The Piramal Healthcare Research Centre is unique in the discovery and development of new therapeutics for cancer, inflammation, diabetes and infectious diseases that are derived from microbial and plant sources.

• The Natural Products Department has a collection of resource samples and plants from an extensive variety of habitats and climatic zones from the far corners of India, ranging from tropical to alpine (Himalayas).
• The microbial collection encompasses habitats such as plants, high altitude (18000 feet), Antarctic regions, meteorite crater, hot springs, river beds, alkaline lakes, caves, mining area, fresh water, marine water and marine invertebrates & plants (viz. sponges, corals, coelenterates, and mangroves).
• Microbial culture library banks over 48,000 microbes comprising of actinomycetes, bacteria, rare fungi, myxobacteria and mushrooms.
• The microbial collection includes industrially important strains which produce high value bioactive compounds such as bafilomycin A1, borrelidin, concanamycin A, chrysomycin A, nosiheptide, actinomycin D, ophiobolin A, mutolide, altersolanol A, echinomycin, chaetoglobosin A, hypericin, chaetomin and plicacetin.
• The metabolite extract library has more than 7,000 plant extracts and more than 56,000 partially purified microbial metabolite extracts.
• The pre-clinical pipeline consists of several new chemical entities for the treatment of cancer, inflammatory diseases, and diabetes.
• Two herbal extracts show promising antiviral activity against Herpes simplex virus
• Two leads with novel structures are broad-spectrum antibiotics for infectious disease therapy. One lead antibiotic is derived from marine bacteria and has potent activity against Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and the other is a potent anti-TB drug.
• We have expertise in the biotransformation of molecules using enzymes as well as whole cells.

Selected publications:

1. Pradipta Tokdar, Prafull Ranadive, Malcolm Mascarenhas, Shashikant Patil and Saji George. (E)-4- Aminostyryl Acetate, a Novel Pancreatic Lipase Inhibitor Produced by a Streptomyces sp. MTCC 5219. International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications 2011, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 135-138.
2. Prafull Ranadive, Alka Mehta, and Saji George. Strain improvement of Sporidiobolus johnsonii -ATCC 20490 for biotechnological production of Coenzyme Q10. International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications 2011, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 216-220.
3. Gautam R, Jachak SM and Saklani A. Anti-inflammatory effect of Ajuga bracteosa Wall. ex Benth. mediated through cyclooxygenase (COX) inhibition. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 2011, 133: 928–930.
4. Deshmukh, S. K., Kolet M. J. and Verekar, S. A. Distribution of endophytic fungi In Lemon Grass (Cymbopogon Citratus (Dc.) Stapf.) Journal of Cell and Tissue Research, 2010, 10(2): 2263-2267.
5. J. K. Misra, J. P. Tewari and S. K. Deshmukh. Systematics and Evolution of Fungi, Taylor & Francis Group, 2011, ISBN - 1578087236, pp340.
6. Pallavi B. Pednekar, Roopesh Jain and Girish B. Mahajan. Anti-infective Potential of Hot-Spring Bacteria. J. Global Infect. Diseases, 2011, 3 (3), 241-245.
7. Pallavi B. Pednekar, Roopesh Jain, Narsinh L. Thakur and Girish B. Mahajan. Isolation of Multi-Drug Resistant Paenibacillus sp. From Fertile Soil: An Imminent Menace of Spreading Resistance. J. of Life Sciences, USA, 2010, 4 (5), Serial No.30.