Natural Product Chemistry

Isolation and Characterization of Pancreatic Lipase Inhibitory Natural Products from Indian Medicinal Plants for Obesity Management.

Obesity is one of the major metabolic disorders that is a growing epidemic. By 2015, WHO estimates the number to increase upto 2.3 billion (almost covering half of the globe). Orlistat, a potent inhibitor of pancreatic lipase, is the only approved anti-obesity drug available in market for long term use. Recent studies have reported the occurrence of severe liver and acute kidney injuries with the use of orlistat, demanding an urgent need for development of newer, safer and effective anti-obesity therapeutics. Indian Medicinal plants have been used for ages to treat obesity. Currently we are exploring the potential of selected Ayurvedic medicinal plants using porcine pancreatic lipase assay and high fat diet model in rats. We have checked a series of plants and have found few interesting result that have not been reported yet.

In-silico Study and Synthesis of Natural Products Derivatives as Pancreatic Lipase inhibitors

An exhaustive in silico study involving docking of 195 plant based pancreatic lipase inhibitors has been performed to understand the pharmacophoric features required for pancreatic lipase inhibition (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Important amino acids interaction with Pancreatic lipase (Sridhar SNC et al; BMC,2017) Pharmacophoric features have been understood and designing and synthesis of novel inhibitors of pancreatic lipase is under way

 Phyto-Technology

Development of Botanical Based Novel Formulation for Mosquito Larvicidal Action

Vector-borne diseases account for 17% of the estimated global burden of all infectious diseases. Mosquitoes act as a vector for most of the life threatening diseases like malaria, dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, filariasis, etc. Currently the world's fastest growing vector-borne disease is dengue and has increased 30 folds over the last 50 years. As botanicals have coevolved with animals/organisms, these phytochemicals act as ligands for wide varieties of biomolecules present in such animals/organisms including mosquito larvae. We at BITS Pilani are targeting the larval stages of mosquito by developing a formulation using different combinations of botanicals which contains phytochemicals that will target such biomolecules. 

*Candidates with INSPIRE/ CSIR/ ICMR/ UGC - JRF/SRF fellowships and interested to work in the area of Pharmacognosy / Phytochemistry / Natural Products/ Pharmacology of herbal drugs/ Formulation and Analysis of herbal drugs, can contact by sending curriculum vitae to Dr. Atish T. Paul (atish.paul@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in)