Biochemistry & Pharmacology: Open Access
Open Access
ISSN: 2167-0501
ISSN: 2167-0501
Neeraj Kumar
Accepted Abstracts: Biochem & Pharmacol
The Indian Himalaya is a source of variety of important medicinal plant species. These medicinal plants have been in use since Vedic times, for the cure of various ailments. The natural products from these medicinal plants are the most consistently successful source of drug leads. These products continue to provide greater structural diversity than standard combinatorial chemistry and so they offer major opportunities for finding novel lead structures that are active against a wide range of assay targets. In recent years, our group has investigated number of highly valued medicinal species of the Western Himalaya for finding novel structural diversity, in particular Lonicera japonica, Bacopa monnieri, Holarrhena antidysenterica, Rosa damascena, Tinospra cordifolia, Zanthoxylum armatum and Asparagus racemosus. New bioactive lead molecules have been characterized belonging to the classes of cerebrosides, flavonoids, terpenoids, steroidal alkaloids and steroids. Simultaneously, robust analytical and spectroscopic measurements for determination of these biologically important phytochemicals have been developed. These analytical and spectroscopic methods have resulted into rapid identification and quantification of several kinds of natural product from plants which have led to the discovery of new drug candidates. Hence, in the present work our lead achievements on chemical and biological aspects of new natural products from Western Himalayan region of India will be discussed.
Neeraj Kumar received his master?s degree in Organic Chemistry at Govt. P.G. College, Rishikesh (HNB Garhwal University). He began his doctoral studies under the direction of Dr. Bikram Singh and Professor S. S. Bari and obtained Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry (Natural Products) from Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. During that time, he contributed significantly on phytochemical investigations of selected medicinal plants: isolation and structure elucidation of the novel scaffolds of biological relevance, methodologies development for quality assurance and chemical fingerprinting of medicinal plants. He joined the Department of Natural Products at CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology in April of 2008, where he is currently a scientist of Organic Chemistry (Natural Products). His group's research interests center around the phytochemistry and development of biomimetic metal phthalocyanine/organocatalyst/Lewis acid catalyzed highly selective organic transformations such as nitro reduction, reductive amination, carbonyl reductions and cascade synthesis.