Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala, one of the top-notch institutions engaged in the propagation of Ayurveda at global level, has signed an agreement with the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad as part of its ongoing research on the efficacy of Ayurvedic drugs in the fight against COVID-19.
The CCMB, one of the premier life science research institutes engaged in testing, sequencing and growing novel coronavirus strains in their laboratories, will test Arya Vaidya Sala’s (AVS) standardised Ayurveda formulations on the lab-grown coronavirus strains in cell culture system, and check for their anti-viral efficacy.
If the new move gives positive results, it will be a big thrust to the country’s pharmaceutical industry.
“Arya Vaidya Sala has joined hands with the CCMB with an objective of validating classical knowledge of Ayurveda within the ambit of modern science,” said Indira Balachandran, director of the Centre for Medicinal Plants Research (CMPR) at Arya Vaidya Sala, Kottakkal.
C.T. Sulaiman, senior scientist at the CMPR, said the findings of the collaborative study would be a game changer in the fight against COVID-19. “The chemical evaluation of the selected formulations showed presence of potent molecules; and they will be investigated further,” said Dr. Sulaiman.
According to Rakesh Mishra, director of the CCMB, Hyderabad, the project can lead to a major progress in the country’s pharmaceutical industry. “While India possesses a lot of ancient wisdom, it has lacked defined regulatory protocols for testing the efficacy of formulations that are based on the ancient texts.”
“In the ongoing fight against the coronavirus, it has become imperative to rigorously test the different treatment possibilities before they are used by the public. At CCMB, we have established an efficacy testing facility for drugs and devices by using the lab-grown coronavirus. This can be used for testing the anti-viral efficacy of Ayurvedic formulations too,” Dr. Mishra said.
