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Use of Ayurveda ingredients will see a quantum jump in pharma & cosmetic use: Dr DBA Narayana
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Nandita Vijay, Bengaluru
August 27 , 2017
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The use of Ayurveda ingredients will now see a quantum jump for their
use through food, drug and partly cosmetic route, according to Dr DBA
Narayana, chief scientific officer, Ayurvidye Trust.
But the
scenario will change now because of the nutraceuticals regulation which
has been notified by the government. So far, there were no clear
regulations for using them through food route. The routes that were only
available were only through classical Ayurveda medicine or as a
proprietary Ayurveda medicine or adding them as ingredients in cosmetics
for external applications, Dr. Narayana told Pharmabiz.
If one
traces the growth of use of these ingredients in terms of the sales
turnover, the growth of pure classical grantha preparations has been
rather slow. This is probably because the industry outside the
traditional Ayurveda industry did not grow. The traditional Ayurveda
industry did not invest in research or development or even generating
specific data so it continued to be sold through traditional vaidyas
added with a bit of commission, marketing. This market suffers from
authentic data.
The investments have been less though funding
from government sector like the Central Scientific Industry Research
(CSIR) labs National Medicinal Plants Board, ICMR went on to support
scientific work on herbs, he added.
There are around 400
ingredients known in Ayurveda with long history of safety and efficacy.
These have been permitted up to a particular permissible level as food
ingredients. Above that level the law classifies it under a medicinal
category and the industry needs to go to Ayurveda as per the regulation
to seek drug licenses. The good thing that has happened is that these
botanicals with a history of use, is permitted to be used in its raw
herb form to be processed into ingredients like extracts and distilled
oils which are oleoresins.
“ We will now see the these moving
across the world, besides the Indian food and pharma industry. All this
while any industry or innovator that wanted to use botanical, they were
forced to use those of western origin on which some science data was
available. This was because it was protected by the nutraceuticals
industry in the US or the food supplement industry in Europe. Now
companies in India under the FSSA guidance can prepare a the list of
nutraceuticals as a supplement or botanicals with safe use. This will
make our domestic companies to look at our own herbs as a special food.
The scenario will change in the next couple of years. It would begin
from farmers who will invest in cultivating medicinal herbs under
supervision of companies that will source it”, said Dr. Narayana.
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TOPICS
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