University claims new drug for diabetes

Speaking to DTNext on the sidelines of the Indo-US Fulbright programme on research capacity building at the University on Saturday, Prof SP Thyagarajan, Dean (Research), at the university, said that even though there were several drugs for treating diabetics, there exists a gap in getting a drug, which could also prevent complications in systems like Neuropathy. “We evaluated Phyllanthus Amarus and Murraya Koenigii in terms of their properties relating to the prevention and curative processes of diabetes, besides checking how capable it is to prevent complications. We have shown that these plants have significant effects in controlling diabetes compared to the conventional drugs available in the market,” he said. 

The researchers have conducted experiments in rats inducing diabetes in them with standard models after getting necessary approvals from the government’s animal ethical committee and treated them with various dosage of their formulation in comparison with standard drugs. They showed almost 10 to 20 times more curative ability with the formulation. “We did several molecular mechanisms of action and concluded that it has several kind of developmental pathways to inhibit the development of insulin deficiency. We proved that it has insulin mimicking property which will mimic insulin in a diabetic,” he added. 

The Centre’s Department of Science and Technology (DST) supported the project and the University has partnered with a Kolkata-based pharmaceutical company and Visva-Bharati University, West Bengal. The researchers have also filed patents for their formulation.