PHARMACOGNOSY

Pharmacognosy, a core branch in pharmacy curriculum involves the study of natural products. Plants have been a source of medicine from past era and earlier. The study of these herbal drugs were referred as materiamedica. “Pharmacognosy” the term was derived from two Greek words; Pharmakon (which means a drug) and gignosko (which means to acquire knowledge of). According to American society of Pharmacognosy, Pharmacognosy was defined as the study of physical, chemical, biochemical and biological properties of drug, drug substances, potential drugs or drug substances of natural origin as well as the search for new drugs from natural sources. The branch of pharmacognosy has undergone numerous changes and is still undergoing the same according to the needs and requirements of the society. In current scenario, is to address the safety concern of synthetic medicines, researchers focus on adopting traditional medicine based approaches and therefore, there is a need to meet the advancements in the field viz. development of sophisticated instrumental techniques to standardize herbal drugs and for the development of herb based formulations.In the department, undergraduate students are trained to explore the resources in an ethical way to understand, to get expertise and to develop newer techniques for the sustainable growth of the subject. The strength of department of Pharmacognosy in KVM College of Pharmacy is in its well-equipped two laboratories which fulfill all the requirements asper the Kerala University of Health Sciences. Three faculties of the department offers proper guidance and training to the students in all aspects of natural products. More than 10 research projects have been conducted in the department labs by the UG students and more than five research papers published in the journals of international and national altitudes.