Intl symposium on “Nature Inspired Initiatives in Chemical Trends’ begins at IICT

Hyderabad, March 3 : A three day International Symposium on “Nature Inspired Initiatives in Chemical Trends’ was inaugurated here on Monday at the campus of CSIR – Indian Institute of Chemical Technology at Tarnaka.

Around 600- delegates from various countries including USA, France, Germany, China, South Korea and India are expected to participate in this mega event. Lectures by 14 International and 22 Indian speakers, mostly by young researchers and students, with an emphasis on recent developments in natural products chemistry and biology will be presented in the symposium.

The symposium was inaugurated by Prof. Goverdhan Mehta, from University of Hyderabad and presided over by Dr. M. Lakshmi Kantam, Director, IICT. The main theme of the symposium is on the chemistry, biology and applications in human health care of natural products of plants, marine organisms, microbial and other natural sources.

Speaking on the occasion Mehta said that, “Nature provides majority of drugs and scientific community need to explore more drugs from natural products of secondary metabolic nature or from their chemically modified structures”.

Speaking to the media, S. Chandrasekhar, senior scientist and organising secretary of the symposium said “as part of the 70th year celebrations, each department of the IICT is hosting a major event every month. The nature provides many needful for the man kind. With chemical modifications many resources can be useful for us. For example Neem tree has four elements and using those, the renal cancer can be treated be better. For this we are working with Mayo clinic of USA, he said. The IICT is also had a collaboration with institutes like Dortmund University of Germany for more research works in the similar field.

The symposium is expected to bring together the natural product chemists, biologists, young researchers and technologists from industry to know the recent developments and to identify the priority areas to provide affordable drugs for the human health care.  INN