The newspapers reported recently that Dr T.R.Govindachari and his colleagues at the SPIC Science Foundation had, for the first time, by use of different solvents and X-ray crystallography, have been able to obtain crystals of Azadirchtin A- the active substance from Azadirachta indica (neem) being used worldwide as a insect repellent. The patenting of Azadirachtin A by E. Larsen of Grace Company, USA has raised considerable protest in India. The author took the opportunity during a visit to Madras to discuss some of these issues with Dr M.D. Nair, senior executive director of SPIC and Dr Govindachari. In the early sixties, a group of scientists were brought together by a pharmaceutical house to establish a centre of excellence at Bombay.
These included Dr Govindachar, Dr Nair, the author and several others who are now scattered all over the world. One of the areas the interest, even in those early days, was the possible discovery of new drugs from Indian medicinal plants. Sometime ago, there were statements on ‘neem’ by the then Indian Commerece Minister, the Director General of Health Services, the Magsaysay awardee, Dr Mira Shiva and many others at New Delhi since the GATT agreement was to be signed at that time. In reply to the author’s request for comments. Dr Nair said, “Neem is a national asset for countries in this region and for time immemorial, neem has been known to have multifarious pharmacological properties.”
It has been traditionally used in a variety of ways especially as a disinfectant. Neem oil as also been known to have therapeutic properties as an anti-inflammatory analgesic, antipyretic and is used for other conditions. Under the patent regime operating in any county of the world, including the countries with the strongest patents, a naturally occurring plant is per se not patentable. What would be patentable is a derivative product, which is isolated from ‘neem’ which is new and which has much improved properties over the natural ‘neem’.
As far as the protection of the germ plasm of the neem tree is concerned, there has to be a different approach for protection. It can be through legislation of through commercial agreement with interested parties – whatsoever the approach, it must ensure that the benefits are passed on to the country if the germ plasm is available only in that country. There are very strong moves being initiated by developing countries in this direction and this issue was debated and discussed at Rio. Dr Nair’s reactions will give readers a clearer picture of this confusing situation. Dr Govindachari pleaded for more work to be carried out on different aspects of neem in the country as there are still many avenues of research to be carried out. More support was necessary for such work. He provided the fascinating information that the very first scientific papers on the anti-feedant activity of neem was published around 1968 by scientists at the Regional Research Laboratory, Jammu.
These observations which came out in Report of the Regional Research Laboratory and in Farm Sciences were not noticed. It was only a few years ago that Dr Morgan rediscovered this property of neem at the laboratories in Germany and revolutionized the scientific use of neem. One wonders whether there are any other search papers from Indian scientists tucked away in our journals which also remain to be rediscovered.
It may well be worth for our scientists and science administrators to look again at what has been published in the last forty years and pick out likely leads for follow-up. As regards his own discovery of the crystals, Dr Govindachari was characteristically modest, saying that it was partly the fact that he actually worked at the laboratory bench every-day which made it possible for him to make this finding. It was refreshing to meet such an infectiously enthusiastic scientist who at the age of seventy plus still works at the laboratory bench everyday.
0 comments:
Post a Comment