The scientists say that there is a drug that cures Dengue which is a novel plant-based drug. Reports say that there are about 4 million dengue cases will be noticed every year.
Both the pharma companies Sun Pharma and ICGEB will see the drug which completed preclinical work in every phase of the clinical studies.
“At least 10 scientists have been working on this for at least 10 years now. During this research at least 10 species of plants have been studied. And in each of the plants had the characteristics to fight the symptoms of dengue-like, fever, muscle pain, rashes,” said Navin Khanna , group leader of Mammalian biology at ICGEB New Delhi. For this project, Dr. Navin Khanna at ICGEB is the principle Investigator.
“Using the knowledge of traditional Indian medicine — Ayurveda — we developed a systematic bioassay-guided screening approach to explore the indigenous herbal bio- resource to identify plants with pan-DENV (dengue virus) inhibitory activity,” said Navin Khanna, senior scientist at ICGEB and the group leader of the project.
“Results showed that the alcoholic extract of Cissampelos pariera Linn (Cipa extract) was a potent inhibitor of all four DENVs in cell-based assays, assessed in terms of viral NS1 antigen secretion using ELISA, as well as viral replication, based on plaque assays. Virus yield reduction assays showed that Cipa extract could decrease viral titers by an order of magnitude. The extract conferred statistically significant protection against DENV infection,” he added.
The experiment was very challenging as they had to deal with the solution to fight the symptoms, said Khanna. Cissampelos parira (Cipa) is the drug which is developed is grown in parts of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh.
Cipa will be developed by Sun Pharma, following a drug registration process which is similar to the new chemical entity, with in-vitro, in-vivo, pre-clinical and clinical studies meeting all regulatory standards from Indian and other agencies worldwide.