CCMB to harness Ayurveda to tackle SARS-CoV-2

Hyderabad: Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) has entered into an agreement with Arya Vaidya Sala (AVS), Kottakkal, to check the efficacy of Ayurvedic formulations in the fight against coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

AVS is a 118-years-old charitable institution headquartered at Kottakkal in Kerala, which has been engaged in the practice and propagation of Ayurveda. It manufactures more than 500 formulations. CCMB is a premier life science research institute, and has been testing, sequencing, and growing coronavirus strains in their labs.

In this partnership, AVS will provide standardised Ayurveda formulations. CCMB will test them on the lab-grown coronavirus strains in the cell culture system, and check for their anti-viral efficacy.

"If it yields tangible results, the project will lead to a major progress in pharmaceutical industry in the country. While India possesses a lot of ancient wisdom, it has lacked defined regulatory protocols for testing the efficacy of formulations that are based on the ancient texts.

In the ongoing fight against the coronavirus, it has become imperative to rigorously test the different treatment possibilities before they are used by the public. At CCMB, we have established an efficacy testing facility for drugs and devices by using the lab-grown coronavirus. This can be used for testing the anti-viral efficacy of Ayurvedic formulations too", says Dr Rakesh Mishra, CCMB director.

"AVS is joining hands with CCMB with the clear objective of attempting to validate classical knowledge of Ayurveda with the aid of modern science. We are hopeful that the findings of this study will yield useful therapeutic support in the current situation. The chemical evaluation of the selected formulations showed the presence of potent molecules, and they will be investigated further" said Dr C T Sulaiman, senior scientist, AVS.