Prof. Pulok Kumar Mukherjee

Member (Ex-officio)

Director, IBSD, Imphal

Professor Pulok Kumar Mukherjee is working as the Director, Institute of Bioresources and Sustainable Development (IBSD), Department of Biotechnology, Govt of India having its presence at IBSD Imphal, Manipur; Aizawl, Mizoram; Gangtok, Sikkim and Shilong, Meghalaya. He has been working on Drug discovery from natural resources with its several translation components on chemistry of natural products, Pharmacology, therapeutics, chemical biology, metabolomics and related aspects. He has enormous expertise in Ethnopharmacology, ethno medicine, and evidence based validation of herbs used in several ancient systems leading to discovery of drugs from nature and from the ancestors. Prof. Mukherjee has more than 29 years of experience on several areas on development of Bioeconomy from Bioresources particularly on traditional medicine inspired drug discovery from Indian medicinal plants, Ethno pharmacology and evidence based validation of medicinal herbs to make them available from ‘Farm to Pharma’. His academic and research career has been outstanding, including globally acclaimed contributions on teaching and research on validation of medicinal plants from Indian systems of medicine, their formulation and standardization, which are useful bio-prospecting tools for the traditional medicine based drug discovery programme. Under his guidance, 35 students have completed their PhD degree. Prof. Mukherjee has more than 255 research publications having total Impact Factor ≥ 278; h-Index- 70, i10-index – 377; citation over 25000 times. Prof. Mukherjee has been listed as Top 2% of the scientist/authors of the world based on the independent survey made by a group form Stanford USA. He has authored/edited 8 books and 21 book chapters with Elsevier, Academic Press, Wiley, Pharma Press etc. He has several national/international patents. Prof. Mukherjee is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), Fellow of National Academy of Sciences, India (FNASc), Fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (FNAAS), Fellow of the West Bengal Academy of Science & Technology (FAScT). He has been awarded with several laurels from Govt. of India and abroad: awarded with the prestigious Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship from Association of Commonwealth Universities [ACU], UK; TATA innovation fellowship, by Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India; Outstanding Service Award from Drug Information association [DIA], USA; Career Award for Young Teacher from All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), BOYSCAST Fellowship from the Dept of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India; Best Pharmaceutical Scientist, from the Association of Pharmaceutical Teachers’ of India (APTI); Col RN Chopra oration award from Indian Pharmacological Society (IPS); IASTAM Award for Contributions to Development of Ayurvedic and Herbal Pharmaceutics by Indian Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine (IASTAM) and many others. Prof. Mukherjee is serving as a Consulting editor, Pharmacological Research, Associate Editor of the Phytomedicine plus, Elsevier Science;. He is the member of the editorial board of several International journals including Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Phytomedicine, Pharmaceutical analysis, Synergy; Phytochemical Analysis, World Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Executive Editor of the India J Traditional Knowledge and many others. He is associated as advisor/member to different organizations and administrative bodies of Government of India and abroad. He served as the president of the International Society for Ethnopharmacology, Switzerland and the Founder of the Society for Ethnopharamcology, India, serving with the mission of ‘globalizing local knowledge and localizing global technologies’, Further details are available at www.pulokmukherjee.com Research Interest & Current areas of work: Prof Mukherjee and his research group has been working on Drug discovery from natural resources with its several translation aspects on the production and chemical processing of economically important Medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) particularly on the bio-prospecting of plants and their constituents. His works on metabolomics analysis for development of MAPs are useful for their value addition, reinforcement and sustainable development. His works established the therapeutic validation of the clinical usage of the medicinal plants and traditional medicine to strengthen the chemical and therapeutic claims of MAPs in Indian traditional system of medicine through scientific evaluation and evidence based validation through biological and chemical sciences. He has been working on several translational aspects for MAPs for their assessment through bio-analytical techniques, bioassay guided isolation, enzyme inhibition, pharmacological and microbiological assays. Research contributions of the team along with the translational aspects in the field of MAPs with the products/process developed along with the publications made, is being highlighted as follows:
  • Development of Bioeconomy from bioresources
  • Pharmacological and therapeutic evaluation of natural products.
  • Chemical and therapeutic validation leading to traditional Medicine inspired drug discovery and development to make them available from Farm to Pharma
  • Translational Research approach for development of Processes/ products from MAPs:
  • Leveraging innovation for development of value added products from therapeutically potent lead components:
  • Documentation and evidence based validation of traditional knowledge
  • Metabolomics based metabolite profiling, Marker analysis and Standardization of MAPS
  • DNA barcoding approach for quality related aspects of MAPS
  • Bio-prospecting of natural resources MAPs for development of therapeutically potent lead
  • Safety evaluation of herbal medicine
  • Development of value added herbal formulations, quality evaluation and validation
  • Development of e-nose technologies based on NIR and Raman spectroscopy for quality control of medicinal plants
  • Exploring Synergy in MAPs research through omics technology, network pharmacology with their chemical and biological perspectives.
  • Sustainable Development of MAPs for strengthening Bioeconomy
  • Dissemination of Knowledge for promotion and development of MAPs