Medicine made of traditional herbs has a good development prospect in terms of science and research, particularly in Indonesia. Let alone in international scale, Indonesia is famous for having plentiful traditional herbs. This is a big chance for pharmacists to keep developing researches.
It is a research on traditional medicine which Dr. Aty Widyawaruyanti, dra., Apt., M.Si. is developing. Besides teaching at the Department of Pharmacognosy & Phytochemistry, every day Aty spends her time at the Institute of Tropical Disease (ITD) UNAIR to examine medicine from natural sources. As a matter of course, part of the Three Principles of Education is aim to support pharmacy science and produce medicine experts (pharmacists, red).
Aty has been active doing the research since she became a staff at the Department of Pharmacognosy & Phytochemistry. In general, the research that she and her team are developing aims to get active ingredients for the research, especially herbs and traditional ingredients for medicine. The active ingredients can be in the form of extract, fraction, or compound which is successfully isolated from the herbs.
Aty focuses herself in inventing natural ingredients for anti-malaria medicine. Started in 1990 until now, she has been developing a research on medicine ingredients for malaria, including isolating their active compound.
In the laboratory which is now called Center for Natural roduct Medicine Research and Development, a research to get herbal products is being developed.
“The products are produced in the form of pharmacy preparations, whether capsules or tablets. For malaria treatment, several products have been tested for their activity on animals or even pre-clinic,” she said.
However at ITD, not only doing a research on anti-malaria medicine, Aty and her team are also exploring medicine ingredients from other herbs. Along with the team, she explores a few national parks and jungles to get some herbs as sample. The sample is in fact to be extracted and tested.
There are two candidates for anti-malaria medicine from the extract that she has been developing. What she has been developing is not in the form of compound, but extract or fraction. The two candidates are made of chempedak bark and paniculata herbs.
Herbal medicine for natural product researches is potential to be developed; since most of research titles which are accepted now are the ones with topic about natural medicine.
“Nowadays the ‘back to nature’ jargon is well known in the community. This is also supported by Indonesia richness which is famous for its traditional herbs and medicine,” she added.
Herbal medicine ingredients will be sustainable to be researched and developed. Moreover with the development of phytopharmaceutical technology, as time goes by the development of traditional medicine availability will also be better and more modern. (*)
Author: Binti Q. Masruroh
Editor: Nuri Hermawan