In the December 2002 issue of this letter we informed you about the prestigious National Award for R & D efforts in Industry presented to Sami Labs Ltd., the research and manufacturing arm of Sabinsa Corporation. This month we present an overview of the state of the art research and development facilities that made this award possible.
The research and development efforts at SAMI are spearheaded by 16 Senior Scientists, with expertise invarious aspects of Phytochemistry, Organic Chemistry, Tissue Culture, Biotechnology and Quality Control, who work with a team of 50 other scientists and chemists. Research efforts are targeted toward the manufacture and authentication of herbal extracts, fine chemicals, specialty chemicals, cosmeceuticals, and also in the direction of new drug discovery. Product yield and quality are improved through process development efforts in sophisticated techniques such as supercritical fluid extraction.
Plant tissue culture research is one of the exciting research areas that serves to augment existing resources for medicinal herbs, while helping to conserve rare and endangered species. Some of the plants that are cultivated by tissue culture include Coleus forskohlii, Curcuma longa, Olea europaea and Melissa officinalis. In the December 2002 issue of this letter we informed you about the prestigious National Award for R & D efforts in Industry presented to Sami toward the production of secondary metabolites, that are the biologically active principles.
At the Biotechology facility, re-search priorities include probiotics, mineral yeast supplements, biocatalytic processes and the microbial synthesis of therapeutically active natural molecules.
A team of five scientists at Sabinsa’s Princeton Research facility collaborate with their counter-parts in India to accelerate product development efforts. This facility has laboratory and semi-commercial scale custom manufacturing capabilities. The processes developed there are scaled up to the required levels at the manufacturing units in India.
