IIT Guwahati: Researchers Develops Tech to Produce Psychoactive Drugs from Agri Resources

A low-cost membrane technology that can produce psychoactive drugs for anti-ageing compounds has been developed by some researchers from IIT Guwahati. 

Researchers from IIT Guwahati have developed the drug from various agricultural resources such as citrus fruits and peels especially orange peels, berries, parsley, pulses, tea, sea buckthorn, and onions.

Another speciality of the drugs is that they do not consist of any organic solvents but only water, unlike other anti-ageing compounds that are commercially available in the pharmaceutical industry at high prices. 

This technology has been developed by Mihir Kumar Purkait, Head, Centre for the Environment and Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Guwahati and an M.Tech student V L Dhadge.

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Why is it better than other drugs? 

Organic solvents such as Chloroform, Acetone, Acetonitrile are used in other anti-ageing compounds that are commercially available which are costly leading to a spike in the price of the antioxidant itself. 

“Since organic solvents are used, the technology suffers various disadvantages like low product quality and yield, high operating and product cost, more time consuming and high energy-intensive process for solvent recovery and has limitations to run continuation mode in industrial scale,” added Purkait.

Having been made from agricultural resources and water this drug is cost-effective and eliminates the risk of side effects. Thus, it can be replaced with other solutions in the pharmaceutical industry.

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Remarks from the Officials: 

The developer Mihir Kumar Purkait, while talking about the technology said, “The health-related benefits of psychoactive drugs (caffeine) and anti-ageing compounds (flavonoids) attributed to stimulating detoxification of enzyme activity and inhibition of cell invasion and angiogenesis. Because of medicinal applications, flavonoid components have gained popularity as ingredients in the pharmaceutical industry. These are also found in smaller amount in bamboo leaves, grapes, apples, and other natural sources,”

He further added, “The developed technology is exclusively pore and particle size based pressure-driven membrane separation process. The water extracts of the plants, fruits or leaves at optimum operating conditions are passed through specially made cascade membrane units of fabricated with appropriate molecular weight cut off (MWCO) membranes capable of separating targeted flavonoids selectively.”

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