Iloilo seen to become leading hub for medicine discoveries
ILOILO City – Hopes are high that this city will soon be the country’s hub of natural medicine and antibiotic discovery with the presence of four state-of-the art research centers and laboratories at the University of San Agustin (USA).
Yesterday, t he Center for Informatics ( CFI), Center for Advanced New Materials Engineering and Emerging Technologies (CANMEET), USA DOST- PCHRD Tuklas Lunas NMR Laboratory Visayas, and Mass Spectrometry Imaging Laboratory were inaugurated.
Also considered as a major milestone for USA, the inauguration was headed by Department of Science and Technology (DOST) secretary Dr. Fortunato De la Peña.
The centers and laboratories will transform the university from a primarily teaching to a research-intensive institution, according to Dr. Jonel Saludes, USA associate vice president for research and global relations.
According to Saludes, the availability of instruments will expedite the process of research.
“Previously it takes us about one to two months to get results from abroad, now it would take us five minutes to finish,” he said.
Though the facilities are fully operational now and with advanced instrumentation that require special training and skills, Saludes said they will train researchers from Visayas and Mindanao to make them competent in using the instruments.
“By the end of the year we now have infrastructure that is ready for use by a new generation of scientists, NMR experts in Visayas and Mindanao. The instruments are not for the exclusive use of the university, it is available for use by other researchers in natural drug discovery,” he noted.
Dr. Doralyn Dalisay, director of the Center for Chemical Biology and Biotechnology (C2B2), said they will be doing projects that address societal problems. She cited for instance, their research on natural resources as natural source of antibiotics.
Moreover, Saludes said, the university is also positioned to contribute to nanomaterial and nanotechnology research that will produce a new class of packaging materials and reduce environmental pollution.
Also, it will lead to the utilization of bio and health informatics for the benefit of public health and social services.
The MALDI-TOF imaging mass spectrometer at the Center for Chemical Biology and Biotechnology (C2B2) and the cryoprobe NMR at the Center for Natural Drug Discovery and Development (CND3) are the first and only research instruments of their kind in the Philippines.
The MALDI-TOF instrument enables the monitoring of absorption of medicines, providing information if these medicines reach the target organs of the body.
Meanwhile, the cryoprobe NMR is a tool in natural medicine discovery, ensuring that the
identity of the active components of a herbal medicine or synthetic drug is correct.
These i nstruments are considered to be indispensable in
the pursuit of new drug discovery, especially for the DOST Tuklas Lunas Development Centers in the Visayas and Mindanao.