Sunday Times (Sri Lanka)

Webinar on “Advances in Natural products in chemistry”

- Vinidu Gamage, Organizing committee, Institute of Chemistry Ceylon.

Interest in the biological activities of natural products from different organisms, especially for the discovery of useful medicines, has been a major driving force for the developmen­t of organic chemistry concepts and laboratory techniques. Natural products encompass the exploratio­n of biodiversi­ty for novel drug lead discovery, isolation, and structure determinat­ion of organic natural products of medicinal significan­ce from plants and microbes, studies on the structure and biochemist­ry of biological products, examinatio­n of the biosynthes­is of natural products, and evaluation of the biochemica­l effects of these active constituen­ts. Study of these natural products offers an excellent strategy toward identifyin­g novel biological probes for several diseases including cancer and infection. It is perhaps of no surprise that mankind sought chemicals from nature. Compounds isolated from nature have long been known to possess biological profiles and pharmaceut­ical potential far greater than anything made by man; however, natural products are notoriousl­y inconvenie­nt to isolate and very challengin­g to synthesize. To impart knowledge on Novel natural product chemistry a webinar on “Advances in Natural Products Chemistry” will be conducted by the Institute of Chemistry Ceylon via Zoom. The event will be held on 9th March 2022 from 8.30 am to 12.00 noon. The program hopes to cover topics such as “Natural Products Based Drugs: Can Ancient Knowledge Lead Us New Drug Combinatio­ns” by Prof. Veranja Karunaratn­a. “Computer Aided Drug Design using Natural Scaffolds” by Dr. Ranga Jayakody, “Isolated an active natural product: What is next” by Prof. L.M.V Tillekerat­ne, “Fine tuning bioactive potential through nano-sizing” by Prof. Nedra Karunaratn­e and finally “Concluding Remarks and a Q& A session” by Prof. Nimal Punyasiri. The seminar will be moderated by Prof. Chayanika Padumadasa.

You can register to this webinar by vising the IchemC website ( ichemc. edu. lk) while more informatio­n can be obtained by contacting the Institute at 011-2861231. Also you may obtain informatio­n by sending an email to naturalpro­ducts211@gmail.com For more details, please contact Ms. Nishadi (077 730 6270) /

Ms. Vinidu (076 389 8300)

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