Hyderabad, Jan 1 (IANS): The CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad has entered into an agreement with Arya Vaidya Sala (AVS), Kottakkal to check for the efficacy of ayurvedic formulations in the fight against coronavirus.

AVS will provide standardised ayurveda formulations, and the CCMB will test them on the lab-grown coronavirus strains in cell culture system, and check for their anti-viral efficacy.

AVS is a 118-year-old charitable institution headquartered at Kerala's Kottakkal which has been engaged in the practice and propagation of Ayurveda. They have manufactured more than 500 formulations.

The CCMB is a premier life science research institute, and it has been testing, sequencing and growing coronavirus strains in their labs.

"If it yields tangible results, the project will lead to a major progress in pharmaceutical industry in India. While India possesses a lot of ancient wisdom, it has lacked defined regulatory protocols for testing the efficacy of formulations that are based on the ancient texts," CCMB Director Dr Rakesh Mishra said.

"In the ongoing fight against the coronavirus, it has become imperative to rigorously test the different treatment possibilities before they are used by the public. At CCMB, we have established an efficacy testing facility for drugs and devices by using the lab-grown coronavirus. This can be used for testing the anti-viral efficacy of Ayurvedic formulations too," he added.

"AVS is joining hands with CCMB with the clear objective of attempting to validate classical knowledge of Ayurveda with the aid of modern science. We are hopeful that findings of this study will yield useful therapeutic support in the current situation. The chemical evaluation of the selected formulations showed presence of potent molecules, and they will be investigated further," said Dr C.T. Sulaiman, Senior Scientist, AVS.