Egypt announces important pharmaceutical discovery from Egyptian plant

He explained that the discovery was headed by Dr. Faiza Mohamed Hamouda, Professor of Medicinal Plant Chemistry at the Center, and the researchers succeeded in preparing the raw pharmaceutical silymarin from the Egyptian milk thistle plant for the first time, which is a product that has no alternative in the Egyptian market.

He pointed out that this product is used in the manufacture of many medicines for the treatment and prevention of liver diseases, through the initiative to deepen local manufacturing, which is one of the initiatives of the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, between the Academy as the funding body, the National Research Center as the implementing body, and Atos Pharma, one of the companies of the SEKEM Holding Group, which produces and markets, within the framework of the state’s policy to replace the imported product with the Egyptian product.

The Acting Head of the National Research Center added that the Egyptian Drug Authority issued a certificate of conformity for silymarin as an Egyptian product last June, noting that the camel thorn plant Silybum marianum L. is one of the most important global plants, and is the primary source of Silymarin, which is used in the manufacture of more than 360 pharmaceutical preparations and nutritional supplements worldwide and nearly 40 pharmaceutical preparations in the Egyptian market, for the treatment and prevention of liver diseases.

Hussein Darwish pointed out that the annual consumption in the Egyptian market of raw silymarin pharmaceuticals reaches 120-150 tons annually, which is entirely imported from abroad in foreign currency and costs the state millions of dollars.

Source: Cairo 24