New Delhi: The Appointment Committee of Cabinet (ACC) has approved the appointment of Professor Pulok Kumar Mukherjee as Director of Institute of Bioresources & Sustainable Development (IBSD), on Tuesday. IBSD is a national institute under the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology. Prior to this appointment, Mukherjee was serving as Professor in Pharmaceutical Technology, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He has been appointed as Director of IBSD for a period of five years or until further orders, whichever is earlier, said the CIC order.
Mukherjee is working as the Director, School of Natural Product Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. His research/academic works highlights on traditional medicine inspired drug discovery from Indian medicinal plants to make them available from Farm to Pharma. He has made several innovative and outstanding contributions in academic and research in the area of natural product studies, Ethnopharmacology and evidence-based validation of herbs used in AYUSH, India.
Mukherjee obtained both his PhD and Master's in pharmacy from Jadavpur University in Jadavpur, Kolkata in 1997. He then attended Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research – Leiden University in the Netherlands as a postdoctoral researcher. Before becoming a professor he worked as a visiting professor at the UCL School of Pharmacy, University of London, King's College and the University of Tokushima in Japan.
In 2007 Mukherjee along with Venkatesan Kumar, Mainak Mal, and Peter J Houghton discovered how to inhibit acetylcholinesterase to treat neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, senile dementia, ataxia and myasthenia gravis.