Interview with the Inventor – Professor Alexey Tyrkov
Interview with Prof. Alexey Tyrkov, Dean of the Chemical Department of ASU, Supervisor of the research project “Method to Obtain Immunotropic Agent as Base for “Immunoflan” Preparation”, Director of the Green Chemistry Research & Educational Center.
– What’s the essence of your development?
– It relates to technologies of “Immunophlan” obtainment; researchers of Astrakhan State University and Astrakhan State Medical University developed it working together. This invention relates to Medicine, in particular – to Pharmacology: this stuff enhances and fully normalizes the immune status of an organism. As it’s well-known nowadays, such medicines may be of synthetic, vegetative, or animal origin. There are also medicines with heart-protecting, liver-protecting, and immunologic properties. Lophanthus anisatus has such properties; folk medicine of Mongolia, China, and some other countries applies it quite actively. We developed a means to obtain a medicinal extract from leaves of lophanthus anisatus by applying “green” technologies (the aqueous alcoholic extraction method).
– What are the useful properties of “Immunophlan”?
– Our research proved that this preparation provides a good sedative effect; it also has heart-protecting and immunotropic properties; it enhances both the leukocytic formula of blood and the organism immunity, which was previously weakened for this or that reason.
– Are you proceeding with examining this preparation?
– We patented it; we published a number of papers in specialized journals and used white mice to research its useful qualities in our lab. Now we’re conducting a more detailed preclinical trial of this stuff; in particular, we aim to reveal the limits of its activity to determine its side effects and contraindications for humans. That’s quite a serious, time-consuming job.
– Are you planning to commercialize your research?
– As for its commercialization, we’re searching for partners. Our work is already at the stage that requires financial support. Our potential investors are well-informed about us, but, as we all know, the economic outlook is rather complicated in our country now. A real advantage of our product is its vegetative origin; it’s not synthetic, which is really essential now. We isolate valuable biological substance from vegetative raw materials: their toxicity is low; their side effect is weak, which is very good for pharmacy. The preparation is cheap, as it’s quite easy to grow lophanthus anisatus under conditions of Astrakhan Region’s climate: it may be harvested twice a year – in middle summer and in autumn. As for financial costs, the substance isolation technology is cheap, while the yield is high. Thanks to all these factors, “Immunophlan” shall be able to compete with synthetic preparations.
Interviewed by T.Yu. Gavrilkina (the Web Resources Information Support Directorate of ASU)
November 14, 2016
Translated by E.I. Glinchevskiy (the Center of Translation Studies & Conference Interpreting “ASTLINK” of ASU)