Name: Orkhon Banzragchgarav
Affiliation: Research Unit for Host Defense
Position: Foreign Visiting Researcher
Term: September 2018 to March 2020
Host researcher: Professor Yoshifumi Nishikawa (English /Japanese)
Circumstances of application:
I had an opportunity to visit at NRCPD for 3 weeks as an internship student in 2017. Even that was short period, I experienced on drug evaluation against Trypanosoma parasites in research unit for host defense under the guidance of Prof. Keisuke Suganuma, and Babesia parasites in research unit for molecular diagnostics. Based on findings, we have published two scientific articles. Thus, I have encouraged to apply the position, foreign visiting researcher.
Research activity in NRCPD:
My background is pharmacognosy. I studied about chemical constituents and structure determination of Mongolian plants, and evaluated biological activities such as anti-Babesia and anti-Trypanosoma activities. For example, we identified eleven new 2,5-diphenyloxazole derivatives, together with six known isoflavonoid derivatives, were isolated from the roots of Oxytropis lanata, a traditional Mongolian plant. The inhibitory activity of the isolated compounds was evaluated against Trypanosoma congolense, and some oxazole derivatives showed potent inhibition activity.
Currently, I am evaluating anti-Toxoplasma, anti-Plasmodium, and cytotoxicity activities of crude extracts and secondary metabolites of Mongolian plants under the guidance of Prof. Yoshifumi Nishikawa. In the result, we identified that one crude extract and some secondary metabolites have potent growth inhibition activity against Toxoplasma gondii (SI>10).
Future prospects:
Our results showed that plants and plant secondary metabolites can be potential candidates for treatment of toxoplasmosis. We have not confirmed our results in vivo condition due to limitation of extracts. Therefore, I would like to conduct in vivo experiments. For that, we need to collect active plants. Moreover, I would like to work on purification and determination chemical structure of active components of the plants.