OFIR - Department for Pharmaceutical Research and Development

15 researchers (10 PhDs and 5 PhD candidates) and one technician work within the Department for Pharmaceutical Research and Development. OFIR researchers are competent experts in the field of pharmacognosy, pharmaceutical technology, analysis of substances of natural origin, who completed part of their professional training at well-known and recognized world institutions - the VILR Institute, Moscow, Russia; at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA; at "Eberhard Karls" University in Tübingen, Germany; University of Cork, Ireland.

The Department's activities take place through scientific, development and internal projects, both national and international.

Development activities are predominantly related to the improvement and expansion of the Institute's production program. In this way, the Department, through products on the market, realizes its own knowledge and solutions and thereby indirectly influences the awareness of the wider community about the benefits of using medicinal plants and positively influences the preservation of the health of the population. The development activities of researchers at OFIR can be divided into three directions that are interconnected, namely:

• designing new products
• developing analytical methods for plant raw materials and products in order to control their quality
• provision of technical and technological documentation for the existing and new production program.

Scientific and research work within OFIR is aimed at:

• Pharmacognosy studies of medicinal and aromatic plants (LAB),
• Studying the resources and quality of wild LAB,
• Examining the chemical composition and biological activities of plants,
• Ethnobotanical and ethnomedical research,
• Isolation of physiologically active ingredients of plants,
• Research related to the development and improvement of plant processing technologies,
• Improvement of extraction techniques and production of plant extracts,
• Pharmaceutical-technological research,
• Formulation of preparations based on medicinal plants.