OXFORD, Miss. – More than 250 scientists from around the
world are gathering in Oxford this weekend to discuss
medicinal plants and dietary supplements at the Seventh
Annual Oxford International Conference on the Science of
Botanicals and the Fourth Interim Meeting of the American
Society of Pharmacognosy.
The event opens Saturday (April 12) at the Oxford
Conference Center and runs through Wednesday. It is hosted
by the University of Mississippi’s National Center for
Natural Products Research and the School of Pharmacy’s
Department of Pharmacognosy.
The purpose of the conference is to review, discuss and
explore methods for determining the identity, purity,
quality and processing of plants.
“This conference is one of a kind in North America where
eminent scientists from the international community come
together to discuss the issues related to botanicals and
improve the safety and quality of botanical products based
on scientific knowledge,” said Ikhlas A. Khan, assistant
director of NCNPR and program director for the center’s
Food and Drug Administration program.
Topic areas include authentication, cultivation, collection
and post-harvest practices for producing quality botanical
plant material and incorporating chemical and toxicological
methods for quality/safety assessment that are required for
the preclinical evaluation of botanicals. The conference
also includes sessions focusing on pharmacognosy
techniques, issues and discoveries.
The keynote speaker is Dr. Josephine Briggs, director of
the National Center for Complementary and Alternative
Medicine within the National Institutes of Health. She is
to address the importance of botanicals in complementary
and alternative medicine.
This year’s conference is co-sponsored by the Center for
Food Safety and Applied Nutrition with the FDA, the
Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica/Chinese Academy of
Sciences, the Council of Scientific and Industrial
Research, and the Society for Medicinal Plant Research.
Part of the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences,
NCNPR is the nation’s only university research center
devoted to improving human health and agricultural
productivity through the discovery, development, and
commercialization of pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals
derived from plants, marine organisms and other natural
products.
For more information on the conference, go to
For more information on research at NCNPR, go to