Mariano Marcos
State University

MMSU profs share expertise at herbal medicine confab in Indonesia

By Ian Paul Villanueva

Expanding the university’s international footprint in research, MMSU Department of Pharmacy Professors Dr. Rhian Jaymar Ramil and Dr. Ma. Danica Ines-Ramil served as speakers during the 2nd International Herbal Medicine Conference (IHMC) at the Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto (UMP) in Indonesia on August 10-13.

Addressing a diverse cohort of healthcare professionals, academicians, policymakers, and industry stakeholders, Dr. Ramil, who serves as Chief of the MMSU Functional Foods and Nutraceutical Research Center (FNRC), discussed how laboratory studies and computer-based tools can work together to identify useful compounds for medicinal plants, understand how they may work in the body, and explore their potential for developing herbal medicines.

He presented the lecture titled “From Metabolites to Mechanisms: An Integrated Computational and Experimental Approach to Herbal Bioactive Discovery.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Ines-Ramil, who is the Chief of the MMSU Tuklas Lunas Development Center (TLDC), talked about how scientific testing can help validate the traditional use of medicinal plants for pain relief and generate evidence that can support the development of safe and standardized medicines.

She delved into the topic of “From Traditional Herbal Use to Evidence-Based Pain Therapy: Pharmacological Evaluation as the Foundation for the Standardization of Analgesic Medicinal Plants.”

Beyond their conference presentations, the two professors also engaged in benchmarking activities with Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The visit aimed to study UGM’s large-scale probiotic production and clinical trials, which would be beneficial for MMSU’s Scale-up Probiotic Production Facility and advance the pre-clinical evaluation of the Indigenous Food Plants (IFP) – Probiotics Research Program toward product development.

The UGM benchmarking activities were done in pursuance of a budding partnership between MMSU and UGM. The two institutions signed a memorandum of understanding in March 2026.