Khan honored for work on medicinal plants

Ikhlas Khan

For more than two decades, Ikhlas Khan, assistant director of the School of Pharmacy’s National Center for Natural Products Research at the University of Mississippi, has studied medicinal plants to better assess the quality and safety of dietary supplements. Khan’s ongoing work was honored March 11 by the American Herbal Products Association with its 2010 Herbal Insight Award for his various contributions to the botanical science industry.

As director of the university’s FDA Center for Excellence in Botanicals, Khan has worked to enhance the knowledge of botanicals among regulators. The AHPA award recognizes Khan for furthering the knowledge and understanding of medicinal and aromatic plants. Khan’s primary research interests include analytical fingerprinting for standardization of herbal products and bio-analytical approaches to improvement of product quality and safety.

Born in Amroha, India, Khan received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, India. He earned his doctorate in pharmacy from the Institute for Pharmaceutical Biology in Munich. He joined the UM faculty in 1988.