# Science based authentication, validation & safety of botanical ingredients

> **NIH FDA U01** · UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI · 2021 · $2,833,000

## Abstract

Abstract:
As per the provisions of DSHEA, the FDA has primary responsibility for ensuring that appropriate regulatory
actions are taken against marketed products that present significant health risks or bear false or misleading label
claims. The development and dissemination of research-based, scientifically valid information requires
cooperation between academia, government, and industry. As a part of the FDA program to establish ‘Centers
of Excellence (COE)’ in support of research relevant to their mission, in 2001 the office of dietary supplements
at CFSAN, established an agreement with the National Center for Natural Products Research at the University
of Mississippi. This agreement represents a cooperative effort to address critical research needs in the botany,
chemistry, and biology aspects of dietary supplement ingredients, especially those of priority safety concern to
CFSAN.
Through two decades of the long-standing, successful inter-institutional cooperative research agreement,
researchers at the COE addressed the ongoing quality and safety issues with botanical ingredients in dietary
supplements and cosmetics. Specifically, several botanically-verified materials and chemical markers were
established and utilized to address the quality and authenticity of more than 10,000 finished products. More than
200 independent analytical methods were designed, and the development of such tools was instrumental in
addressing quality control issues with dietary supplement products. These findings allowed regulators to develop
a critical scientific base to recall several thousands tainted botanical supplement products containing synthetic
artifacts or others exogenous components. In addition to the state-of-the-art instrumentation available at the
COE, in-house medicinal plant garden and collaborative research agreements with national and international
botanical research partners allowed the COE to amass several thousand botanicals for both research and
training purposes. As result of these cohesive scientific efforts, on average, the COE contributed more than 50
publications and generated about 1000 citations per year for the last 10 years, addressing various quality and
safety issues with botanical ingredients integral to various dietary supplements and other products.
The current proposal is a request for continued support to address critical quality and safety aspects of botanical
ingredients’ in various finished products. This request aligns with CFSAN’s mission to assure public health. The
COE will continue to augment the development of a prioritized list of botanicals of concern, implement reference
materials, and develop suitable analytical methods for establishing the invaluable scientific base for requlatory
compliance. The proposed diverse activities and resulting tools could provide an important arsenal to regulators
to develop, implement and modify regulatory guidance to assure the quality and safety of botanical ingredients
in dietary s...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10351025
- **Project number:** 2U01FD004246-11
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI
- **Principal Investigator:** Ikhlas Ahmad Khan
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** FDA
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $2,833,000
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2011-09-15 → 2026-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10351025

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10351025, Science based authentication, validation & safety of botanical ingredients (2U01FD004246-11). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10351025. Licensed CC0.

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