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History

The Department of Pharmacognosy is one of the five Departments in the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ibadan. The Faculty of Pharmacy was established in 1980 as a department under the College of Medicine and rose to the status of a full Faculty in 1983. Postgraduate programmes including Pharmacognosy commenced in the Faculty in 1990 with Masters and Ph.D. Pharmacognosy Unit was then under the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Pharmacognosy until split into separate departments after the Faculty’s full autonomy. In the Department of Pharmacognosy, the M.Sc Pharmacognosy was embarked upon to include medicinal plant research and or phytochemistry as a result of the prominent role of herbal drugs in the health care delivery of the African populace. Over the years, medicinal plants research in the Department has led to extraction, isolation and biological actions of a wide variety of compounds, such as phenolics, alkaloids, terpenoids and some other secondary metabolites, which are potential drug discovery leads for pharmaceutical drug development. Examples include antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimalarial, antitumor, antimutagenic, anti-carcinogenic, antibacterial or antiviral activities. There are presently eight (8) qualified and experienced academic members of staff in the Department. Over the years, the more senior academic members of staff have proven to be very effective in delivery of their lecture topics and in general administration of the unit.  Six (6) of the academic staff are qualified and registered pharmacists