By Iznee Isa & Alyani Azhar
Pictures by Shahiddan Saidi

CHERAS, 12 July 2017- UKM Medical Expert, Prof Dr Srijit Das was bestowed with the ‘International Young Scientist Award’ in France recently.

He did his study on diabetes along with co-researcher Dr Teoh Seong Lin.

“An injection called streptozotocin was given to the animals to cause diabetes. Then I inflicted wounds on the rats using a biopsy needle and treated it with Momordica charantia (bitter gourd), Piper betle (kaduk) and Piper sarmentosum (sirih),” said the medical expert.

He stated the herbal extract was applied as a paste on those rats and the wound healing process was examined.

“Positive outcome were shown in this research where the natural products have a good healing effect on the diabetic rats,” he said.

His recent Master student, Dr Amro and co-researcher Dr Norzana also obtained positive results by using virgin coconut oil on diabetic wounds.

“My future hope for this research is to develop biofilms to help in diabetic wound treatment,” he said.

He added that they planned compare between treatments using natural products with conventional antibiotic ointments too gauge the most efficient treatment.

Prof Dr Sirjit has received multiple awards for his other researches including PECIPTA National Award and International Technology Award in Belgium.