AHPA Chief Science Officer Holly Johnson, Ph.D., presented on the critical uses of reference materials for botanical authentication at the 18th Oxford International Conference on the Science of Botanicals (ICSB) on Tuesday.

Other presenters in the session included AHPA members Amit Chandra, Ph.D., manager of the chromatography sciences group at Amway, and Paula Brown, Ph.D., director of applied research, natural health & food products at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Chandra presented on the significance of fit for purpose tests during the botanical product development process and Brown discussed critical role of reference materials in metabolomic approaches to natural products research.

AHPA Chief Information Analyst Merle Zimmermann, Ph.D., also attended this year's event which explores approaches for post market surveillance, risk and safety assessment, quality control and adverse event reporting (AER) for botanical dietary supplements (BDS) and natural products. Attendees also explored regulatory issues from the perspectives of government agencies, manufacturers and trade associations.

The Oxford ICSB is supported by a cooperative agreement between the NCNPR and the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It is co-sponsored by the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica/ CAS, China; the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR - India); the Ministry of Indigenous Medicine, Sri Lanka; the American Society of Pharmacognosy (ASP); the Society for Medicinal Plant Research (GA); Hunan University, China; the Korean Society of Pharmacognosy (KSP) and the Japanese Society of Pharmacognosy (JSP).