Training Students and Researchers in Tajikistan

In April 2018 Professor Vyacheslav Dushenkov of Hostos Community College led an intensive a week-log meeting at the Research Training Center for Botanicals and Metabolic Syndrome (CBMS) in Tajikistan.  The meeting was comprised of the lectures by leading international scientists from the US, Indonesia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, and included a series of workshops on botanical therapeutics, treatment and prevention of diabetes and metabolic syndrome. CBMS focuses on metabolic syndrome and diabetes providing training in research with emphasis on anti-diabetic botanicals, life cycle studies and early life determinants of chronic diseases. The training program for CBMS includes a variety of online courses and in-country training. The lectures and training activities were sponsored by a grant from the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health. In addition, to organizing the meeting and chairing multiple sessions, Professor Dushenkov delivered a presentation “Developing effective botanical therapeutics research training in Tajikistan“ and conducted workshops on “Implementation science” and “Methods of an early lead discovery in botanical therapeutics.”  Overall about 800 students from Avicenna Tajik State Medical University and Tajik National University were engaged in the training activities. Additionally, over 150 graduate students and researchers varicose instructions participated in workshops and lectures. CBMS graduate students and postdoctoral fellows shared results of their research on medicinal plants and treatment of diabetes in Tajikistan. Several leading research and training institutions of the Republic of Tajikistan collaborated on this project. Those institutions included Avicenna Tajik State Medical University, Institute of Avicenna’s Medicine and Pharmacology, Institute for Botany, Physiology and Genetics of Plants, Pamir Institute of Biology, Tajik National University, The Centre for Innovative Development of Science and New Technologies of the Academy of Science Republic of Tajikistan. There has been a substantial increase in interest in early diagnosis, prevention and treatment of diabetes since the inception of CBMS activities in 2014. Noteworthy that discovery and development of botanical therapeutics from the local resources have been declared a priority economic area under the control of President of Tajikistan.