Formerly Regional Research Laboratory, Jammu, it is one of the premier institutes engaged in two areas of research namely, drug design and development and microbial biotechnology. Established in 1941 as a low-key research and production centre known as Drug Research Laboratory of J&K State, it was later taken over by the CSIR in 1957. Sri Ramnath Chopra, an outstanding luminary in the field of medical education and research and widely acclaimed as the Father of Indian Pharmacology, was its founder director. The track record of achievements of RRL, Jammu, which has widened its scope of prospecting biodiversity of various geographical niches of the country, has been recently recognized and renamed Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM).

Facilities

A multidisciplinary organization, it has all the infrastructural facilities and Science & Technology (S&T) manpower on all aspects ranging from development of agro-technologies to the production of finished value-added products from medicinal plants.

Major areas of research

1. Standardizing the agro-technology of MAPs and their propagation techniques;
2. Isolation of active fraction/s and single molecules from such plants;
3. Bioactivity screening of plant fractions and molecules;
4. Exploring microbes for useful reactions;
5. Identification and standardization of chemotypes and genotypes of plants by molecular fingerprinting;
6. Screening microbial wealth of North West Himalayas for isolation of enzymes for industrial processes;
7. In silico screening studies of a huge repository of natural and synthetic compounds.

Knowledge network on medicinal plants

An extension of Government of India-UNDP Umbrella Programme on Herbal Drugs that helped in fostering and promoting cooperation amongst participating developing countries, this knowledge network on medicinal plants and National Centre for Training and Technology Transfer has been established at IIIM to accelerate the development of herbal drugs through mediation of a comprehensive knowledge base on herbal drugs. The centre will endeavour to serve as a national clearing house of information on herbal drugs. It also holds national and international workshops for human resource development in this area in the developing world.