Atta-ur-Rahman Institute for Natural Products Discovery (AuRIns) is devoted to drug discovery from natural resources and the analysis of herbal medicines. Natural products offer a vast and virtually unlimited source of new agents for the pharmaceutical industries. At AuRIns, we conduct basic and applied multidisciplinary research to understand the biological and chemical properties for medicinal plants and microbial metabolites for potential development into pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals.

A significant part of our research is dedicated to Malaysian plants, which are particularly diverse and numerous. The main objective is to provide scientific rational to the traditional usage of local medicinal plants through biological testings, isolation, purification and structural elucidation of the chemical constituents. Our phytochemical methodologies heavily utilize modern and advanced chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques. 

Besides plants, microorganisms are among the greatest contributors to new drugs of natural origin. Natural products from microorganisms play a pivotal role in the development of new therapeutics. Malaysian microbial wealth is huge and virtually unexplored as source of new drug. AuRIns researchers have developed an integrated platform to quickly and reliably dereplicate microbial extracts and identify new bioactive chemical entities. In addition, other related research themes such as synthesis of bioactive natural products, supramolecular chemistry and computational chemistry are also explored.