The International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of Karachi (ICCBS) and Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology (TIB), Chinese Academy of Sciences signs the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation of Science and Technology on January 8, 2019. Prof. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal Choudhary, the Director of ICCBS and Prof. Yanhe Ma, the Director of TIB signs the MoU on behalf of the both sides. Prof. Jibin Sun, the Deputy Director of TIB, Dr. Atia-tul Wahabre, the Associate Professor of ICCBS and related personnels of TIB attended the signing ceremony.
The broad objectives of this MoU are to promote wide cooperation in various fields of bioorganic chemistry and biological sciences, especially in natural products, including R&D, staff exchange, transformation and industrialization of scientific and technological achievement. The MoU agrees that the two sides will co-establish China-Pakistan Joint Research Center for Natural Products based on the framework of the National Technology Innovation Centre for Synthetic Biology and co-support the related S&T activities of the COMSATS such as the International Thematic Research Group on Natural Products Sciences.
The signing of this MoU will promote the technical cooperation and industrial development in related fields between China and Pakistan to achieve mutually beneficial win-win cooperation through complementarities. Meanwhile, as the two COMSATS International S&T Centre of Excellences, it will facilitate both sides play much bigger roles to promote the sustainable development by science and technology in developing countries.
As the world famous scholars in the field of natural product chemistry, Prof. Dr. M. Iqbal Choudhary made an open lecture entitled “Natural Products and Microbial Biotechnology Based Drug Led Discovery” during the visit at TIB. Dr. Atia-tul Wahab also gave a lecture entitled “NMR Based Drug Discovery and target Identification”. Several scientists including Prof. Huifeng Jiang, Prof. Meng Wang also introduced their own research work in the biosynthesis of plant natural products and key steroid intermediates. The two sides had in-depth discussions on moving forward the related cooperations in the future.
During the visit, Prof. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal Choudhary visited TIB’s core facilities covering high-throughput screening, systems biotechnology, fermentation, the S&T exhibition and the national maker space on biotechnology named BIOINN under the guide of Prof. Jibin Sun.

The Signing Ceremony on site

Group photo for the Singing Ceremony

Prof. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal Choudhar made on open lecture for TIB’s researchers

Prof. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal Choudhar visits the core facilities of TIB under the guide of Prof. Jibin Sun, the Deputy Direcotor-General