Background: Undergraduate researches in universities are potential sources of useful data in medicinal plant research. In higher education institutions, many of these manuscripts remain untapped and inaccessible to researchers and scientists. If widely utilized, these can contribute in the growth of knowledge on medicinal plants. Objectives: This article aimed to catalogue the medicinal plant researches of the Bicol University – Department of Biology from 1991 to 2019, highlight significant developments, trends, and responsiveness of the research, and recommend policies to improve medicinal plant research in the next decade. Methodology: A complete list of undergraduate research titles was obtained and analyzed using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) process. Categorization of researches included the medicinal plants studied, year of study, and the biological assays conducted. The final list included two things: researches that utilized medicinal plants and those researches which tested the biological and medicinal properties of plants. Results were presented in percentages. Results: To date, 18.72% of the 865 thesis titles archived in the department are medicinal plant researches and majority of which focused on antimicrobial and toxicity studies. There were 52 plant families, 99 genera, and 114 plant species investigated. Leguminosae and Asteraceae were the most studied plant families. The years 2011-2019 were the most fruitful in terms of research completed. Conclusion Undergraduate researches can provide vital information on medicinal plants studies, especially on an institutional and regional level. It is recommended that medicinal plants research be included as a thematic area among higher education institutions, and that policies be implemented to support publication of researches.
Burseraceae ; Anti-Bacterial Agents ; Asteraceae ; Animal Care Committees ; Anti-Infective Agents ; Biological Assay ; Licensure

At the start of the pandemic, the Philippines had to send swab samples to the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory in Melbourne, Australia for COVID-19 confirmation. With the increasing number of suspected cases needing confirmatory diagnostic testing, there was a demand to rapidly expand the capacity for widescale testing. Remarkably, within 200 days from announcement of the first confirmed COVID-19 case in the Philippines in January 30, 2020, the country has been able to expand its testing capacity from one national reference laboratory, the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM), to more than 100 licensed reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and cartridge-based PCR laboratories across the country. Due to the shortage of a trained clinical laboratory workforce, diagnostic centers are forced to hire additional personnel who have limited experience and technical knowledge and skills of molecular assays, especially in processing specimens, interpreting the results, identifying errors, and troubleshooting, in order to meet the demand of increased testing. Thus, the vulnerability to diagnostic errors, including cross-contamination, is increased and with the tendency for generating false positive results that can compromise the health of the patient and disrupt the efficacy of public health policies and public health response, surveillance programs, and restrictive measures for containing the outbreak. Hence, this review article aims to present the different sources of contamination in the laboratory setting where RT-PCR assays are conducted, as well as provide efficient, effective and feasible solutions to address these issues, most especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) like the Philippines.
Developing Countries ; Quality Control ; Diagnosis