BHU Dairy Science Team Wins Indian Patent for Milk–Aloe Antacid Tablet

A Banaras Hindu University research group in dairy science has secured an Indian patent for a composite antacid tablet that blends milk protein with aloe vera — a laboratory idea now stamped with Patent Office number 597350.

The Patent Office grant, reported on Sunday, lists application number 202311057324. The work came out of the Department of Dairy Science and Food Technology at BHU’s Institute of Agricultural Sciences. Inventors named on the document are Dinesh Chandra Rai, Raj Kumar Duary, Arvind, Ruchi Chawla, Ridhi Pandey and Krishna Kumar.

Rai, who led the group and now serves as Vice-Chancellor of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bihar University, described the tablet as part of a longer push toward protein-enriched, plant-linked digestive aids. He said the patent could open doors to clinical validation, scale-up and eventual commercialisation, while tying dairy value addition to everyday consumer need. Those next steps are aspirations, not completed trials.

Antacid shelves in India are crowded with alkali salts and syrups. A milk-protein matrix with aloe vera is an attempt to marry buffering with a familiar food protein and a plant extract already common in wellness talk. Whether that combination matches or beats existing formulations on acid neutralisation, shelf life and cost will be decided in formulation studies and, if investors bite, in regulated clinical checks.

For BHU’s agriculture faculty, patents are a scoreboard item as much as a product roadmap. Dairy science groups on the campus have spent years looking for higher-value uses of milk solids beyond liquid sales. An antacid tablet sits in that value-addition lane even if it never reaches a pharmacy counter.

Colleagues and alumni from BHU and BRABU publicly congratulated Rai after the announcement. The patent document itself, not the congratulations, is the hard fact: a numbered grant, a named department, a listed inventor team.

Consumers should not read the headline as a new over-the-counter launch. No price, brand or manufacturing partner was attached to Sunday’s disclosure. The legal right to exclude others from making the claimed composition now sits with the patentees under Indian patent law, subject to the usual maintenance and challenge processes.

Varanasi’s academic news cycle rarely pauses for intellectual-property paperwork. This one earns space because it is concrete — a patent number, a dairy department, and a clear composition claim — rather than a memorandum of understanding without deliverables.

Institute of Agricultural Sciences sits across the university’s south side, away from the medical and engineering headlines that usually dominate Banaras copy. A dairy patent will not empty a lecture hall, but it does show the agriculture faculty still filing claims that survive Patent Office scrutiny.

If a licensee appears, the inventors will still need food-safety clearances and stability data before any tablet can be sold as an antacid. Sunday’s news stops at the grant. The distance from patent number to pharmacy shelf remains long, and that gap should stay visible in any honest report.