Pharmaceutical Biology

Research Overview

Natural products (NPs) (≡secondary metabolites) of microorganisms and plants remain among the most important sources for the development of new drug substances that are used to treat numerous diseases and infections. Research of the Pharmaceutical Biology Group is focusing on early stages of NP-based drug discovery and on the characterization and biosynthetic investigation of bioactive metabolites obtained from selected species.

The following three interconnected areas of research are being actively explored:

1. Natural Product Lead Discovery Platform & Activity Profiling
   New lead compounds are identified in our lab from various natural sources, including plants, bacteria and fungi. We are using a discovery workflow that integrates an extract library-based screening both in-house and/or within academic and industrial collaborations. This pipeline can be applied to different target and assay types such as biochemical, cellular and functional assays. It enables the targeted localization and identification of active compounds, which are subsequently isolated for structural and biopharmaceutical characterization. Current research projects focus, among others, on the discovery of new lead compounds which could be eventually developed for the treatment of melanoma, glioblastoma, and Alzheimer’s disease.
    
2. Medicinal Plants
   The value of medicinal plants for the treatment of various disease conditions is widely recognized. In collaboration with pharmacologists and biologists we conduct chemo/bioanalytical research aiming at identifying the active ingredients of phytomedicines as a contribution to rational phytotherapy. In this context, we are also particularly interested in the microbiota-mediated health promoting effects of food and medicinal plants.
    
3. Biosynthesis & Bioengineering of Natural Products
   To understand how the complex NP backbones are generated in nature, the underlying biosynthetic pathways are studied. This includes the mechanistic and structural investigation of designated key enzymes required for the formation of NP pharmacophores (e.g. with antibiotic or anticancer activities). The knowledge gained this way is furthermore exploited for the bioengineering of novel NP derivatives with improved pharmacological features. To this end, diverse methods and approaches are routinely used, e.g., NP structural elucidation (by MS & NMR spectroscopy), protein X-ray crystallography, bioinformatics, molecular genetics (cloning etc.), chemoenzymatic synthesis, or metabolomics including MS/MS-based molecular networking.