Pharmaceutical Biology

Secondary metabolites (“natural products”) of microorganisms and medicinal plants remain the most important sources for the development of new drug substances that are used to combat diseases and treat infections. Research of the Pharmaceutical Biology Group is thus focusing on early stages of natural product-inspired drug discovery and on the evaluation of bioactive metabolites obtained from medicinal plants and microorganisms. In addition, the underlying biosynthetic pathways and involved enzymes are studied, which facilitate the formation of structurally complex natural products and can be exploited for the production of novel derivatives.

The Pharmaceutical Biology Group utilizes an integrated approach including library-based screening in-house and/or within academic and industrial collaborations, targeted localization and identification of active compounds, and structural and biopharmaceutical characterization of these molecules. In addition, biosynthetic key enzymes required for pharmacophore formation of bioactive natural products (e.g. with antibiotic or anticancer activities) are mechanistically and structurally studied as prerequisite for the bioengineering of novel derivatives. To achieve these goals, diverse methods and approaches are routinely used, e.g., biochemical/spectroscopic analyses (HPLC-MS, NMR & UV-Vis spectroscopy, etc.), protein X-ray crystallography, molecular biology/genetics, biotechnology/bioengineering, chemoenzymatic synthesis, or metabolomics.