OPENING LECTURE
Prof. Peter H. Seeberger
Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Germany
Peter H. Seeberger studied chemistry in Erlangen (Germany) and completed a PhD in biochemistry in Boulder (USA). After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Research in New York he advanced to tenured Firmenich Associate Professor of Chemistry at MIT. After six years as Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich he assumed positions as Director at the Max-Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam and Professor at the Free University of Berlin in 2009. ##MORE## In addition, he serves as honorary Professor at the University of Potsdam. From 2003-2014 he was Affiliate Professor at the Sanford-Burnham Institute for Medical Research (La Jolla, USA). Since 2021, he is a Vice President of the German Research Foundation (DFG) the main funding body in Germany. Since 2023, Seeberger is the Founding Director of the “Center for the Transformation of Chemistry” that received €1.25 billion funding. He is a member of the governing body of the Max-Planck Society (“Senate”) and the Veterinary University (TiHo) Hannover (“Stiftungsrat”). Professor Seeberger’s research on the chemistry and biology of carbohydrates, carbohydrate vaccine development and continuous flow synthesis of drug substances spans a broad range of topics from engineering to immunology and has been documented in over 660 peer-reviewed journal articles, four books, more than 60 patents, over 200 published abstracts and more than 950 invited lectures. He is one of the editors of the standard textbook “Essentials of Glycobiology”. His work was recognized with more than 40 international awards from the US (e.g. Arthur C. Cope Young Scholar Award, Horace B. Isbell Award, Claude S. Hudson Award from the American Chemical Society), Germany (e.g. Körber Prize for European Sciences, Wissenschaftspreis des Stifterverbandes, Emil Fischer Medal), Holland (Havinga Medal), Israel (Honorary Lifetime Member Israel Chemical Society), Japan (Yoshimasa Hirata Gold Medal), Switzerland (“The 100 Most Important Swiss”), the Philippines (“Gusi Peace Prize”), the Czech Republic (Dr. h.c. Univ. Chem. Tech. Prague) and international organizations (Whistler Award 2012, Int. Carboh. Soc.). In 2013 he was elected to the Berlin-Brandenburg (Prussian) Academy of Sciences.Peter H. Seeberger greatly supports the idea of open access publishing as the Editor-in-Chief of the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry and serves on the editorial advisory boards of many other journals.Through his work in the area of neglected diseases, Peter Seeberger has become involved in philanthropic causes. He is a co-founder of the Tesfa-Ilg “Hope for Africa” Foundation that aims at improving health care in Ethiopia that recently helped to build a bed-net factory and established an IT training center.The research in the Seeberger laboratory has given rise to nine successful companies in the USA, Switzerland, Denmark and Germany.
PLENARY SPEAKERS
Prof. Ikuro Abe
The University of Tokyo, Japan
Ikuro Abe is Professor of Natural Products Chemistry at Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The University of Tokyo (since 2009). He received his B.S. (1984) and Ph.D. (1989) from The University of Tokyo. After two years postdoctoral research with Professor Guy Ourisson at the CNRS Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles, and mostly with Professor Michel Rohmer at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Mulhouse in France (1989-1991), he moved to the USA to work with Professor Glenn D. Prestwich at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1991-1996) and then at the University of Utah (1996-1998). ##MORE## His research interests mostly focus on exploring and engineering the natural products biosynthesis. He has authored 300+ publications including Nature, Nat Catal, Nat Chem Biol, Nat Commun, JACS, ACIE, and PNAS. He received the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan Award in 2019, and Prizes for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. He is a former President of The Japanese Society of Pharmacognosy.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Judith M. Rollinger
University of Vienna, Austria
After her PhD in Pharmacognosy (University of Innsbruck/Austria), Judith Rollinger extended her studies to the fields of phytochemistry, ethnopharmacology, and molecular modelling, and implemented computational approaches in natural product science (habilitation in 2007). She was appointed full Professor at her present institution in 2014 leading the ‘Phytochemistry and Biodiscovery’ group. Prof. Rollinger is senator of the University of Vienna and project leader in various national and international projects. ##MORE## She served as president (2020 - 2023) of the largest European learned society, focusing on research on natural products, nature-based drug discovery, medicinal plant research and quality control of herbal medicines – the “Society for Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research” (Home - Society for Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research (GA) (ga-online.org)). Her research focuses on the interdisciplinary field of integrating big data analytics (chemoinformatics, chemometry) in pharmacognostic research as strategy for the discovery of natural lead structures for treating viral infections, metabolic syndrome, and inflammation. Publications resulting from her research have appeared in highly ranked international journals (~140), as book contributions, and patents.
Prof. Anne Osbourn
John Innes Centre, United Kingdom
Professor Anne Osbourn OBE FRS NAS is a Group Leader at the John Innes Centre working on plant naturalproducts. Her discovery that in plant genomes the genes needed to make particularnatural products are often organised in clusters like ‘beads on a string’ has greatlyaccelerated the discovery of new pathways and chemistries. She has established asynthetic biology platform based on transient plant expression that provides rapidaccess to previously inaccessible compounds and analogs at gram scale. ##MORE## These twostep changes open up new routes to combine genomics and synthetic biology tosynthesize and access previously inaccessible natural products and analogs formedicinal, agricultural and industrial applications. Anne was awarded theNovozymes 2023 Award in recognition of her scientific contributions. She is also apoet, and has developed and co-ordinates the Science, Art and Writing (SAW)Initiative, a cross-curricular science education outreach programme. Her prize-winning poetry collection ‘Mock Orange’ was recently published.
Dr Valerie Paul
Head Scientist, Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce, United States
Dr Valerie Paul has been the Director and Head Scientist of the Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce, Florida since 2002. She received her Ph.D. in Marine Biology in 1985 from the University of California San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and then served on the faculty of the University of Guam Marine Laboratory from 1985-2002. In Guam, Valerie built a research program focused on marine chemical ecology and coral reef studies. Her ongoing research interests include marine cyanobacteria and algal blooms, coral reef ecology, marine chemical ecology and natural products. ##MORE## She is the author or co-author of over 310 scientific research papers and review articles. Valerie was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1996. In 2019, she was selected as the Silver Medal Award recipient recognizing career achievement by the International Society of Chemical Ecology. In 2020, she received the Paul J. Scheuer Award in Marine Natural Products. Her work on coral reefs has been recognized with the Eminence in Research Award from the International Coral Reef Society in 2020.
Prof. Dong-Chan Oh
Seoul National University, South Korea
Prof. Dong-Chan Oh studied oceanography and chemistry at Seoul National University in the Republic of Korea. In 2006, he received his Ph.D. in marine natural product chemistry from Scripps Institution of Oceanography under the supervision of Prof. William Fenical. After graduating, he served as a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School before becoming an instructor under Prof. Jon Clardy. He began his independent academic career at the Natural Products Research Institute, College of Pharmacy, Seoul National University in 2009. ##MORE## From 2012 through 2017, he worked as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Early Career Scientist. Dong-Chan Oh is a full professor in the College of Pharmacy at Seoul National University and the director of the Natural Products Research Institute. He is a member of the Natural Product Reports editorial board and the Journal of Natural Products editorial advisory board. His study focuses on the discovery, structure elucidation, and stereochemical determination of new bioactive natural compounds derived from microorganisms.
Prof. De-an Guo
Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Prof. De-an Guo serves as director of the Shanghai TCM Research Center and National Engineering Research Center of TCM Standardization Technology at Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received his Ph.D. Degree of Pharmacognosy at Beijing Medical University in 1990 and proceeded postdoctoral research at Texas Tech University (1993.6-1996.10). His main research focused on the TCM comprehensive analysis and quality standard development for the main-stream pharmacopoeias. ##MORE## He developed a series of strategies and analytical methods including the “Chemical-Metabolic-Biological analysis” approach named “Trinity Analysis” for the holistic quality standard elaboration, based on which the quality monographs for TCM pharmacopoeial standards were established including Chinese Pharmacopoeia, United States Pharmacopoeia, and European Pharmacopoeia, etc. To date, he has published over 580 SCI papers with 17,000 plus SCI citations. Dr. Guo received a number of renowned national and international awards including National Natural Science Award and National Science and Technology Progress Award, American Society of Pharmacognosy Varo Tyler Prize, among others.
Prof. Dr Alain Goossens
Ghent University, Belgium
Prof. Alain Goossens obtained his Master in Biology-Plant Biotechnology at Ghent University (1992) and his PhD in Marc Van Montagu’s and Geert Angenon’s lab at the Laboratory of Genetics, Ghent University (1998), studying plant seed storage protein synthesis. During his PhD, he has also been a visiting researcher at CIAT in Cali (Colombia) in the group of César Cardona. After obtaining his PhD degree, he performed postdoctoral studies for 2 years at the IBMCP-UPV in Valencia (Spain) in the lab of Ramón Serrano, supported by a TMR-Marie Curie EU postdoctoral fellowship, and working on yeast salt tolerance. ##MORE## He returned to VIB-Ghent University and started his own research group within the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology at Ghent University in 2003, focusing on jasmonate signaling, gene discovery in plant specialized metabolism and metabolic engineering. He is experienced in yeast and plant functional genomics, molecular biology and applied biotechnology. His current research aspires to understand jasmonate signaling in model, crop and medicinal plants and unravel the mechanisms that steer plant metabolism in fitness programs to find novel tools for plant metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. He has been appointed as a Full Professor at Ghent University in 2015 and senior Full Professor in 2022. He has been mentoring over 45 master students, 35 PhD students and 25 postdoctoral researchers. Five of his alumni have acquired leading academic positions as professors and two more as managers of core facilities at universities in Belgium and abroad. He has authored over 150 peer reviewed publications, including in Nature, Science, Nature Communications, PNAS, etc.., which have been cited over 12,000 times. In 2020 he was elected as an EMBO fellow and since 2015 he has been continuously included in the Clarivate list of Highly Cited Researchers.
Prof. Maria Giovanna Chini
University of Molise Italy
Prof. Maria Giovanna Chini obtained her master’s degree in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology in 2005 at the University of Naples Federico II and completed her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Salerno in 2012. During this period, she was a Visiting Ph.D. Student at the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Dr. Craig Butts. She is now Associate Professor in Organic Chemistry at the Department of Biosciences and Territory (DiBT), University of Molise. In 2023, she was an invited Professor for Teaching activity at the Department of Natural Sciences and Medicine of Ilia State University (Georgia) within the ERASMUS+ INTERNATIONAL CREDIT MOBILITY framework. ##MORE## In 2016, she was awarded the Giacomo Ciamician medal by the Organic Chemistry Division of the Italian Chemical Society. Her scientific fields of interest are a) extraction, isolation, and structural characterization of bioactive metabolites obtained from natural sources; b) analysis of ligand/target interaction by NMR techniques coupled with computational methods; c) advanced NMR techniques and ab initio calculations for the stereostructure determination of natural molecules; d) design and synthesis of new bioactive molecular platforms. From November 2022 until May 2025, she was appointed as Delegate of the Rector to the Library of the University of Molise. Since March 2023 she is the PI of an annual project Start-UP-2022 and since July 2023 she is Responsible for the Local Research Unit of a two-year PRIN project.
Prof. Yun-Sil Lee
Ewha Womans University, South Korea
Prof. Yun-Sil Lee is a full professor at the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at EwhaWomans University. She earned her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in the College of Pharmacy atEwha Womans University. Following her academic journey, she pursued postdoctoral researchat the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the USA. For nearly two decades, she worked as aPrincipal Scientist at the Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences, where shecontributed significantly to research on radiation damage modulators. ##MORE## Her research primarilyrevolves around the development of radiation protectors or sensitizers that target heat shockprotein 27 (HSP27) using small molecules, with a specific emphasis on natural products. Morerecently, her research interests have shifted towards the development of inhibitors for pulmonaryfibrosis. Currently, there are only two clinical treatments available for pulmonary fibrosis,underscoring the pressing need for additional treatment options. Consequently, she is activelyengaged in research to identify new therapeutic targets and to develop inhibitors based on thesediscoveries. Dr. Lee's extensive research contributions are reflected in her publication record,with over 200 SCI(E) papers. Her expertise has also earned her invitations to internationalsymposia as an invited speaker.
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Prof. Séverine Derbré
University of Angers, France
Séverine Derbré is a scientist in the field of natural products (NPs) and a trained pharmacist. Aftergraduating from the Faculty of Pharmacy in Angers (France) in 2002, she obtained her PhD in thechemistry of NPs under the supervision of Pr. E. Poupon at the University of Paris 11 in 2006. Shethen worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the French Atomic and Alternative Energy Commission (CEASaclay, France) with Y. Ambroise in the laboratory of C. Mioskowski and B. Rousseau.In 2007, she was recruited by the University of Angers, Faculty of Pharmacy, as Assistant Professor of Pharmacognosy and joined the SONAS laboratory headed by Pr. P. Richomme. ##MORE## Her fields of interestare the chemistry of NPs and their biological activities, with special focus on methodological aspectsfor the discovery of bioactive NPs, especially from tropical endemic Clusiaceous and Calophyllaceousspecies (chemometrics, molecular networking).Recently, she has been involved in the development of new methods for the rapid identification ofactive NPs in complex matrices based on mass spectrometry (LDI-HRMS; UPLC-HRMS) and 13 CNMR. In the field, she and her team have recently developed a freely available software, namelyMixONat (https://sourceforge.net/projects/mixonat/), to decipher complex mixtures based on 13 C-NMRspectra (Most Innovative Paper Award, Planta Medica, 2021 | Habilitation in 2020).She has also developed an automated anti-AGE screening assay that allows rapid evaluation of NPsand extracts for potential cosmetic and therapeutic applications (anti-inflammatory andimmunomodulatory).
Prof. Sachiko Tsukamoto
Kumamoto University, Japan
Prof Sachiko Tsukamoto since 2009 is Professor Kumamoto University, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Science. Previously she was affiliated: 2008 Chiba University, Professor, Graduate School of Science 2000 Kanazawa University, Associate Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Her research interests focuse on Marine Biomedical Research and searching for drug leads/chemical probes from natural resources including microorganisms, marine organisms, and plants.
Prof. Mehdi Beniddir
Université Paris-Saclay, France
Mehdi Beniddir is a Professor of Natural Product Chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Paris-Saclay University. His research interests include the streamlined discovery and structure elucidation of intricate natural substances from plants, marine invertebrates and micro-organisms using MS-based dereplication approaches.
Prof. Michel Frédérich
University of Liège, Belgium
Michel Frédérich was born in Verviers (Belgium) in 1973. He was graduated Pharmacist in1996 at the University of Liège (Belgium) where he obtained his PhD in PharmaceuticalSciences in 2000, and the Agrégation de l’Enseignement Supérieur degree in 2007. Herealized during the year 2003 a postdoctoral stay in the laboratory of Pharmacognosy ofProfessor Verpoorte at the University of Leiden (Netherlands). Laureate of three awards, hewas Senior Researcher at the F.N.R.S. (Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique) from2004 to 2010. In 2010 he became lecturer at the University of Liège and he is currently fullProfessor in Pharmacognosy. ##MORE## Author of more than 120 international publications, his fields ofresearch are Natural substances with antiplasmodial, antitumoral and anti-inflammatoryproperties, plant metabolomics and herbal medicines quality control.
Prof. Chung Sub Kim
Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea
Prof. Chung Sub Kim is an Assistant Professor of School of Pharmacy at SungkyunkwanUniversity, South Korea. He graduated from Sungkyunkwan University with a B.S. andPh.D. in Pharmacy in 2010 and 2015, respectively, under the guidance of Prof. Kang Ro Leefocused on the plant natural product chemistry. After a four-year postdoctoral research withProf. Jason Crawford in Yale University, he started his independent career at SungkyunkwanUniversity in 2020. ##MORE## He received Young Pharmacognosy Researcher Award from the Korean Society ofPharmacognosy in 2022 and Next Generation Pharmacy Researcher Award from thePharmaceutical Society of Korea in 2022. His research interests mainly focus on 1) isolationand elucidation of structure and biosynthetic pathway of small molecules from humanmicrobiome, 2) discovery of lead compounds for new drugs from natural sources, and 3)stereochemical assignment/revision of organic molecules by computational chemistry.
Prof. Norberto Peporine Lopes
Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil
Prof. Norberto Peporine Lopes is currently Professor of Organic Chemistry at Physic and Chemistry Department of School of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirão Preto from University of São Paulo since 1998. He is Temporary Visiting Professor at Food Chemistry Department of Munster University (German) since 2009. Prof. Lopes has extensive experience in the natural products chemistry and analytical chemistry focus on mass spectrometry. ##MORE## The goal of his research is to investigate the interaction between different organisms in natural (Plant, microorganisms, marine and terrestrial animals) applying metabolomic strategies. Lopes leads one FAPESP thematic project, he is founder of the Mass Spectrometry Facility CEMMO and also initiated the of NAP-USP research nucleus in natural and synthetic products. He is Member of the Brazilian Academy of Science, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and President of the Brazilian Chemical Society. Advisory Boarder member of the Planta Medica, Rapid Communications in Mass Spetrometry, Scientific Reports and ACS-OMEGA. Received in his career eight prizes with highlight to the honorary medal of the Brazilian Society of Mass Spectrometry and the Prize of Innovation Fernando Galembeck of the Brazilian Society of Chemistry. He is the author of five books, 15 books chapters and over 490 refereed scientific publications and is currently rated with a WoS h-index of 48.
Prof. Young Hae Choi
Leiden University, The Netherlands
Young graduated on College of Pharmacy, Seoul National University in1992. In 2000, he received PhD diploma from the same university. The title of his PhD thesisis ‘Supercritical Fluid Extraction of Nitrogen-Containing Natural Products’. After two yearsof post-doc experience working at the application of mass spectrometry to the identificationof natural products, he moved to Leiden University, the Netherlands (the present position). Inthe last 20 years, he developed diverse metabolomics methods of plant and microorganisms. Using the developed methods, a wide range of biological model systems were investigatedfor the research questions related to biology, physiology, and ecology. ##MORE## Some of hisrepresentative metabolomics research can be exemplified with tobacco–TMV (tobaccomosaic virus), Brassica–herbivores, Senecio– thrips, Brassica and Arabidopsis treaded withsignal molecules (salicylic acid, jasmonate, and benzothiadiazole),Catharanthus–phytoplasma and some chemo-taxonomical applications for Ilex andCannabis. And many traditional medicines were used for metabolomics. On top of theresearch field of metabolomics he has also focused on green technology using natural deepeutectic solvents and supercritical fluids. Based on the research career, so far, he haspublished more than 290 peer-reviewed scientific papers that has been cited over 13,000
Prof. Toshio Morikawa
Kindai University, Japan
Prof. Toshio Morikawa was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1972. He received a B.Sc. fromKyoto Pharmaceutical University (KPU) in 1995 and an M.Sc. from the GraduateSchool of Pharmaceutical Sciences, KPU, in 1997. He started his academic career underProf. Dr. Masayuki Yoshikawa at KPU in 2001 and received a Ph.D. in 2002. In 2005,he moved to Pharmaceutical Research and Technology Institute, Kindai University(formerly known as Kinki University), as a Lecturer (Prof. Dr. Osamu Muraoka) andwas promoted to Associate Professor (P.I.) in 2010 and then to a Professor in 2015. ##MORE## Hewas awarded The Japan Society of Pharmacognosy (JSP) Award for Young Scientists(2005), The Pharmaceutical Society of Japan (PSJ) Kinki Branch Award for YoungScientists (2008), The JSP Award for Scientific Contributions (2018), and The PSJAward for Divisional Scientific Promotion (2022). His current research focuses on thesearch for bio-functional molecules obtained from natural resources to prevent andameliorate lifestyle diseases. He has published over 250 papers in peer reviewedjournals and is currently serving on the editorial board members of Journal of NaturalMedicines (JONM, Associate Editor), Traditional & Kampo Medicine (TKM, Editor-in-Chief, Basic Research), and Japanese Journal of Food Chemistry and Safety.
Prof. Toshiaki Makino
Nagoya City University, Japan
Prof. Toshiaki Makino is a pharmacist and pharmacognosist. Hegraduated from Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, KyotoUniversity, Japan, to awarded Ph.D in 2000. Then, he started his career asan assistant professor at the Department of Kampo Medicinal Sciences,Hokkaido College of Pharmacy, Japan where he learned the theory oftraditional Japanese Kampo medicine and its research methodology. ##MORE## Then,he moved his research career in Graduate School of PharmaceuticalSciences, Nagoya City University in 2005, and he became full professor ofthe Department of Phamacognosy in 2014. He published 254 researchpapers in academic journals, including 158 papers included in SCI. Hisresearch interest is not only classical pharmacognosy treating qualitycontrol and the isolation of active chemicals from traditional medicines butalso clinical pharmacognosy using pharmacology and pharmacokinetics oftraditional medicines to provide drug information for pharmacists andphysicians. Furthermore, he also studies medicinal history. He is thedirector of Japanese Society of Pharmacognosy, Japanese Society ofOriental Medicine, and International Society of Oriental Medicine. He isthe representative of Japan Liaison of Oriental Medicine to manage Japanteam in ISO/TC249 traditional Chinese medicine.
Prof. Young Pyo Jang
Kyung Hee University, South Korea
Prof. Young Pyo Jang is a professor of Pharmacognosy lab at College of Pharmacy of Kyung HeeUniversity, Seoul, South Korea. He received a bachelors degree from Seoul National University School of Pharmacy in 1992 and a doctorate from the same university in 2001. ##MORE## In 2002, he moved toKoji Nakanishi laboratory at Columbia University, NY, NY and conducted research on anthocyaninand aging fragments as a postdoctoral researcher, and in 2005 he moved to Janet Sparro slaboratory at the same University. Since becoming a professor at Kyung Hee University College ofPharmacy in 2007, he has been conducting various studies on the standardization of herbalmedicines and raw materials using DART-MS, HPTLC, etc.