Research

Main Research Interests    

Natural products have been and still are the primary source of pharmaceuticals. Yet, to meaningfully untap these versatile and mostly still unknown resources, a multidisciplinary and state-of-the-art approach is needed. This is realized at the Department of Pharmacognosy at the University of Innsbruck by three main research interests: (a) the isolation and structural elucidation of secondary metabolites from natural sources such as plants, fungi, or algae, (b) studying the quantitative occurrence by analytical techniques, and (c) investigating their activity in diverse bioassays.

When (novel) bioactive compounds are to be identified, the well-established concepts of activity-guided isolation and chromatography were augmented by innovative approaches in the recent past. They include isolation techniques like Fast Centrifugal Partition Chromatography (FCPC), Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC) for analysis, or the visualization of large data-sets by computational methods such as Feature-Based Molecular Networking (FBMN). Together with standard approaches like LC-MS or CE and more specific techniques (Circular Dichroism Spectroscopy for chirality determination), they are well established at this Department. Additionally, bioactivity can be studied in a fully equipped cell culture laboratory, e.g. based on the protein-protein as well as small molecule-protein-interactions using a yeast-based system.

Such a comprehensive workflow from plant to the target identification of bioactive compounds not only permits studying all research questions associated with “classical” pharmacognosy, but also opens up new opportunities related to pharmaceutical biology. Together with many national and international cooperation partners, we are ready to accept the opportunities and challenges of natural products research in the 21th century.