Molecular Targets

Research Focus

"Natural products can be viewed as a population of privileged structures selected by evolutionary pressures to interact with a wide variety of proteins and other biological targets for specific purposes, a view supported by the fact that natural products have become effective drugs in a wide variety of therapeutic indications" (Koehn FE and Carter GT. Nat Rev Drug Discovery 4:206-220, 2005).

Our research focuses are

i) to understand the molecular interaction of natural products with proteins/signaling molecules within cells. Identification of biological targets will help to identify new pharmacological targets for drug discovery & development.

ii) to identify new active natural products by target- (nuclear receptors, transcription factors, phosphatases) or phenotype-oriented cellular screening models using material that was preselected by collaboration partners via in silico tools or ethnopharmacological knowledge.

The cellular models currently used in our lab focus on the prevention and/or treatment of cardiovascular and metabolic disease.

Funded Projects

To top