Photo by Ole Ziegler
Research Interests
Fields
Molecular
Systematics; Taxonomy, Chemotaxonomy; Phylogenetics;
Evolutionary Biology; Co-evolution; Tropical Botany;
Ethnobotany; Medicinal Plants; Selection; Conservation;
Biodiversity.
Groups
Higher
Plants; Angiosperms; Moraceae (Ficus);
Amaryllidaceae; Liliaceae (Fritillaria);
Plantaginaceae (Plantago).
Current Research
The
predictive power of phylogenies in search for new drugs
from plants – with
emphasis on plants from the Amaryllidaceae family with
activity against disorders of the central nervous
system
Plants are of
immense importance in providing healthcare worldwide, both
as medicinal plants and in finding new lead compounds for
drug development. Most modern screening programs take
advantage of knowledge from traditional medicine to choose
plants for further investigation. However, focusing on
plants with traditional use does not systematically explore
the diversity of potentially active compounds from plants.
Over the last decades, phylogenetic analyses based on DNA
sequence information has led to a revolution in plant
systematics. PHYLODRUGS will investigate the predictive
power of phylogenies as a new approach in search for new
drugs from plants. As a case, PHYLODRUGS will focus on
plants of the Amaryllidaceae family with activity against
disorders of the central nervous system. An amaryllidaceous
alkaloid, galanthamine, is recently registered in a number
of countries under the name Reminyl or Rezadyne as an
acetylcholinesterase inhibitor (AChE) for use in the
management of Alzheimer’s disease. Extracts of a
number of Amaryllidaceae species show AChE inhibition in
vitro, but the investigated species constitute less than 5%
of the about 850 species in the family and mainly come from
two genera. In addition to screening for AChE inhibitory
activity, PHYLODRUGS will also screen for affinity to the
serotonin transporter, which is a target for several
antidepressants. PHYLODRUGS will explore and compare
activity in bioassays of amaryllidaceous plants across the
phylogeny of the family and between three genera from South
Africa, South American Andes, and the Mediterranean, three
of the World’s hotspots of biodiversity. PHYLODRUGS
will then evaluate the predictive power of both family and
genus level phylogenies in search for new drugs from plants
in this case study.
Funded
by The Danish Natural Science Research
Council.
In collaboration with
Anna Jäger, Per Mølgaard, University of Copenhagen;
Johannes van Staden, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South
Africa. Alfonso Guzmán, Universidad de Los Lagos, Chile;
Vincent Savolainen, Imperial College, UK.