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Symposium 13: Health effects of Natural Products: from molecular structure to the biological response

Tracks
Track 5
Wednesday, July 15, 2026
11:15 AM - 1:15 PM

Details

The proposed Natural Products Pharmacology symposium has been conceived to provide an up-to-date knowledge in all aspects of the basic and translational pharmacology of natural products including plant- and fruit-derived natural products as well as natural product as a pure chemical entity. The symposium will cover specific areas related to discovery and preclinical development based on metabolomics, biological activities in the cardiovascular, metabolic and cancer domain, defined mechanisms of action, and novel targets or therapeutic indications. The aim of the symposium is also to promote networking strategies between junior and senior scientists as well as students interested in the health effects of Natural Products, between pharmaceutical industrial partners and the Natural Products researchers community, and to strengthen a working collaboration between the scientists in the field of Natural Products and the Natural Products Section of IUPHAR.


Speaker

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Dr Jean-Luc Wolfender
Full Professor, Vice Dean Sciences
School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Geneva University

Natural Product Research in the Digital Era: Exciting opportunities offered by metabolomics and accessible digitised data combined in semantics rich knowledge graph

Biography

Jean‐Luc Wolfender is Professor at the University of Geneva where he leads the phytochemistry bioactive natural product (PBNP) group. Since the 1990s he helped introduce LC-MS and LC-NMR for the profiling of natural extracts for dereplication for accelerating the discovery of novel bioactive compounds. He is currently developing innovative metabolomic approaches based on mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in various aspects of natural product research and includes LC-MS computational approaches for data mining with a focus on generic assessment natural extracts composition. His research focuses on the discovery of NP-based drugs and evidence-based phytotherapy, and also covers the search for new NP that can be induced in response to stimuli. ORCID : https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0125-952X Website : https://ispso.unige.ch/phytochimie/members.php
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Prof Valerie Schini-Kerth
University of Strasbourg

Potential of omega-3 fatty acids to improve cardiovascular health: Mitigation of endothelial dysfunction and low-grade inflammation

Abstract

Biography

Valérie Schini-Kerth received her PhD in 1987 at the University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg, France. Thereafter, she spent her post-doctoral training at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minnesota), held an assistant professor position at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, Texas), and a research and teaching position at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt/Main (Germany). She is Professor of Pharmacology at the Faculty of Pharmacy since 2000, and head of the research unit entitled “Translational Cardiovascular Medicine” since 2024 at Strasbourg University. Her major interest is focusing on the pivotal role of the endothelium in the control of vascular homeostasis in health and disease. In particular, she is studying the mechanisms contributing to the induction of endothelial dysfunction related to ageing and major cardiovascular risk factors including hypertension and diabetes. Her recent interest is focusing on the role of premature endothelial senescence in the initiation of endothelial dysfunction and its pharmacological inhibition by drugs and natural products including berry-derived products. The experimental approaches include cultured endothelial cells, isolated organs including conductance and resistance blood vessels, pre-clinical models of human cardiovascular diseases and a translational approach. She has published more then 300 original papers. She is currently the Chair of the Natural Products Section of the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR).
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Dr Yali Liu
Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine

Natural ginseng-derived nanoparticles for integrated anti-cancer strategies: Immune checkpoint enhancement and tumor vaccine delivery

Abstract

Biography

Dr. Yali Liu is an Assistant Professor at the State Key Laboratory of Technologies for Chinese Medicine Pharmaceutical Process Control and Intelligent Manufacture, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, China. She obtained her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics from the University of Tübingen, Germany. Her research focuses on the discovery and biomedical application of bioactive natural products, particularly plant-derived extracellular vesicle-like particles (PDEVs). Dr. Liu’s recent work has explored the therapeutic relevance of these vesicles in inflammatory conditions affecting the skin and gut, as well as their emerging potential in tumor immune modulation, with an emphasis on targeted delivery and cross-species communication. Dr. Liu is also open to collaborative opportunities in natural product-based therapeutics.

Session chair

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Valerie Schini-Kerth
University of Strasbourg

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Michael Spedding
President
Spedding Research Solutions SAS

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