TITLE: The biomedical potential of marine macrobiota and microbiota
PRESENTERS: Vassilios Roussis & Efstathia Ioannou
Department of Pharmacognosy and Chemistry of Natural Products, School of Pharmacy, University of Athens, Panepistimiopolis Zografou, Athens 15771, Greece
Natural products have been the predominant source of new pharmaceuticals in the last fifty years. Between 1981 and 2002, 60% of the anticancer drugs and 75% of the anti-infectious disease drugs could be traced to or were inspired by natural products. Humankind has explored and exploited the terrestrial environment for more than 3000 years, but only relatively recently turned its attention to the oceans as a possible source for natural medicines.
From the early investigations in the 1970s until now marine organisms have yielded more than 30,000 natural products. Already a number of them are available in the pharmaceutical market, such as ziconotide (strong analgesic for severe pain relief by the brand name Prialt®) and ecteinascidin 743 (potent antitumor for the treatment of soft tissue sarcoma by the brand name Yondelis®), while almost 15 compounds are in advanced clinical trials for the treatment of numerous diseases. Many marine natural products are bioactive, often displaying unique modes of action.
As part of our studies on the chemical composition and biological activity of marine organisms, our group has investigated a significant number of marine macro- and micro- organisms including algae, sponges, corals, mollusks, as well marine derived bacteria and fungi.
The presentation will include results of our investigations that have focused on the isolation and structure elucidation of novel natural products with pharmacological activities and metabolomic studies in search of a fast and reliable screening tool for the chemical profiling of marine organisms.
NATIONAL AND KAPODISTRIAN UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS,
DEPARTMENT OF PHARMACY,
Section of Pharmacognosy and Chemistry of Natural Products,
Panepistimiopolis Zografou, Athens 15771 GREECE
Phone - fax: +30-210-7274-592 E-mail: roussis@pharm.uoa.gr
SHORT BIO: Vassilios Roussis is a Professor at the Department of Pharmacognosy and Chemistry of Natural Products, School of Pharmacy, Univ. of Athens. He obtained his PhD in 1987 (University of Iowa, USA) and did postdoctoral work at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA (1987-1989) and NCSR Demokritos (1992-1995). He joined the School of Pharmacy in 1995 and in 2006 he was promoted to full professor.
He is currently the Director of the Laboratory of Pharmacognosy and Chemistry of Natural Products. He has organized and chaired several national and international meetings. He has been invited to give lectures at international conferences, universities and companies and has trained several junior scientists.
His specialization is in Marine Pharmacognosy and chemistry of marine metabolites. He is the author of more than 175 publications and 5 patents. He is actively involved in the chemical investigation of marine organisms from the East Mediterranean Sea and has isolated more than 300 new marine natural products and his research has been funded by several national and European grants.
He is the editor for Marine Natural Products in the scientific journal Phytochemistry Letters and Marine Drugs and a member of the editorial board in 3 additional authoritative journals. He has reviewed for more than 30 scientific Journals. He has served for two years as Chairman of the Phytochemical Society of Europe.
In 2015 he received the PSE – Bruker Award "in recognition of his outstanding contributions to chemistry, structure and function of marine natural products".
NATIONAL AND KAPODISTRIAN UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS,
DEPARTMENT OF PHARMACY,
Section of Pharmacognosy and Chemistry of Natural Products,
Panepistimiopolis Zografou, Athens 15771 GREECE
Phone - fax: +30-210-7274-913 E-mail: eioannou@pharm.uoa.gr
SHORT BIO: Efstathia Ioannou received her Ph.D. degree from the Department of Pharmacy at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2009, where she studied the isolation and structure elucidation of bioactive secondary metabolites from marine algae, and carried out postdoctoral research on the chemistry of marine actinobacteria with Prof. William Fenical at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, before returning to Greece to take up a lectureship at the Department of Pharmacy at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where she is currently an Assistant Professor. Her research interests focus on the isolation, structure elucidation and biological activity evaluation of natural products mainly from marine, but also from terrestrial, macro- and microorganisms. She is co-author of 48 publications and 4 book chapters and a recurring reviewer of manuscripts for more than 25 scientific journals. She has participated with more than 120 oral or poster presentations in national and international conferences and has served as a member of the organizing committee for 5 international conferences, including acting as Chairman for the 10th European Conference on Marine Natural Products in 2017. She has supervised or co-supervised the research of 8 PhD students, 28 MSc students and several BSc students and has participated in several national and international R&D funded projects. In 2017 she was appointed as Meetings’ Secretary of the Phytochemical Society of Europe, while in the past she served as Regional Representative for South-East Europe.