Theme Issue Honoring Professor Peter Proksch’s 70th Birthday: Bioactive Compounds from Nature Products
A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Natural Products Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2023) | Viewed by 10159
Special Issue Editors
Interests: structure–activity relationships; anti-inflammatory natural products; drug discovery; molecular pharmacological mechanisms; tumor microenvironment; drug resistance
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: bioactive metabolites derived from marine organisms (sponges and corals); marine mangrove plants and their associated microorganisms
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Prof. Dr. Peter Proksch is an eminent biologist in the field of marine natural product chemistry. Throughout his career, he has devoted over 20 years to research and teaching at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. His research interests cover several aspects of marine natural product chemistry, including marine chemical ecology, bioactive natural compounds with unique structures derived from marine macro- and microorganisms, OSMAC and co-culture of marine-derived fungi to activate silent biosynthetic pathways, and the mode of action of bioactive compounds. He is engaged in the field of bioactive marine natural substances, which have potential for pharmaceutical and agriculture applications. During the early stages of his research career, he focused on marine invertebrates such as sponges and corals, which are regarded to be unique sources of chemical entities with potential bioactivities that could lead to the development of new drug candidates and serve as a powerful chemical defense against a multitude of natural enemies and competitors. His research group is highly productive, having discovered numerous bioactive compounds with structural diversity from benthic organisms inhabiting different ocean locations. Representative works include his discovery of sponge-derived brominated isoxazoline alkaloids and amide dienons that enzymatically converted from aeroplysinin-1 in the wounded sponge, showing pronounced antibiotic activity against many Gram-positive and Gram-negative marine bacteria; brominated bastadins protecting sponges from overgrowth by fouling organisms such as barnacles and mollusks; and dibromohemibastadin (DBHB) preventing fouling by barnacles or mussels through the inhibition of a phenoloxidase in the marine environment. In the last few decades, prior to his retirement, he explored marine-derived fungi as sources of bioactive natural products, due to the fact that many bioactive compounds isolated from sponges or other marine invertebrates are in fact of microbial origin and live within multicellular hosts. He has uncovered several novel, diverse, fungi-derived natural products with potent bioactivities, such as fungus-derived chlorflavonin as a new antibacterial agent and inhibitor of tuberculosis pathogens and multiresistant strains with a new mode of action; phomoxanthone A, provoking apoptosis in various tumor cell lines, including platin-resistant cells; atropisomeric dihydroanthracenones as inhibitors of multiresistant Staphylococcus aureus; and embellicine A as a novel NF-κB inhibitor. Furthermore, he has focused on the effect of microbial cross-talk on natural product accumulation and developed a microbial co-cultivation methodology to induce cryptic natural products. He has also contributed toward the enhancement of constitutive present metabolites compared with axenic cultures. Prof. Proksch has supervised more than 80 international doctoral students and published more than 600 peer-reviewed original publications, review articles, and book chapters.
Prof. Dr. Peter Proksch was born in Leipzig in 1953, and studied biology in Cologne, where he received his doctorate, Master’s degree, and Bachelor’s degree in 1975–1980. After a research stay for two years (1980–1982) as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California in Irvine (USA), he secured a position as an assistant professor in the field of biology and pharmaceutical biology at the University of Cologne and at the Technical University of Braunschweig in 1982–1989. He was employed as an associate professor for pharmaceutical biology at the University of Würzburg (1990–1999), and then was promoted to full professor and head of the Institute for Pharmaceutical Biology and Biotechnology at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (Germany) until his retirement. Prof. Proksch has participated in international collaborations across a broad range of countries, including China, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, and Nigeria. Based on his excellent contributions to the field of marine natural product science and his international cooperation, he was given the National Friendship Award of the PRC (China) in 2016, the Qilu Friendship Award of Shandong Province (China) in 2014, the Coconut Island Commemorative Award (China) in 2017, an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Abuja (Nigeria) in 2017, a Commemorative Medal of the Vietnamese Academy of Sciences (Vietnam) in 2008, and the First Prize Inventor Award (North-Rhine Westfalia, Germany) in 2008. He has also received Honorary Professorships from both the Three Gorges University (China) (2015) and the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Science (2016),
Molecules is very pleased to host a Special Issue in honor of Prof. Peter Proksch for his 70th birthday. We invite scientists to submit original contributions to the Special Issue “Bioactive Compounds from Marine-derived Organisms: A Themed Issue in Honor of Professor Peter Proksch's 70th Birthday”. Potential topics include the isolation, structural elucidation, and bioassay of marine-derived compounds; the bio-catalysis and biosynthesis of marine natural products; marine chemoecology; and the synthesis of marine natural products, as well as their bioactivities and modes of action.
Prof. Dr. Nicole Teusch
Prof. Dr. Wenhan Lin
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- marine organisms
- bioactive compounds
- biosynthesis
- structure elucidation
- bioassay
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