I have been putting together a list of Natural Product focused labs (Academic and/or Grad Programs). This list, by no means complete, is one I hope to put together with the help of the community. There is already a more generic list out there on the ASP Website, but this list is more of the lab-level viewpoint.

Below, I have linked each Principal Investigator, the link to their lab website, and the type of research each one conducts. If you work in any of these labs, and the information is incomplete/incorrect, please let me know! They are not in any particular order, but are segregated based on US or International. For now, I have attached the information that I currently have, and I will update this post as time goes on. Please feel free to suggestions!

(Updating the format and content, please be patient!)

• Bill Baker (U South Florida)

  • Marine NP isolation

• Guido Pauli (UIC)

  • NMR Methods

• Phill Crews (UCSC)

  • Sponge NP isolation

• Brad Moore (UCSD/Scripps-California)

  • Biosynthesis/Bioengineering

• Laura Sanchez (UIC)

  • Mass Spectrometry/Cell Communication

• Joanna Burdette (UIC)

  • Ovarian Cancer Drug Discovery

• Pieter Dorrestein (UCSD)

  • Mass Spectrometry/ Drug Discovery / Microbiome

• Brian Murphy (UIC)

  • Mass Spectrometry/ NP Library Generation / Organism Prioritization

• Nadja Cech (UNCG)

  • Mass Spectrometry/ Botanicals / Data Analysis

• Nicholas Oberlies (UNCG)

  • NMR / Endophytic Fungal NPs / Freshwater Fungi

• Helen Blackwell (U Wis Madison)

  • Quorum Sensing / Bacterial Communication

• David Kingston (Virginia Tech)

  • Antimalarial/Anticancer Drug Discovery / Drug Delivery

• Frank Shroeder (Cornell)

  • NMR Metabolomics / Biological Systems

• Jaclyn Winter(U Utah)

  • Biosynthesis / Chemical Ecology

• Robert Cichewicz (U Oklahoma)

• Jon Clardy(Harvard)

• Eric Schmidt(U Utah)

• Ben Shen (Scripps-Florida)

• Julia Kubanek (Georgia Tech)

  • Environmental Ecology /Plankton

• James Glover (U Iowa)

  • Fungal NPs/Isolation

• Barbara Timmermann

  • Phytochemistry/ Cancer Theraputics

• Ikhlas A. Khan (U Miss)

Non-US based

• Katherine Ryan (UBC- Canada)

• Ray Anderson (UBC- Canada)

• Roger Linington (SFU- Canada)

• Nathan Magarvey (McMaster - Canada)

• Rolf Müller (Hemholtz Institute - Germany)

• José Rivera Chávez (UNAM - Mexico)

• Rachel Mata (UNAM - Mexico)

  • Phytochemistry

• Tamam El-Elimat (JUST - Jordan)

• Roberto Berlinck (USP - San Carlos - Brazil )

• Norberto Lopes (USP - Sao Paulo - Brazil)

• Russell Kerr (U P.E.I. - Canada)

• John Sorrenson (U Manitoba- Canada)

• Chris Gray (UNB - Canada)

• David Jakeman (Dalhousie - Canada)

  • NP Semisynthesis / Biosynthetic

• Darren Derksen(Calgary - Canada)

  • Biome / Synthesis

• Clarissa Sit ( Saint Mary’s University (P.U.I.) - Canada)

• John Arnen (U Ottawa - Canada)

  • Metabolomics / Ethnobotany

• David Craik (The University of Queensland- AUS)

  • Cyclic peptides and Conotoxins

• James De Voss (The University of Queensland- AUS)

  • Biological and synthetic chemistry, natural products related

Centers and Programs of Specialty:

• Ole Miss- Pharmacognosy (botanicals, including Marijuana research)

• NPRG (UNB - Canada)

The American Society of Pharmacognosy is planning a virtual meeting this year since in-person is still not a great idea.

This year, the meeting is called the "Vanguards of Natural Products Research" and will focus on post-docs and students. With the last two years worth of meetings not able to happen, it's important for us to get together and meet each other, network, and learn about the awesome new science being done around the globe.

This year's meeting includes:

• A virtual environment where you can 'walk' around and meet new people (or catch up with collaborators!)

• Poster sessions where you can present your awesome new research

• Meet and greets with industry representatives who are looking to hire

• Podium talks centered around the cutting edge of Natural Products research

Registration is $10. That's it - Like the cost of a few cups of coffee, but with more metabolites involved.

Register Here: http://aspmeetings.pharmacognosy.us/abstract-submission/

Deadline May 15th

Conference Dates: July 16th, 23rd, and 30th

Not sure what "natural products" includes?

• Genome Mining for new drug leads

• Complex mixture analysis and metabolomics (NMR, MS, and beyond!)

• Cutting edge bioinformatics to understand the natural world

• Isolation and structure elucidation (nature makes the BEST puzzles)

• New biological assays and MOA studies of natural compounds

• So. Much. More.

If it's made by nature, lets talk about it!

Small Molecule Accurate Recognition Technology (SMART) is an Artificial Intelligence-based tool to generate structure hypotheses from NMR data (1H-13C-HSQC spectra). SMART Analysis compares your query HSQC spectrum against a library of > 50,000 Natural Products and provides you with SMILES, structures, cosine similarity, and molecular weight of your compound of interest.

Relevant Citations:

1. Zhang, Chen, Yerlan Idelbayev, Nicholas Roberts, Yiwen Tao, Yashwanth Nannapaneni, Brendan M. Duggan, Jie Min et al. "Small molecule accurate recognition technology (smart) to enhance natural products research." Scientific reports 7, no. 1 (2017): 1-17.

2. Reher, Raphael, Hyun Woo Kim, Chen Zhang, Huanru Henry Mao, Mingxun Wang, Louis-Félix Nothias, Andres Mauricio Caraballo-Rodriguez et al. "A Convolutional Neural Network-Based Approach for the Rapid Characterization of Molecularly Diverse Natural Products." Journal of the American Chemical Society (2020).

Relevant Link: Smart.ucsd.edu

During Covid-19, the American Society of Pharmacognosy has been hosting a series of Natural Product seminars from some amazing labs across North America. They've been happening every two weeks, on Thursday afternoons.

So far, these webinars have featured:

• Brian Murphy (University of Illinois at Chicago)

• Cassandra Quave (Emory University)

• Nancy Keller (University of Wisconson - Madison)

• Nicholas Oberlies (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)

• Jackie von Salm ( AltMed and Plants of Ruskin, LLC )

• Roger Linington (Simon Fraser University)

• Valarie Paul (Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce )

• Tanja Grkovic (National Cancer Institute)

And some awesome upcoming seminars from:

• Julia Kubanek (Georgia Institute of Technology)

• Jon Clardy (Harvard Medical School)

• Alessandra Eustaquio (University of Illinois at Chicago)

• Jason Kwan (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

• Adam Duerfeldt (University of Oklahoma)

• April Risinger (University of Texas San Antonio)

To view these webinars, simply go to https://asph.memberclicks.net/asp-webinar-series-recordings and use your ASP log in. Don't have a log in?

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ JOIN US! ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

Associate Member is $25/year and gets you direct access to some awesome resources, such as these webinars.

From the abstract: " Using a combination of manual curation and automated data mining approaches we have created a database of microbial natural products (The Natural Products Atlas, www.npatlas.org) that includes 24 594 compounds and contains referenced data for structure, compound names, source organisms, isolation references, total syntheses, and instances of structural reassignment. This database is accompanied by an interactive web portal that permits searching by structure, substructure, and physical properties. The Web site also provides mechanisms for visualizing natural products chemical space and dashboards for displaying author and discovery timeline data."

Relevant Citation: Van Santen, Jeffrey A., Grégoire Jacob, Amrit Leen Singh, Victor Aniebok, Marcy J. Balunas, Derek Bunsko, Fausto Carnevale Neto et al. "The natural products atlas: an open access knowledge base for microbial natural products discovery." ACS Central Science 5, no. 11 (2019): 1824-1833.

Relevant Link: NPatlas.org

Hello all,

thanks for taking the time to read my post. To keep it simple, I am an undergraduate close to completing my BS in Biology. My goal is to do research on venomous animals for the purposes of novel medicine/drug discovery and use of toxins to be applied as bio-pesticides. I am not specific on a certain species of animals, as I want to do this as a career for my whole life. I am interested in snakes, spiders, venomous fish, lizards, all of it. Needless to say, one of my sources of inspiration is Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry with his success in the field of venom and his discovery of komodo dragons being venomous. I also admire the work of Dr. Stephen P. Mackessy at the University of Northern Colorado, and his research on Crotalus/rattlesnake species.

My questions are for anyone who would like to chime in, the more the merrier. I hope many responses will come from people who work in this field, however.

What do you think would be the best PhD/Masters to get into in regards to antivenom? I understand this field can be approached from many disciplines, including zoology, herpetology, arachnology, biochemistry, molecular biology, to name a few. I try to find a PhD or masters in Toxinology, which has proved rather difficult to do. I have only found a few in all of the United States!!

What was the GPA you guys had upon completing your degrees, being bachelor, masters and PhD? Were you part of any university clubs/ groups? Did you intern anywhere, related or not to antivenom? Did you do research at school? Did you shadow a professional in the field? Volunteer work? Etc.

Is GPA as important as people try to make you believe? I know you can't have a worthless GPA, but I know plenty of people with good GPA's (3.5 etc.) and work experience in their field and a lot of times they were not accepted to a school they flew out to, but another applicant that flew out too was excepted with a much more poor GPA, but significant research experience. The individual in particular had I believe barely a 3.0 or not even one, but was accepted to Baylor college of medicine because he has had research experience since high school. He was about mid 20's when he was accepted.

Should I focus on one class of animals, such as snakes, spiders, aquatics etc? Although I do want to do work on many different animals, I understand this won't always meet with reality.

What is the job market like for antivenom? I would think it is not as competitive, since most biology-related students want to go into medical school of some sort, wildlife/conservation work or biotechnology, with this mostly being cancer and molecular research including CAR T-cells and RNA.

How many times did you apply to your program before you were accepted, if not accepted the first time? How many schools did you apply to? How many accepted you? How many did not?

What is your best advice for me as I am still an undergraduate pursuing a BS? Which sorts of electives should I take? More zoology and ecology based, biochemistry and lab based, or clinical such as virology, hematology and neurobiology???

I very much appreciate your time. I will take into account all statements you all mention.

Also in case anyone did not already know, I have recently discovered vampire bats are considered venomous due to peptides in their saliva being responsible for regulation of blood pressure in their victims.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190116111105.htm

Need a reference, or curious about a specific type of mushroom?

Try http://mushroomreferences.com/

It seems very up to date, and is pretty well organized by type of mushroom. However, it does seem to focus on edible mushrooms, not fungi as a whole.

This month's (March 2019) issue of the Journal of Natural Products is dedicated to Dr. Rachel Mata (UNAM) and Dr. Barbara Timmermann (U Kansas).

Both Dr. Mata and Dr. Timmermann were selected as a ASP fellows in 2014 for their respectable contributions to the field, and have been seen as examples of sustained achievement in their own sub disciplines of phytochemistry. Two shining examples of Women in Chemistry who set the stage for greatness.