Research on pharmacologically active natural products at the Department of Pharmacognosy, Uppsala University.

Since 1954, research at the Department of Pharmacognosy at Uppsala University has been oriented towards modern natural products chemistry with emphasis on pharmacologically active compounds. Studies of plants used in the traditional medicine of different cultures have been of major interest. The research strategy is based on: inventory and identification of the plants used, demonstration of pharmacological activity of an extract of the plant, bioassay-guided fractionation, isolation and characterisation of the active compounds and studies of structure activity relationships. Plants from Africa, Asia, The Americas, The Pacific and Europe have been collected in collaboration with botanists and ethnobotanists. Investigations of these plants have resulted in the isolation, and chemical and pharmacological characterization of many different types of compounds. At present the work is focused on compounds with anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects.