Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences

Profile

Qualifications    

BSc, PhD, MRPharmS, SRPharmS, AFHEA (MILT)

Internal memberships / posts

• Course Leader for MPharm (Hons)
• Chair of Unit Assessment Examination Board, Chair of Conjoint Board of Studies
• Chair of Employers Liaison Committee, Member of Course Leaders Committee
• Member of School Research & Knowledge Transfer Committee
• Member of Nutrition and Natural Products (NNP) group

External memberships / posts

• General Pharmaceutical Council
• Royal Pharmaceutical Society
• Academic Pharmacy Group RPS and Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Member of Pharmaceutical Scientist
• Member of The joint Pharmaceutical Analysis Group

Key teaching responsibilities  

Natural products provide an immense range of compounds, from very simple molecules, for instance monoterpenes, fatty acids and phenolic compounds such as salicylic acid, to more complex structures such alkaloids, glycosides, lignans and flavonoids. My main focus for the teaching area is natural products, as a key source of medicinal compounds.  In addition, how these compounds can be templates to provide a range of semi-synthetic derivatives that are routinely used as therapeutic agents in medicine. There is an obvious link of natural products and phytotherapy. This is illustrated with concepts of phytotherapy and examples of herbs that cross the boundary. Furthermore, I am interested in plants that are known to have a toxic profile.

I also take an interest in topics relating to medicinal chemistry and illustrate mechanism-based enzyme inhibition as the finesse for controlling specific disease conditions.

Key research interests

Natural products, especially those from plants provide a huge diversity of unique structures, many of which have a niche in therapeutic and clinical treatment of various types of medical conditions.

My research area focuses on natural products with particular interest in isolating and identifying bioactive compounds from plants. These are plant secondary metabolites and identification entails bioassay-guided fractionation linked to spectroscopic and other techniques. The research projects are varied, such as study of selected plant species of the family Euphorbiaceae to control the spread of parasitic disease in particular schistosomiasis, study of specific chemotaxonomic markers, utilizing specifically biologically inherited compounds within a species to standardise herbal preparations, and investigating herbal remedies e.g. raspberry leaves as potential for treatment of irritable bowel syndrome and species related to St. John’s Wort for antimicrobial application.

Recent Publications*

More recent publications

*Please note that in publications, Asmita Sautreau goes by the name Asmita Patel.