Program • NNPC 2025

19.30 Get together barbecue

Chair: Anders Backlund and Ulf Göransson, Uppsala University

Professor William Gerwick
University of California San Diego
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences

Marine Cyanobacteria as a Natural Source of Kahalalide F-Like Depsipeptides

Speaker Bio William Gerwick’s research focuses on the bioactive natural products of marine algae and cyanobacteria, their application in biomedicine especially to parasitic diseases and cancer, their biosynthesis using genomic approaches, and the development of new methods in structure analysis including artificial intelligence applications.

William Gerwick earned a BS in Biochemistry at UC Davis, a PhD in Marine Chemistry at Scripps/UCSD, and did postdoctoral work in biosynthesis at U Connecticut. After a junior faculty position in Chemistry at the U Puerto Rico, he spent 21 years at Oregon State U in the College of Pharmacy. In 2005 he returned to his PhD institution at Scripps (UC San Diego) where he currently holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Oceanography and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

William Gerwick is an elected Fellow of the American Society of Pharmacognosy and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Professor Gerwick's research group has published over 450 research papers and holds 26 patents. He has trained approximately 100 PhD and postdoctoral scholars, as well as many visiting scholars and undergraduate students, in his 43-year independent career in the natural products sciences.

10.30-11.00 Coffee

Chair: Dan Staerk, University of Copenhagen

11.00 Short talk 1

Design and optimisation of ecdysteroid ester and oxime ether derivatives as potential trypanocidal agents
Márton Háznagy, University of Szeged.

11.20 Short talk 2

Chiral separation and synthetic analogs of usnic acid enantiomers
Dagmar Ísleifsdóttir, University of Iceland.

11.40 Short talk 3

Twists, Boats and Chairs: Conformational Insights into the Dibenzocyclooctadiene Lignans
Luke Robertson, Uppsala University

12.00-13.00 Lunch

Chairs: Sunithi Gunasekera, Uppsala University, and Dan Staerk, University of Copenhagen

Associate Professor Rohan Davis
Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics
School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Australia

Adventures with Great Barrier Reef sourced natural products

Speaker Bio Rohan Davis’ research involves all aspects of biodiscovery including the isolation and structure elucidation of complex natural compounds, generation of natural product-based extract and fraction libraries for HTS, as well as the design and synthesis of bespoke semisynthetic discovery libraries.

Rohan Davis has authored 183 publications, holds 2 patents and has been awarded >$5M in research funding over the past 10 years. In 2023 and 2024 he was recognised by Clarivate as a “highly cited” researcher.

Rohan Davis has led both industry and academic projects that have resulted in the identification of >1000 natural products from plant, marine invertebrate, mushroom and microbial sources. Rohan Davis is also the Manager of NatureBank, a unique Australian biodiscovery resource located at Griffith University.

For more details on Rohan Davis’ research please visit: griffith.edu.au/institute-drug-discovery/unique-resources/naturebank

13.30 Short talk 4

Phylogenetic tools for exploring the biosynthesis of usnic acid enantiomers in Cladonia lichen
Maia Biwersi, University of Iceland

13.50 Short talk 5

Discovery of bikaverin from Fusarium oxysporum as a potent antibiotic against Staphylococcus aureus through fungus-bacterium cocultivation
Jianzhong Zhu, University of Copenhagen

14.10 Short talk 6

Discovery and characterisation of a novel nemertean peptide toxin subfamily (delta-nemertides) from the epidermal mucus of the benthic ribbon worm Lineus viridis
Quentin Laborde, Uppsala University

14.30-15.00 Coffee

Chairs: Erik Jacobsson, Uppsala University, and Elvar Örn Viktorsson, University of Iceland

15.00 Short talk 7

Diarylheptanoids from Alnus incana and inhibition of nitric oxide secretion
Andrea Eltvik, University of Oslo

15.20 Short talk 8

Cyclotides from Bolivian plants: A study of behaviour and morphological changes in Caenorhabditis elegans
Jose Antonio Ruiz, Uppsala University

15.40 Short talk 9

Natural product-based drug discovery: structure optimization of bioactive protoflavonoids in the search for new and effective xanthine oxidase inhibitors
Máté Vágvölgyi, University of Szeged

16.00-18.30 Poster session

Session Judges: Lindon Moodie, Lars Bohlin & Raffaelo Riccio

19.00 Dinner

Join for a fantastic opportunity to network in the NNPC community

12.00-13.00 Lunch

Chairs: Helle Wangensteen, University of Oslo, and Błażej Ślązak, Instytut Botaniki PAN

Professor Attila Hunyadi
Biologically Active Natural Products Research Group
Institute of Pharmacognosy, University of Szeged, Hungary

The chemical space of ecdysteroids and its use as a source of nutraceuticals and candidates for drug discovery

Speaker Bio TBP

13.30 Short talk 10

Supercritical fluid-based protocol for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of characteristic triterpenoids in Inonotus obliquus (Fr.) Pilát
Karmen Kapp, University of Helsinki.

13.50 Short talk 11

Investigation of high-throughput cannabinoid isolation by a FLASH purification system
Dennis Carrelo, University of Copenhagen.

14.10 Short talk 12

Investigating plants from Somalian traditional medicine for new anti-rheumatic treatments
Anas Slaii, Uppsala University

14.30-15.00 Coffee

Chairs: Päivi Tammela, University of Helsinki, and Taj Muhammad, Uppsala University

Associate Professor Johan Rosengren
School of Biomedical Sciences
The University of Queensland

Chemical Synthesis and Characterisation of the Structurally and Functionally Unique Peptide Natural Product Recifin A.

Speaker Bio Dr Johan Rosengren is a Group Leader and Associate Professor at the School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Queensland, Australia. His expertise is in NMR spectroscopy and its application to natural products, medicinal chemistry and biology, and he has made significant contributions to both NMR methodology and peptide structural biology.

Johan Rosengren completed his undergraduate studies in biomedical chemistry at the University of Kalmar, Sweden. He then completed his PhD, which focused on structure-activity relationships of antimicrobial peptides, under the supervision of Professor David Craik at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, UQ, in 2003. After post-doctoral work at IMB he moved to Sweden in 2005 to take up a position as Assistant Professor at Linnaeus University. During 2008-2009 he held a joint appointment between Linnaeus University and Uppsala University. In 2009 he was awarded the Swedish ‘Docent’ title before returning to University of Queensland, and establishing his research program on the back of NHMRC Career Development and ARC Future Fellowships.

Johan Rosengren’s research focuses on bioactive peptides, in particular how structural features control activity and stability. His main interests are peptide hormones, peptide natural products with unusual constraints, and the use of NMR spectroscopy in the design of novel peptide drug leads. He has solved >100 structures using NMR spectroscopy and published >140 papers that have been cited >7500 times. His work has been recognised by the Sir Paul Callaghan medal from the Australian and New Zealand Society for Magnetic Resonance.

15.30 Short talk 13

In Search of Ribosomal Peptides in marine sponges from the North Atlantic to the Tropics
Sunithi Gunasekera, Uppsala University

15.50 Short talk 14

Sunflower Trypsin Inhibitor I (SFTI-1) derived peptide engineering: Plant-based tool assisted Rheumatoid Arthritis fine-specific autoantibody characterization
Mingshu Zhang, Uppsala University

16.10 Short talk 15

Synthesis and development of new phenazines as antimycobacterial and antileukemic agents
Goraksha Khose, University of Iceland

16.30-17.00 Poster awards

Join us as we present the awards for Best Poster Presentations at Nordic Natural Products Conference 2025.

Jury: Lars Bohlin, Raffaele Riccio and Lindon Moodie.

18.00 Conference Dinner

Welcome to the Nordic Natural Products Conference 2025 Dinner &
A fantastic opportunity to network in the NNPC community.

09.45-10.15 Coffee

Chairs: Berit Smestad Paulsen, Oslo University & Lars Bohlin, Uppsala University

10.15-11.30 Nordic Sessions

10.15 Nordic Natural Products Research. An overview.

Elín Soffía Ólafsdóttir, University of Iceland
Helle Wangensteen, University of Oslo
Päivi Tammela, University of Helsinki
Ulf Göransson, Uppsala University

11.30-12.00 Concluding remarks

Lars Bohlin, Uppsala University
Berit Smestad Paulsen, University of Oslo
Raffaele Riccio, University of Salerno

12.00-13.00 Lunch

13.30 Departure