Webinar
Trends in natural product Research & Development
Webinar Summary:
Bioactive Natural Products (NP) have greatly contributed to life sciences as drugs as well as food and cosmetic ingredients. High diversity, complementary to synthetic compounds, and an inherited evolutionary bias have made NPs a valuable source for innovative drug and ingredient discovery. However, with the technical complexity in accessing, handling and processing at the required scale, as well as changing R&D strategies driven by competitive technologies, NPs have been increasingly regarded as less productive in R&D efforts.
On the other hand, with a constant high demand in bioactive leads by the pharma industry as well as the steadily increasing consumer demand in “all natural” foods, cosmetics and preventive health products, the life science industry asks for serious commercial NP services, productively providing naturally derived products. IMAX Discovery represents a world leading provider of NP R&D services with the world’s largest NP collections, superior experience and highly productive cost-efficient processing.
This webinar will describe the current trends in natural product R&D as well as how IMAX Discovery positions and can contribute productively to the life science industry.
Keywords:
Natural products, life sciences, ingredients, drug discovery, all natural, high-throughput screening (HTS).
Speakers:
- Thomas Henkel – IMAX Discovery, a business unit of Axxam GmbH
Thomas Henkel looks back on a long career as an entrepreneur: he worked at Bayer Health Care, Germany, as Vice President Enabling Technologies and member of the International Research Committee and founded, as well as managed, the biotech companies InterMed Discovery in 2006 and IMD Natural Solutions (IMD) in 2012. He successfully transferred IMD, with its leading position in natural antimicrobial assets, into the Lanxess group in 2017.
Thomas currently works as an independent consultant, supporting IMAX Discovery in its life science R&D service business. Over more than 30 years, Thomas gained experience in multiple Pharma indications and life science application areas (including crop, food, cosmetic and flavour sciences), as well as enabling technologies. He acquired profound management skills regarding productive lead discovery, embedded in a global co-operation environment, and served at the helm of two biotech companies generating a successful business exit. Under his business and scientific leadership, a novel naturally derived preserving agent was discovered and developed to market readiness, which is now marketed by Lanxess under the trade name Nagardo(R) in food and beverage applications.
Thomas is the author of 37 peer-reviewed publications in the field of natural products and bio-chemistry.