Special Issue Celebrating the Austrian Pharmacognosy

This special issue is dedicated to four outstanding scholars whose individual contributions as well as their ongoing commitment to Austrian pharmacognosy have considerably shaped the discipline.

In 2024, Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Dr. h. c. Brigitte Kopp (75 y) and em. o. Univ.-Prof. DI Dr. Chlodwig Franz (80 y) celebrated their “round” birthdays, whereas in 2022/2023, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Hermann Stuppner went into his well-deserved retirement. He will be followed by Univ.-Prof. Dr. DDr. h. c. Rudolf Bauer this year (2024). The editors of this Planta Medica special issue were happy to take up these highly warranted occasions to invite friends and colleagues of the mentioned honorees to submit a manuscript in their field of natural product research.

Although one may argue that these are quite private occasions of four individuals, there is a strong bond that unites them in their passion and life filling dedication …. and this is pharmacognosy. They all spent decades in pharmacognostic research and education in Austria. They trained hundreds or even thousands of students in Graz, Innsbruck, and Vienna in the field of natural products and their underlying chemistry, biology, and application.

For this reason, we labelled this issue a “Celebration to Austrian Pharmacognosy”. In Austria, there is a specific setting connected with the field of pharmacognosy. Vienna is the cradle of this scholarly term, where it was introduced by Johann Adam Schmidt, a German-Austrian surgeon and ophthalmologist. In 1795, he became a professor at Josephs-Akademie in Vienna, where he gave lectures on several subjects in medicine. His book Lehrbuch der Materia Medica was published posthumously in 1811. It is a treatise on medicinal plants and their properties, wherein, for the first time, he coined the technical terms pharmacodynamics (effect of a remedy) and pharmacognosy (recognition/characterization of a remedy) – the latter now being a purely pharmaceutical discipline.

In 1939/40, pharmacognosy became detached from medicine and was implemented in the pharmaceutical curricula at the Austrian universities offering the study of pharmacy (Graz, Innsbruck, Vienna). In contrast to many other countries around the world, to this day, the fieldʼs labelling pharmacognosy has remained unchanged at all the state-run Austrian universities. It includes research, training, and education in all pharmaceutical facets of natural product research.

Though having different research favorites and different backgrounds, all four honorees of this special issue are true representatives of the Austrian pharmacognosy. They assumed responsibilities for the field from their academic predecessors and filled it with scientific innovation and openness for new ideas while still maintaining and enhancing the necessary pharmacognostic expertise, such as drug analysis, analytics, chromatography, and structure elucidation, just to name a few. As we all know, this is not something taken for granted since time and preferences change, while research trends most often are accompanied by renaming.

Be invited to go through the brief profiles of the four scholars, which are far away from being complete nor are we able to list all of their achievements:

Rudolf Bauer studied pharmacy and received his degrees at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. Since 2002, he has been Professor of Pharmacognosy and Head of the Institute of Pharmacognosy (later Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences) at the University of Graz, Austria. He is an expert on medicinal plants and natural products, focusing on the analysis and isolation of plant secondary metabolites. Prof. Bauer is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, e.g., two honorary doctorates (2019 University of Helsinki, 2021 University of Szeged). He served as President of the Society for Medicinal Plant Research (GA; 2002 – 2007), the International Society of Ethnopharmacology, and the GP-TCM Research Association. He is member of the Expert Group 13A (chairman since 2023) and the TCM Working Group of the European Pharmacopoeia Commission.

Chlodwig Franz studied biology and pharmaceutical biology at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria, at the University of Vienna, Austria, and the University of Munich, Germany. From 1985 to 2012 (and since then Emeritus), Prof. Franz was Professor and Head of the Institute of Applied Botany and Pharmacognosy at the Veterinarian University Vienna, Austria. He trained hundreds of students and conducted research on numerous national and international projects (in particular EU projects) in the field of breeding genetics and cultivation of medicinal plants, and phytotherapy in veterinary medicine. For two periods, he served as Vice Rector of Research and Evaluation at the Veterinarian University Vienna. He received several distinctions, medals, and awards and is an honorary member of the Society for Medicinal Plants and Natural Products Research.

Brigitte Kopp studied chemistry and physics at the TU Vienna, and pharmacy at the University of Vienna, Austria, where she received her doctorate and habilitation, and where she was appointed full Professor of Pharmacognosy from 2000 to 2014. For 10 years, she served as Director of Study Affairs at the University of Vienna. Her research focused on plant biotechnology, bioactive plant constituents, and quality control of herbal remedies. For many years, Prof. Kopp served as President and Vice President of the GA. She received an honorary doctorate from the University of Iasi, Romania, the Grand Silver Medal of Honor for Merit from the Republic of Austria, and was appointed Honorary Senator of the University of Vienna. She is still active as a member of many expert groups to ensure the quality and regulations of herbal drugs, e.g., as a member of the Expert Group 13B of the European Pharmacopoeia Commission.

Hermann Stuppner studied pharmacy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and received his doctorate from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. He was appointed Professor of Pharmacognosy at the University of Innsbruck in 2001 and served as Head or Deputy Head of the Institute of Pharmacy until his retirement in 2022. From 2004 – 2022, Prof. Stuppner was Dean of Studies at the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy and President of the Herbal Medicinal Platform Austria since 2006. He served as President and Vice President of the Austrian Pharmaceutical Society from 2006 to 2019. Prof. Stuppner received numerous awards for his research on the isolation and structure elucidation of plant constituents as well as the analysis and quality assessment of medicinal plants and phytopharmaceuticals. In 2023, he was honored by the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art (1st Class).

In recognition of their outstanding and continuous tribute to pharmacognostic research, we, the editors of this issue, together with all the authors of this collection would like to express our gratitude and appreciation to the four honorees. Besides their personal input and efforts in the Society for Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research (GA) as well as its associated journal Planta Medica, all of them contributed to shaping the bright and internationally recognized Austrian pharmacognosy. We herewith also take the opportunity to congratulate Univ.-Prof. Dr. Gerhard Buchbauer (Univ. Vienna) for his recently celebrated 80th birthday and his outstanding research on essential oils.

Austrian natural product researchers may be labelled as conservative, but it is important to highlight the high diversity of subfields interconnected and gathered under the wide umbrella of todayʼs state-of-the-art pharmacognosy. As pars pro toto, this becomes evident in the tremendous richness of research topics of the 11 original research papers and 3 reviews collected within this special issue. The potpourri of original works covers novel and innovative approaches and insights concerning (i) the isolation and structure elucidation of natural products (e.g., the papers on benzylisoquinoline alkaloids, iso-guttiferone J and guttiferone J, or the influence of endophytes on bergenin production), (ii) the biosynthesis and chemistry of phytochemicals (e.g., the papers on the variability of chalcone synthase in chamomile, light activation of parietin or oxon-mediated oxidation of oleacanthal or oleacein), and (iii) the identification and mechanistic dissection of bioactivities in in vitro (e.g., the manuscripts on the antioxidative and anti-inflammatory potential of phylloxanthibilin, inhibition of acetylcholinesterase by Jaborosa species or immunometabolic facets in the activity profile of urolithin A) and in vivo models (e.g., the papers on phytonutrients for enhanced proteostasis in Drosophila and the 3R compatible search for health-promoting compounds in Caenorhabditis elegans). The reviews center on the role of plant-derived peptides for drug discovery, the so far overlooked traditional Austrian knowledge on wound healing herbs, and the chemistry and biology of blossom essential oils.

We are grateful to all the contributors of this issue not only for their fascinating research insights, but also for their fast and positive feedback after our invitation and the timely delivery of their manuscripts. A special thank goes to the Editor-in-Chief for Planta Medica special issues, Prof. Dr. Robert Fürst, in trusting us to make this happen in less than 1 year. This would not have been possible without the enormous help and assistance from so many reviewers, and the great support from the editorial office.

We are confident that our honorees will continue to support and promote pharmacognosy, even during their well-deserved retirement, and thereby never stop being fascinated by natural products … and thus, we hope they will enjoy reading the articles of so many colleagues and friends collected in this special issue.

Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Judith M. Rollinger Division of Pharmacognosy, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Vienna, Austria
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Assoc.-Prof. PD Dr. Elke H. Heiß
Division of Pharmacognosy, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Vienna, Austria
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Publication History

Article published online:
06 June 2024