Chemical and biological investigations of Vietnamese herbal medicines from the Euphorbiaceae family to develop high-value healthcare materials and their quality control

The project will have the following objectives :

1) to find natural compounds or extracts from Euphorbiaceae plants used in Vietnam as herbal medicine with interesting biological activities to contribute as new material for the pharmaceutical or food industries, e.g. as food material, functional food, nutraceuticals, ...
2) to survey medicinal plants from the Euphorbiaceae family used in traditional medicine in Vietnam. The study will focus mainly on Phyllanthus, but also on Mallotus species, with a special interest in endemic species
3) to study the chemical composition and investigate biological activities of selected medicinal plants using chemical and molecular biological techniques
4) to produce materials (food supplements) and/or to identify lead molecules with a potential interest for pharmaceutical or food industries
5) to apply analytical aspects for quality control of plant materials or products from plants : chromatography fingerprints of crude extracts for identification and quality control purposes, and quantitative determination of specific active compounds.