Chao Liang

Chao Liang

External Postdoc

Primary fields of research

Recent research has shown oxidative stress to be an important factor in the development and progression of obesity, T2D and cardiovascular diseases; and safe and efficient antioxidants and anti-diabetic functional food and/or new drug leads are therefore urgently needed. Plants from traditional Chinese medicine constitute an important source of new drug leads – but without sufficient knowledge about individual constituents responsible for antioxidative capacity and anti-diabetic activity , and the same applies to their cultured endophytes (i.e., microorganisms living in the intercellular space of plant material). However, extracts of TCM plants - and of their cultured endophytes - are very complex matrices of molecules with different physicochemical and biochemical properties. To advance analysis of bioactive metabolites in TCM plants and their cultured endophytes, we have developed a new metabolomics technology platform which combines high-resolution bioassay with a state-of-the-art hyphenated HPLC-HRMS-SPE-NMR system.

The first objective of my research is therefore to isolate and culture endophytes as sources of bioactive molecules. The second objective is to use our newly developed high-resolution/HPLC-HRMS-SPE-NMR platform to identify the bioactive constituents from antioxidant and antidiabetic TCM plants.

ID: 359795465