Pharmacological Advances in Natural Product Drug Discovery

Guanhua Du is a professor of Pharmacology; Former-President of the Chinese Pharmacological Society; a member of the Asia Pacific Federation of Pharmacologists Executive Committee; and Director of National Centre for Pharmaceutical Screening.Dr. Du got his Ph.D. degree from Peking Union Medical College in 1995, and conducted his postdoctoral research in University of Liege, Belgium from 1995 to 1998. Dr. Du is mainly engaged in drug discovery and development, screening methods and strategy, and drug effect and mechanism research in cerebrovascular and neurodegenerative disease. He originated the national high-throughput drug screening system in China, and provided drug screening services for over 300 million numbers of samples for domestic pharmaceutical institutions or enterprises.In the recent 10 years, Dr. Du has published more than 400 papers, discovered more than 30 monographs, and applied for more than 60 patents. He has finished preclinical research of 3 new drugs. He is the member of editorial committee of “Pharmacology & Therapeutics” and more than ten other journals.

• 1. Chemical and pharmacological research on the polyphenol acids isolated from Danshen: A review of salvianolic acidsGuanhua Du, Junke Song, Lida Du, Li Zhang, Guifen Qiang, Shoubao Wang, Xiuying Yang and Lianhua Fang2. Pharmacological properties of tanshinones, the natural products from Salvia miltiorrhizaXiaoying Wang, Yang Yang, Xiao Liu and Xiumei Gao3. Pharmacological action and potential targets of chlorogenic acidMingsan Miao and Liling Xiang4. Astragaloside IV derived from Astragalus membranaceus: A research review on the pharmacological effectsJianqin Zhang, Chuxuan Wu, Li Gao, Guanhua Du and Xuemei Qin5. Modern traditional Chinese medicine: Identifying, defining and usage of TCM componentsDavid J. Newman6. LW-AFC, a new formula from the traditional Chinese medicine Liuwei Dihuang decoction, as a promising therapy for Alzheimer's disease: Pharmacological effects and mechanismsXiaorui Cheng, Yan Huang, Yongxiang Zhang and Wenxia Zhou7. Pharmacological effects of icariinChunyang He, Ze Wang and Jingshan Shi8. Seaweed-derived bioactives as potential energy regulators in obesity and type 2 diabetesGiovanna Bermano, Teodora Stoyanova, Franck Hennequart and Cherry L. Wainwright9. Preventive and therapeutic effect of Ganoderma lucidum on kidney injuries and diseasesXiaoqiang Geng, Dandan Zhong, Limin Su, Zhibin Lin and Baoxue Yang10. Fungal polysaccharidesZhiyong Xiao, Wenxia Zhou and Yongxiang Zhang11. Toxicity of traditional Chinese medicine herbal and mineral productsRunping Liu, Xiaojiaoyang Li, Nana Huang, Mengyue Fan and Rong Sun