The Centre is committed to undertaking fundamental and applied research to produce value added products based on bio-active natural extracts.

Since its establishment in 1999, the Centre for Phytochemistry and Pharmacology has been delivering competitive services to the nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, agrichemical and biotechnology industries. The Centre offers a comprehensive service with specialist skills for commercial research involving plant chemistry. Whether it be for medicinal or veterinary applications, industrial, agricultural or domestic uses, plants are able to provide a resource that is to date largely untapped.

Employing some of the most advanced technologies in plant chemistry, the Centre can provide a range of research and commercial services, including:

Extraction - small and large scale Büchii, laboratory scale SFE

Chemical profiling - high throughput analysis using automated GC, GCMS, HPLC, LCMS and LCNMR techniques

Isolation and purification of compounds - gram scale preparative HPLC

Structural elucidation - automated 1D- and 2D-NMR and LCNMR techniques

Bioassay guided fractionation and screening - high throughput cell and non-cell based assays

Following a preliminary evaluation, the Centre can deconvolute an extract and isolate pure compounds for further investigative work. The Centre has the capability to identify these compounds using state-of-the-art spectroscopic methods and also quantify their concentration in the natural extract. This in turn leads to investigating the optimum methods of production and developing protocols for extraction and storage.

The Centre can also provide rapid screening of extracts and pure compounds for cytotoxicity and other biological assays.

To evaluate the potential of commercial new sources of chemicals from nature, the centre is developing a comprehensive library of plant extracts derived predominately from Australian and medicinal plants. These extracts can be used to provide an indication of potential chemical activity.