Speaker: Dr Susan Semple, Quality Use of Medicines and Pharmacy Research Centre, Clinical & Health Sciences, University of South Australia
Title: New knowledge from ancient knowledge: a partnership in understanding the potential health benefits of Australian plants
Chair: Dr Nicky Thomas, Senior Research Fellow, ENT Surgery, BHI and University of South Australia
Zoom ID is 849 7786 7996 Password 614522 or direct link
Speaker biography: Dr Susan Semple is a Senior Research Fellow in the Quality Use of Medicines and Pharmacy Research Centre, University of South Australia Clinical and Health Sciences. She has a background in pharmacy and natural products chemistry. Her research focuses on Australian medicinal and food plants with an emphasis on projects in partnership with Aboriginal communities and driven by the communities. The laboratory-based part of her research involves testing extracts of selected plants for biological activity as well as the isolation and identification of bioactive compounds from the plants.
Currently Susan is working on collaborative research with communities in Queensland and South Australia around some of their traditional medicinal and food plants. Her work with Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation (Kuuku I’yu homelands, Cape York, North Queensland) has been used by the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) as a case study for protection of Indigenous Intellectual Property (IP) around medicinal plants. She is particularly interested in the role that locally-available and culturally-appropriate bush food plants can play in improving health outcomes for Aboriginal communities including younger people. She also collaborates internationally with researchers at the University of Copenhagen as a member of a project team bringing together botany, taxonomy, evolutionary phylogeny, plant chemistry and pharmacology to understand the chemistry and bioactivity of the Australian plants in the genus Eremophila. This includes the isolation and characterisation of compounds from these plants with activities relevant to bacterial infections and type 2 diabetes.
