Jean-Luc Wolfender
University of Geneva
Jean-Luc Wolfender
Link to orcid or another website https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0125-952X
Current position: Full Professor, Phytochemistry and Bioactive Natural Products Research Unit, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland.
Research activity and interest Jean‑Luc Wolfender is a chemist and pharmacognosist whose research focuses on natural products chemistry, metabolomics, and the discovery of bioactive compounds from plants and microorganisms. He has played a pioneering role in the development and application of hyphenated analytical techniques such as LC-MS and LC-NMR for the profiling and dereplication of natural extracts in drug discovery programs.His current research develops innovative MS- and NMR-based metabolomics approaches applied to phytochemistry, microbial interactions, chemical ecology, and phytotherapy. His group specializes in the identification of bioactive metabolites at the microgram scale through integrated workflows combining metabolomics, bioassay-guided isolation, molecular networking, and advanced spectroscopic techniques. Major research interests include:
- Discovery of antimicrobial, anticancer, antiparasitic, antidiabetic, and other bioactive natural products.
- Metabolomics of complex biological systems using mass spectrometry and NMR.
- Natural product dereplication and annotation strategies.
- Chemical ecology and stress-induced production of specialized metabolites.
- Plant–microbe and microbe–microbe interactions.
- Fungal co-culture approaches for the induction of new natural products.
- Investigation of phytopharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals through systems biology approaches.
- Development of innovative analytical and computational strategies for natural products research.
Ongoing Research funding’s projects
2025–2029 – Swiss National Science Foundation (ANR-SNF)
MetaboLinkAI (Co-PI) – Integrating artificial intelligence and metabolomics for advanced metabolite annotation and biological interpretation.
2023–2027 – Swiss National Science Foundation, BRIDGE Discovery Identification of antimicrobial and anti-virulence lead compounds from biodiverse microorganisms through a platform integrating metabolomics and innovative bioassays (PI)
2021–2025 – Swiss National Science Foundation, Sinergia
An in silico and chemo-biological approach to identify anti-infective and pro-metabolic natural products (PI).