Prof Peter Hylands has many years experience in natural product research and development, with an emphasis on the isolation and structural determination of novel bioactive compounds, both in academia and industry.

He has led multidisciplinary research programmes in Europe, the Americas and various Asian countries and has been an invited speaker all over the world.

He has recently returned to the Department and important aspects of his present research are innovative chemometric metabonomic approaches to natural product research, notably the standardisation of plant extracts

Professor Hylands started his career with academic appointments in the University of Strasbourg, as a Royal Society European Fellow, and then in the University of London. His special research interest has always been natural products in medicine. He joined the commercial world in 1988 as Director of Chemistry and then Research Director of biopharmaceutical companies in the UK and the USA. He has consulted for the United Nations and Commonwealth Science Council. He has worked or collaborated with institutions on every continent regarding natural medicines and natural product research and development. He serves on a number of boards, advisory boards and government committees and is currently Head of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, King’s College London. He teaches organic chemistry, including the application of spectroscopy to structural studies, and pharmacognosy for undergraduate and postgraduate courses. His current research emphasises the application of chemometrics and emerging biotechnologies to the problems of standardisation and quality control of plant medicines. He has a research group in the Centre for Natural Medicines Research, King’s College London of which he is Director

Innovative chemometric metabonomic approaches to natural product research, notably the standardisation of plant extracts