RICARDO JORGE DINIS-OLIVEIRA, PhD, European PhD, DSc, is a Forensic Sciences Expert, namely in Toxicology and Forensic Medicine areas, and develops its scientific and academic activity in the areas of Toxicology and Pharmacology of Psychoactive Substances, Pesticides and Medicines, in their preclinical, clinical and forensic aspects and in Forensic Medicine, namely the development of mathematical models to calculate the postmortem interval, known as the Holy Grail of Forensic Sciences. He is an Associate Professor with Aggregation at University Institute of Health Sciences and of the Faculty of Medicine of University of Porto. He is an Integrated Researcher at UCIBIO-REQUIMTE - Applied Molecular Biosciences Unit/ Associated Laboratory for Green Chemistry, Clean Technologies and Processes and at the IINFACTS. He is the founder and current President of the Portuguese Association of Forensic Sciences (APCF).

Dr. Daniel C. Hoessli is a medical graduate from the University of Geneva. He was trained as an immunologist in the labs of Herman Eisen (Washington University, St. Louis) and Byron Waksman (Yale University). Following his return to Geneva, (department of pathology and immunology, University of Geneva, faculty of medicine), he became involved in the study of lymphocyte surface proteins and receptors, and more generally, in the structure of plasma membranes. Following this lead, he contributed to the concept of plasma membrane rafts, or plasma membrane microdomains, which constitute specialized domains where transmembrane signaling can be initiated. After his retirement from the University of Geneva, he started a fruitful Pakistani collaboration with Professors Nasir-du-Din at the Institute of molecular sciences and bioinformatics in Lahore and Iqbal Chaudhary and Atta-ur-Rahman in Karachi (ICCBS).

Thomas Iftner, born in Fuerth/Bavaria in 1958, is the Director of the Institute of Medical Virology and Epidemiology of Viral Diseases at the University Hospital of Tübingen and a Full Professor of Experimental Virology. His research interests range from basic research on human papillomaviruses to clinical and epidemiological trials with more than 200 peer-reviewed publications (citations above 14,000, h-index 61, i10-index 157) along with 10 international patents. On the basis of his research, more than 70 students have been awarded Ph.D. and M.D. degrees. Apart from this Prof. Iftner is providing support and guidance to worldwide leading companies involved in diagnostics and pharmaceutical research.

Emilio Jirillo is full professor of Immunology at University of Bari Medical School (Bari, Italy) since 1986.His current fields of interest are: mucosal immunity, microbial immunity and immunonutrition. Especially in this last field, he has recently published in vitro and in vivo studies on the anti-inflammatory effects of polyphenols. He is author of more than 560 papers (326 scientific papers are listed in PUBMED), including books and chapters of books. He is also editor-in-chief- of another Bentham journal: Clinical Immunology Endocrine Metabolic Drugs.

Michael Kahn, Ph.D., is professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Medicine at City of Hope's comprehensive cancer center. He comes to City of Hope from University of Southern California, where he was first appointed as the provost professor, with joint appointments in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Keck School of Medicine of USC and the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology in the USC School of Pharmacy. After completing his postdoctoral training at Columbia University with Professor Gilbert Stork, Ph.D., Dr. Kahn subsequently did a second postdoctoral fellowship at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology, where he first became interested in utilizing novel chemistry to complement and enhance the investigation of complex biological signaling pathways. Dr. Kahn’s research program is focused on the integration of basic science with translational medicine. His lab utilizes a forward chemical genomic strategy to identify and validate novel pharmacologic tools to study complex signaling pathways in development and disease. From a translational perspective, these studies led to the development of the second-generation CBP/β-catenin antagonist, Wnt modulating drug, PRI-724. These efforts resulted in the clinical trials of PRI-724 in colon and pancreatic cancer, leukemia and liver fibrosis.

Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman, Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Kings College, University of Cambridge (1968), and Sc.D. (University of Cambridge) has 1315 international publications in several fields of organic chemistry including, 349 books (11 authored, 338 edited) published largely by major U.S. and European presses. He is Editor of the “Studies in Natural Products Chemistry”, 78 volumes of which have been published by Elsevier under his Editorship in last 3 decades. He was elected as Fellow prestigious of Royal Society (London) (2006) and won the UNESCO Science Prize (1999). The Austrian government honoured him with its high civil award ("Grosse Goldene Ehrenzeischen am Bande") (2007) in recognition of his international services to the cause of science. Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman was appointed Academician (Foreign Member) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2015) and Fellow (Foreign Member) of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology. He won the "Friendship Award of China" (2014) and was conferred the highest scientific award of China, the International Science & Technology Cooperation Award, by President Xi Jinping (2020). The leading Chinese University on Traditional Medicine in Changsha, Hunan has established the “Academician Professor Atta-ur-Rahman One Belt and One Road TCM Research Center” in October 2019. The largest university in Malaysia, Universiti of Technologi, Mara, Malaysia (UiTM), has established an institution entitled, “Atta-ur-Rahman Institute on Natural Product Discovery (AuRins)” in 2013. He has served as the Vice President of The World Academy of Science (TWAS, Trieste, Italy), and Coordinator General of COMSTECH (OIC Ministerial Committee on Science and Technology). He is President of Pakistan Academy of Science and is President of Network of Academies of Science of Islamic Countries (NASIC).

Dr. Reitz obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Chemistry from the University of California, San Diego. He also holds an Executive Masters in Technology Management from the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton, Penn Engineering). Currently, he is also an Adjunct Professor in the Drexel University College of Medicine. He has published more than 150 scientific publications and is a named inventor of 60 issued U.S patents. He was also the founding Editor (2000).

Prof. Dr. Bilge Sener was born in Malatya (Turkey) on July 23, 1953. She graduated from Ankara University, Faculty of Pharmacy in 1974 with her First B.Sc. degree, and completed her Ph.D. awarded by the Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council (TUBITAK) at the Department of Pharmacognosy in 1977 under the supervision of Prof.Dr. Mekin Tanker. In 1981, was promoted to Associate Professor position. In 1982 she got an invitation to the establishment of Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Gazi University, made research in the field of isoquinoline alkaloids at the Department of Chemistry, The Pennsylvania State University (USA) between 1986 and 1988 as Visiting scientist awarded by National Science Foundation. She returned and became a full Professor in 1988. Spent three months as a guest professor at the invitation of Prof. Dr. Ichiya Ninomiya at Kobe Womens College of Pharmacy and Osaka University-Japan by JSPS program. Prof.Sener was involved in several administrative works at Gazi University; as Director at the Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Gazi University between 1982 and 2002, 2013-2016 as Chair at the Division of the Professional Sciences of Pharmacy as Co-Director at the Institute of Health Sciences (1988-1994) and as Dean at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Gazi University (1994-1997). She served as a senator at Gazi Univ from 2017 to 2020. 1991-2000 she served as co-adviser for 19 Ph.D. students at HEJ as TWAS South-South Fellowship. She served as chair for divisions (IUAPC, PCMD, ICNPR), and European Pharmacopoeia and chairs at the Ministry of Health.

Prof.Sener is one of the most prominent scientists in Turkey, her scientific contributions are internationally recognized in the fields of natural products chemistry. Prof.Sener has isolated and established structures of hundreds of new natural products. Her work on the isolation, and structure elucidation along with biological studies of isoquinoline, Amaryllidaceae, steroidal alkaloids, and taxane derivatives was widely recognized for originality and significance. The special issue of Phytochemistry Letters is organized to honor her on her retirement and also to acknowledge her contribution to the field of natural products.

She retired on July 27th, 2020 from Gazi University. She continued to give Ph.D. courses at the ICCBS-Karachi and supervised MSc and Ph.D. thesis.

Prof. Wei Wang is a Yangtze River (Scholar) distinguished professor at Hunan University of Chinese Medicine. He has served as the director of TCM and Ethnomedicine Innovation & Development International Lab. His research interests focus on the material basis and new compound discovery of TCM, and the new method of screening the activity of TCM based on specific target and the innovative research on the targeted synergistic effect of active components of TCM. Prof. Wang has published over 200 peer reviewed papers in highly impacted journals including Angew Chem Int Ed Engl., ACS Nano, Biomaterials, Sci Bull., J Pineal Res., etc.