Current Members « van Breemen Laboratory

Dr. Richard van Breemen, PhD

Prof of Medicinal Chemistry,
Dept of Pharmaceutical Sciences,
College of Pharmacy

Richard B. van Breemen is professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the College of Pharmacy, a founding member of the Global Hemp Innovation Center, and a principal investigator in the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University. Prof. van Breemen received his B.A. in chemistry from Oberlin College in 1980 and Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics with Catherine Fenselau from the Johns Hopkins University in 1985. He carried out postdoctoral research in laser desorption mass spectrometry with Robert Cotter at Johns Hopkins before joining North Carolina State University and then the University of Illinois College of Pharmacy. At Illinois, he co-founded the UIC/NIH Center for Botanical Dietary Supplements Research with the late Norman Farnsworth and served as its director until moving to Oregon State University in 2018.

He serves on the USP Dietary Supplement Admission Evaluation and Labeling Expert Committee, on the Chemical Analysis Working Group of the Botanical Safety Consortium, and as the Chief Scientific Officer of Applied Discoveries. His research concerns the discovery and development of natural products as antiviral, antibacterial, and chemoprevention agents, and the investigation of botanical dietary supplements as alternatives to hormone therapy for menopausal women.

Some of Prof. van Breemen’s achievements include: