Maria Sauer

Maria Sauer is a researcher at the Chemical Biology of Microbe-Host Interactions group at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Hans-Knöll Institute) in Jena, Germany, and also affiliated with the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) in Saarbrücken, Germany. Her research focuses on the chemical synthesis and biological evaluation of natural products, particularly marine-derived compounds.

Her research interests center around chemical biology approaches to study microbe-host interactions through natural product chemistry. She specializes in the total synthesis of complex bioactive lipids, particularly sphingoid bases and their derivatives, with emphasis on structure elucidation, revision, and biological activity profiling. Her work combines organic synthesis techniques with biological evaluation to understand structure-activity relationships of marine natural products.

Her recent publication demonstrates expertise in synthesizing stereoisomer libraries (32 stereoisomers in this case) to resolve structural ambiguities of natural products using advanced NMR techniques. This work has significant implications for marine metabolomics and sphingolipid metabolism research.

Maria Sauer collaborates extensively within the German research ecosystem, working with multiple institutes including Leibniz-HKI, HZI, and Saarland University. Her research has applications in antimicrobial development and understanding sphingolipid-related physiological processes.