Cassandra Quave, PhDAssistant Professor of Dermatology and Human HealthCurator of the Herbarium

Dr. Cassandra L. Quave is Curator of the Herbarium and Associate Professor of Dermatology and Human Health at Emory University. She was appointed Thomas J. Lawley, MD Professor of Dermatology, an endowed professorship, in 2023. Dr. Quave serves as the Assistant Dean of Research Cores for Emory University School of Medicine. She earned degrees in biology and anthropology (B.S.) from Emory University in 2000 and a Ph.D. in biology in 2008 from Florida International University under the direction of Dr. Bradley Bennett. She completed postdoctoral fellowships in microbial pathogenesis at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences under the direction of Dr. Mark Smeltzer (2009-2011) and in human health at Emory University under the direction of Dr. Michelle Lampl (2011-2012). As a medical ethnobotanist, her work focuses on the documentation and pharmacological evaluation of plants used in traditional medicine. The National Institutes of Health, industry contracts, and philanthropy support Dr. Quave’s research. Quave is a Guggenheim Fellow, Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, Fellow of the Explorers Club, a past President of the Society for Economic Botany, a recipient of the Emory Williams Teaching Award, Charles Heiser, Jr. Mentor Award, American Botanical Council James. A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award, and American Herbal Products Association Herbal Insight Award. In 2022, she received The National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communication. Dr. Quave serves on the Board of Directors for the Society for Investigative Dermatology and the editorial board for Natural Product Reports. She also serves on the advisory board of the American Botanical Council.

Beyond her academic research and teaching activities, Dr. Quave is the co-creator and host of Foodie Pharmacology, a podcast dedicated to exploring the links between food and medicine. She is the creator and host of the Teach Ethnobotany channel on YouTube, through which she creates and shares educational videos about botanicals, pharmacology, and natural products. She writes a weekly newsletter on Substack, Nature’s Pharmacy, to reveal the science behind natural remedies and address misinformation on herbs. Dr. Quave has authored more than 100 scientific publications, two edited books, twenty book chapters, and seven patents; her work has been cited in the scientific literature more than 8,000 times. Dr. Quave is co-founder and CSO of Verdant Scientific Inc.—a biotech company focused on developing new therapies for infectious and inflammatory skin disease. Her research has been profiled in the New York Times Magazine, BBC Science Focus, National Geographic Magazine, NPR, PBS, and the National Geographic Channel. She has written opinion essays for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Conversation. Quave is the author of an award-winning science memoir The Plant Hunter: A Scientist’s Quest for Nature’s Next Medicines, critically acclaimed as one of the best nonfiction books of 2021 by Kirkus Reviews.

Research in the Quave lab is focused on drug discovery efforts from natural products to improve treatment options for multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial infections. We use an ethnobotanical approach to drug discovery. This involves field research to document traditional medical therapies for infectious diseases, collection of biological specimens (plants and fungi) for chemical extraction, and bioassay-guided fractionation strategies to screen for novel anti-infectives. Our bacterial targets include serious and urgent threat-level pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRE), respectively. Our main pathways of interest are regulation of bacterial quorum sensing and biofilms. Examples of our lead projects include work on one natural product composition (220D-F2) that inhibits biofilm formation in S. aureus and disrupts established Streptococcus pneumoniae biofilms and another composition (224C-F2) that quenches the S. aureus agr quorum sensing system, effectively turning off production of a suite of destructive exotoxins. We are exploring the utility of these products as potential adjuvants to existing lines of therapeutics with the aim of improving response to antibiotic therapies. Isolation and structural elucidation of small molecules is foundational to our research, and this involves use of state-of-the-art MS and NMR resources.