2023 Integrative Dermatology Symposium

Featured Speakers

October 27-29, 2023

Reno, Nevada

Cassandra Quave,

PhD

Cassandra Quave, Ph.D., is Curator of the Herbarium and Associate Professor of Dermatology and Human Health at Emory University, where she leads anti-infective drug discovery research initiatives and teaches courses on medicinal plants, microbiology, and pharmacology. As a medical ethnobotanist, her work focuses on the documentation and pharmacological evaluation of plants used in traditional medicine. Dr. Quave’s research is supported by the NIH, industry contracts, and philanthropy. She is a Fellow of the Explorers Club, a past President of the Society for Economic Botany, a recipient of the Emory Williams Teaching Award, and Charles Heiser, Jr. Mentor Award. She is the host of Foodie Pharmacology, a podcast dedicated to exploring the links between food and medicine. Dr. Quave has authored more than 100 scientific publications, two edited books, twenty book chapters, and seven patents. Her research has been the subject of feature profiles in the New York Times Magazine, BBC Science Focus, National Geographic Magazine, Brigitte Magazin, NPR, PBS, and the National Geographic Channel. She is author of a science memoir The Plant Hunter: A Scientist’s Quest for Nature’s Next Medicines (which was named one of the best books of 2021 by Kirkus). Learn more about her research by visiting her website or following her on Facebook or Twitter.

IDS 2023 Sessions

The Plant Hunter: Botanicals and the Future of Skin Health

Day Three: Sunday, October 2, 2022 | 9:00 AM - 9:30 AM:

Plants have served as the fundamental basis for the human pharmacopoeia since ancient times. There are an estimated 374,000 species of plants on Earth and roughly 9% of all plant life (33,000 species) have been used in some form of traditional medicine. Although the legacy of plants as sources of medicine is long, we have only recently begun to apply modern scientific tools to uncovering how botanicals work in mitigating skin disease. Dr. Quave searches the world for plants used in traditional systems of medicine to treat infectious and inflammatory skin diseases, including skin and soft tissue infections, acne, and atopic dermatitis. She offers insights from her research conducted on more than 700 medicinal plant species and explores some of the different ways plant-derived natural products influence skin health through manipulation of the skin microbiome.

Speaker