- Written by Dimitar Kirkovski
Professor Dr. Milen Georgiev
Position: Head of Department of Plant Cell Biotechnology, CPSBB
Person-in-Charge of the Stephan Angeloff Institute of Microbiology for the PlantaSYST project
Prof. Dr. Milen I. Georgiev is heading a Lab of Metabolomics at Institute of Microbiology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He has 20 years of experience in natural products field and has published in excess of 170 papers (i.a., Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Genome Biology, Trends in Biotechnology, Plant Physiology and Plant Biotechnology Journal, among others). He has delivered 50+ invited lectures in 20 different countries.
Milen holds several grants from the NSF of Bulgaria, Romania and framework programmes of the European Union (incl. H2020 – PlantaSYST project, well-funded with 30 million Euro).
In 2020 and 2021, he was listed among top 2% in the Stanford University worldwide citation ranking of all scientists and scientific disciplines. Milen is a recipient of Pythagoras award for outstanding scientist by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science (2011, 2015 and 2020), as at present the only scientist in Bulgaria to have won three times.
Milen serves as an Editor, Associate Editor and Editorial Board member of dozen journals in biotechnology and natural products fields, incl. Phytomedicine, Food and Chemical Toxicology, Phytochemistry, Biotechnology Letters, Chinese Medicine, eFood, Food Frontiers, International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Frontiers in Pharmacology, among others. Serving as a chairman he has established the International Conference on Natural Products Utilization: from Plants to Pharmacy Shelf (ICNPU), which had four issues so far. The latest ICNPU edition attracted attention of 330+ participants from 50 different countries (www.icnpu.com/2019).
His current research focuses on 1) biosynthesis of fine molecules and development of biotech tools for their sustainable mass production, 2) metabolomics and comprehensive metabolite profiling and 3) molecular pharmacology (with particular focus on obesity, photoaging and longevity).
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- Atanasov A.G., Zotchev S.B., Dirsch V.M., Orhan I.E., Banach M., Rollinger J.M., Barreca D., Weckwerth W., Bauer R., Bayer E.A., Majeed M., Bishayee A., Bochkov V., Bonn G.K., Braidy N., Bucar F., Cifuentes A., D’Onofrio G., Bodkin M., Diederich M., Dinkova-Kostova A.T., Efferth T., El Bairi K., Arkells N., Fan T-P., Fiebich B.L., Freissmuth M., Georgiev M.I. et al. (2021)
- Natural products in drug discovery: advances and opportunities. Nature Reviews in Drug Discovery. 20: 200-216. (IF 112.288)
- Ding M., Zhang K., He Y., Zuo Q., Zhao H., He M., Georgiev M.I., Park S.U., Zhou M. (2021)
- FtBPM3 modulates the orchestration of FtMYB11-mediated flavonoids biosynthesis in Tartary buckwheat. Plant Biotechnology Journal. 19(7): 1285-1287. (IF 13.263)
- Savova M.S., Vasileva L.V., Mladenova S.G., Amirova K.M., Ferrante C., Orlando G., Wabitsch M., Georgiev M.I. (2021)
- Ziziphus jujuba Mill. leaf extract restrains adipogenesis by targeting PI3K/AKT signaling pathway. Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy. 141: 111934. (IF 7.419)
- Shi M., Liao P., Nile S.H., Georgiev M.I., Kai G. (2021)
- Biotechnological exploration of transformed root culture for value-added products. Trends in Biotechnology. 39(2): 137-149. (IF 21.942)
- Vasileva L.V., Savova M.S., Tews D., Wabitsch M., Georgiev M.I. (2021)
- Rosmarinic acid attenuates obesity and obesity-related inflammation in human adipocytes. Food and Chemical Toxicology. 149: 112202. (IF 5.572)