Thomas Brendler is an ethnobotanist, translator and consultant, primarily for the pharmaceutical sector. For the last 17 years, he has developed and managed various projects for industry on the use of plants in medicine, food and cosmetics. His consultancy work focuses on all aspects of herbal product development, registration and licensing.

He has been editor and author of Herb-CD®, a digital encyclopaedia of medicinal plants, since 1996, (5th edition 2003). He co-authored, edited and contributed to a wide range of publications on phytotherapy and natural product regulation, most notably "Physician's Desk Reference for Herbal Medicines" (4th edition 2007), "Medicinal and Aromatic Plants of Indian Ocean Islands" (2004) and "A Practical Guide To Licensing Herbal Medicinal Products" (2009). He is a member of the editorial boards of Natural Standard and Phytotherapy Research, and a regular peer reviewer for Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Ethnobotany Research & Applications, Economic Botany and Herbalgram.

In 1997 he founded PlantaPhile®, an innovative consultancy and image archive based in Berlin, Germany and London, UK focusing on the identification and data collection of medicinal plants and their uses in traditional medicines and the protection of biodiversity. He has made various field trips to ethnopharmacologically relevant regions of the world, especially Africa, Pacific islands and Balkan countries. He worked on the translation into English of the German Commission E monographs on medicinal plants, and co-produces and maintains PhytoDok®, a reference database for publications on medicinal plants. As a consultant to the Centre for Development of Enterprise (European Union) he has been involved in the preparation and management of various CDE funded projects. In 2009 he joined the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (USA) as a research associate. As of August 2009 he is a visiting scholar at Rutgers University (NJ), Department of Plant Biology and Pathology, Natural Product Research Group of Prof James Simon.

In 2004 he co-founded a project on the preparation of trade standards for African medicinal plants now known as the Association of African Medicinal Plants Standards. He currently serves as director and secretary of AAMPS. In this capacity he is deeply involved in the compilation of the AAMPS African Herbal Pharmacopoeia (in press), a publication which currently holds information on 50+ of the commercially most relevant African medicinal plant species.

T. Brendler is member of various professional associations and societies.

PlantaPhile
Thomas Brendler
Belforter Strasse 20
D 10405 Berlin
Germany

fon: +49-(0)172-601 87 54

UK Office
Plantaphile Ltd.
18 Hyde Gardens, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN21 4PT, UK

US contact
fon: +1-240-727 40 24

email:
www.plantaphile.eu
www.thmp.eu