Professor Dr. Dr. h. c. Otto Sticher (October 8, 1936 – March 11, 2022)

Otto Sticher, Emeritus and former Professor of Pharmacognosy and Pharmaceutical Biology at ETH Zurich, died peacefully on March 11, 2022, at his home in Ebmatingen, Switzerland, at the age of 85.

We lose a distinguished colleague, great mentor, and a long-standing friend. Prof. Sticherʼs enthusiasm for plants and natural products has influenced all those who worked with him. We thankfully look back at all his contributions to medicinal plant research, and we recall how he has influenced our lives and our ways of thinking in so many ways.

A remarkable contributor to the study of natural products, Professor Sticherʼs breadth of research covered the entirety of the field. His scientific approach led not only to a deep knowledge and understanding of natural productsʼ isolation and identification, but also opened the view of their relevance in ethnomedicinal systems and as potential drug leads. Since 1972, he had been Full Professor and Director of Pharmacognosy (later Pharmacy) at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences within the Department of Applied Biosciences at ETH Zurich, from where he retired on April 1, 2002.

Otto Sticher was born on October 8, 1936, in Hochdorf, Canton (District) Lucerne. He studied pharmacy and earned his doctorate under Professor Hans Flück at the Pharmaceutical Institute of the ETH Zurich with a thesis on the essential oils of Mentha spp. After two years as a manager of a pharmacy, he became a postdoc under Professor Hans Schmid at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Zurich and obtained a teaching assignment in Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry at the ETH Zurich. On April 1, 1972, he was appointed Associate Professor and in 1979, Full Professor of Pharmacognosy at ETH Zurich. He taught Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry (Pharmaceutical Biology) for both pharmacy students at the ETH and biology students at the University of Zurich. As part of the legendary ETH pharmacognosy curriculum, Professor Sticher organized and conducted “pharmacobotanical” excursions to various areas in Switzerland. These excursions were highly appreciated by both his scientific staff and his students, as they combined knowledge from lectures with observations of plants in their natural habitat.

During his distinguished and productive scientific career, which lasted over 30 years, Professor Sticher authored and coauthored close to 400 scientific publications. His important contributions to the field have been recognized through numerous honors and awards. Among these, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2002 from the School of Pharmacy, University of London, and the Egon-Stahl-Award in Gold from the Society for Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research (GA) in 2011. He was also an Honorary Member of several societies, including the GA, and an Honorary Member and Fellow of the American Society of Pharmacognosy (ASP). From 1978 to 1984, he was the president of the GA and actively supported the journal Planta Medica for many years, first as Co-editor and then as a member of the Editorial Board – a position he held until his retirement in 2002.

In addition, he was a member of the ASP Foundation Board and an Editorial Advisory Board Member of the Journal of Natural Products. Professor Sticher held appointments on pharmacopeial committees in Switzerland, Europe, and the United States. He has been a member of the Federal and European Pharmacopoeia Commission and President of the Swiss Society of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Overall, the research of Professor Sticher has had a major impact on the international research community in the field of natural product research. Already in the early 1980s, he invited researchers from all over the world to join his research at ETH Zurich. Strong ties were formed with Turkey, through the fruitful collaboration with Prof. İhsan Çaliş, Egypt, Greece, Morocco, and Papua New Guinea, where he led bioprospecting expeditions to study medicinal plants together with Prof. Topul Rali from the University of Papua New Guinea. Ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological studies were continued through three projects in Mexico co-directed by Prof. Michael Heinrich. The PhD project among the Yanomami in Venezuela was highlighted recently by Professor Jürg Gertsch in the Planta Medica special issue (14, 2021), which was dedicated to Professor Sticher on the occasion of his 85th birthday.

The research of Professor Sticher focused on the isolation, structure elucidation, and biological screening of natural products from medicinal plants and cyanobacteria as well as on quality control of herbal drugs, phytopharmaceuticals, and ethnobotany. He was a specialist in the phytochemistry of Ginkgo biloba and Panax ginseng, among other herbal medicines, as well as the natural product classes iridoids and saponins. In his laboratory, the “PRISMA” model for computer-aided HPLC mobile phase optimization was developed. Professor Sticher was the main author of the later editions of one of the leading German textbooks “Pharmakognosie Phytopharmazie”, first published in 1963 by E. Steinegger and R. Hänsel, which, so far, has been published in a 10th edition (2015). An influential review on natural product isolation published by the Royal Society of Chemistry came out in 2008. In 2014, Prof. Sticher was honored by a special issue of Journal of Natural Products, and in 2021, as already mentioned above, a special issue in Planta Medica on the occasion of his 85th birthday was dedicated to him (Planta Medica 14, 2021).

Professor Sticher will be remembered as a scholar in a class of his own. His scientific contributions were prodigious in quality and quantity. As a mentor and friend to many scientists in the field of natural product research, he will remain with us after his passing. The human and academic legacy of Otto Sticher will live on, and his vision and personality will remain an inspiration to all of us. The thoughts of all of us go to his beloved wife and family.

Jürg Gertsch

on behalf of the Editors-in-Chief of Planta Medica, Oliver Kayser and Robert Fürst, and GA President, Judith Rollinger.

Publication History

Article published online:
13 June 2022

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