The March guest presenter of the FABI International Seminar Series was the world-renown Prof. Marc Stadler who present on his research activities linked to the discovery of biologically active fungal metabolites from new and hitherto unexplored species. Prof. Stadler is affiliated to the Department of Microbial Drugs at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig, Germany. Fungal metabolites are used extensively as drugs and pesticides and with the huge global diversity of fungi and to this end his research group examines cultures of rare types of fungi and bacteria, predominantly from tropical regions, for their potential to develop new antibiotic substances. In addition, they focuses on developing sustainable pilot-scale procedures for the manufacture and preparation of natural compounds. They are consequently made available for multi-gram-scale preclinical optimisation and can subsequently also be transferred for industrial scale processing. Professor Stadler explained how they have also targeted rare European species that are difficult to culture. Most of the new compounds were isolated from new genera and species that were concurrently discovered in the course of taxonomic studies.