Dr. Sautreau’s main field of interest is in the pharmaceutical context of natural products, especially those from plants which provide a huge diversity of unique structures, many of which have a niche in therapeutic and clinical treatment of various types of medical conditions.

Her research focuses on natural products with particular interest in isolating and identifying bioactive compounds from plants. These are plant secondary metabolites and identification entails bioassay-guided fractionation linked to spectroscopic and other techniques. The research projects are varied, such as study of selected plant species of the family Euphorbiaceae to control the spread of parasitic disease in particular schistosomiasis, study of specific chemotaxonomic markers, utilizing specifically biologically inherited compounds within a species to standardise herbal preparations, and investigating herbal remedies e.g. raspberry leaves as potential for treatment of irritable bowel syndrome and species related to St. John’s Wort for antimicrobial application.