Recent Advances in Anti-Infective Drug Discovery

Tianhong Dai is an assistant professor in Harvard Medical School. He is considered a world leader in antimicrobial blue light therapy for infections, and a world expert in animal models of wound infections using bioluminescent microbes. He is the author and co-author of more than 80 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Dai’s research has been supported by the NIH (R01 and R21), DoD and other funding sources.

Michael R Hamblin Ph.D. is a Principal Investigator at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Hamblin is an Associate Professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School and a member of the affiliated faculty of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Science and Technology. His research interests cover photodynamic therapy, photobiomodulation, and nanomedicine. He directs a laboratory of around a dozen post-doctoral fellows, visiting scientists and graduate students. He has published 344 peer-reviewed articles, over 150 conference proceedings, book chapters and International abstracts and holds 8 patents. Dr. Hamblin has an h-index of 75 and his work has been cited over 20,000 times. He is an Associate Editor for 11 journals, besides, he is on the editorial board of a further 20 journals and serves on NIH Study Sections. He has edited 11 SPIE proceedings volumes and seven other major textbooks on PDT and photomedicine. In 2011, Dr. Hamblin was honored by election as a Fellow of SPIE. He is a Visiting Professor at different universities in China, South Africa and Northern Ireland.

Athanassios Tsakris is currently Professor and Head of the Department of Microbiology at the Medical School, University of Athens, Greece. He graduated as an MD from the Medical School of University of Athens, Greece, and completed his training in Medical Microbiology at North Middlesex Hospital and the Central Public Health Laboratory, London. He received his PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is a Fellow in Medical Microbiology at the Royal College of Pathologists, London. His research interests include the development of diagnostic methods for detecting antimicrobial resistance mechanisms and infection control activities. Prof. Tsakris is an evaluator of grant applications in several international organizations and serves as editor or on the editorial boards in microbiology/infectious diseases scientific journals.

Mauricio S. Baptista is a professor of Biochemistry at the University of São Paulo (USP, Brazil). He earned Bachelor (1990) and Master (1992) degrees in Biochemistry from USP and holds a doctoral degree (1996) in Chemistry from Marquette University (USA). He did his post-doctoral training at UW-Madison (1997) and was a visiting professor (2006) at the Université Joseph Fourier (Grenoble-France). His main interests are photochemistry/photobiology, skin damage and protection, regulated mechanisms of cell death, where he published over 200 papers.

Prof. Soroush Sardari is a full professor of Pasteur Institute of Iran. He did Ph.D. from Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the University of Alberta in addition to obtaining Pharm.D from TUMS. He worked as an assistant professor at the University of Cape Breton, Sydney. From his work, he has registered 4 USPTO patents and 9 national patents, published more than 100 papers, 6 books and more than 100 abstracts in national and international congresses. He has worked as the co-editor of three scientific journals from 2006 to present and as the reviewer of more than 9 journals during 1993-present. Since 1992, he has supervised more than 50 Ph.D. and M.Sc. dissertations.

Dr. El Solh is a Professor of Medicine and Anesthesiology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the Director of Research at the VA Western New York Healthcare System. He holds MPH in Health Administration from the Medical College of Wisconsin. He has published more than 250 publications between peer reviewed original papers, abstracts, and book chapters. He holds three patents on screening and diagnosis of sleep disorders.

Sobhan Ghafourian is an Assistant Professor of Medical Microbiology in the Department of Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Ilam University OF Medical Sciences, Ilam, Iran. His previous experience was head of Health Technology Development Center, Ilam University of Medical sciences. He is recognised by his peers as an expert in his field with his appointments as internal and external examiner at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and had been invited as speaker at seminars and conferences. He is actively involved in research as evident by securing several research grants, having many postgraduate students and extensive publications. His research interests are in bacteriology particularly Persister cells, Toxin antitoxin systems and antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Dr. Aditya Gupta is a practicing dermatologist and medical director of Mediprobe Research in London, Ontario. In addition, Dr. Gupta is a professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto (Ontario, Canada), lecturing on topics such as mycology, fungal infections and antifungal treatments. He is also a visiting professor in the Department of Dermatology at Tel Aviv University and an adjunct professor in the Department of Dermatology at the University of Rome “G. Marconi”. Dr. Gupta has published over 600 articles with 15 original studies in mycology in the last 3 years.

Dr. Syed Sarim Imam earned his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Pharmacy, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India. Dr. Imam has more than 10 years of total experience in teaching and research, and is presently working as Associate Professor at Glocal School of Pharmacy, Glocal University, Saharanpur, India. His research interests include drug delivery, brain targeting, formulation optimization, and lipid based delivery systems. Dr. Imam has contributed 12 book chapters in different publishers, such as Elsevier, CRC and Springer. Furthermore, he has a list of more than 50 research/review manuscripts in journals of international repute.

Graduated from Mendeleev University, Moscow. PhD and DSc Theses awarded by MU-Sofia.Editor: METAL-BASED DRUGS; ASIAN CHEM LETT; INT J DRUG DISCOV; INT J CURR CHEM; REC PAT ANTI–CANCER DRUG DISCOV; J PHARMA & PHARM SCI.Member of Editorial Boards: ANTI-CANCER AGENTS MED CHEM; WORLD J VIROL; IND J PURE & APPL PHYS; THE OPEN CANCER JOURNAL; REC PAT ANTI-INF DRUG DISCOV; INFECT & DRUG RES; BRIT J MED MED RES; INT J CHEM; INT J ENVIR SCI; DATASET PAPERS CHEM; PEERTECHZ J MED CHEM RES. Published over 130 papers (citations>3000; IF>140; h-index: 27).

Dr. Vikas Kumar, is an Assistant Professor (Pharmacognosy) in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shalom Institute of Health and Allied Sciences, Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology & Sciences (SHUATS), Allahabad, India has been working on traditional medicine in drug discovery leading to the development of therapeutic leads from natural resources. His research work is highlighted on screening, evaluation, formulation and standardization of herbal drugs with their validation to ensure quality, efficacy and safety. He has made innovative, outstanding and original contributions both in research and education in the area of natural products.

Dr. Saeed Khan is currently a senior regulatory research scientist and head of the shelf life extension program of pharmaceutical drug products at FDA. He is also Adjunct Professor of Oncology and Radiology and Adjunct Director of Drug Discovery Center at Johns Hopkins Oncology at Johns Hopkins Medicine. He received his MS and Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Sciences from M.D Anderson Cancer Houston. Dr. Khan has been involved in 60 plus publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and 10 international patents on cancer drugs. He is a recipient of numerous awards such as Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute.

Prof. Lee is a director in the National Leading Research Laboratory and a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Myongji University. He has more than 25 years of experience of in research fields such as antimicrobials, multidrug resistance, and biochemistry and X-ray crystal structure of ESBLs extended-spectrum β-lactamases and carbapenemases as well as structure-based drug design, and stem cells regenerative medicine. He has authored more than 100 scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals, many of which were the first in the field of Infectious Diseases and Drug Resistance.

Dr. Manzin received his Medical Degree in 1983. He is specialist in Hygiene and Preventive Medicine, and in Microbiology. Since 2006, he is a Full Professor of Microbiology and Virology in the Medical School at the University of Cagliari, Italy. He is currently leading an active lab in the clinical microbiology and virology, study of pathogen-host interplay, use of molecular tools in diagnosis of infectious diseases, and study of the human virome and microbiome. He is the Director of Specialization School of Microbiology and Virology at the University of Cagliari. He has authored nearly 100 scientific manuscripts on various aspects of basic and clinical microbiology and infectious diseases.

Dr. Suprabhat Mukherjee is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Animal Science & Coordinator of Biochemistry, Kazi Nazrul University, India. He did his Ph.D. from Visva-Bharati University, India and having research experience at INSERM, Paris, France and NEHU, India. He has co-authored more than 40 research publications and 5 book chapters till date. For his research, he got several awards. Dr. Mukherjee’s research interest is immunobiology of inflammatory and infectious diseases as well as development of effective drugs.

Carole Ayoub Moubareck is a Pharmacist who specialized in microbiology. He didPhD from the Paris Descartes University then pursued a post-doctoral work at the Institut Pasteur of France. She was responsible for the National Reference Center of Antibiotic Resistance in France for several years and since 2014, she is an Associate Professor at Zayed University in Dubai. Her research interests are in controlling infectious diseases by monitoring the emergence and spread of resistant bacteria to antibiotics, characterizing the related resistance mechanisms and investigating potential new therapeutic options.

Dr. Utpal Nandi is currently working as Scientist in the PK-PD,Toxicology and Formulation Division of Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (CSIR), Jammu, India. His current research work is focused on preclinical pharmacokinetics of drug/drug-like molecules & phytotherapeutics for drug induced toxicities. He has published more than forty research papers in various reputed journals.

Prof. S.I. Ofoefule is a Professor of Pharmacy. He has nearly 23 years of experience as a Pharmacy Educator and Researcher, and 13 years as a Professor. Previously, Prof. Ofoefule served as Dean of Faculty at the University of Nigeria and University of Uyo, respectively. He is currently the Head of Department and Coordinator, Drug Delivery and Nanotechnology Research Unit at The University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He has authored more than 100 research publications, two Pharmacy books and one technical report. Prof. Ofoefule is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Uyo and the University Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

Dr. Rodriguez obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Chemistry from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (1990). Then, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institutes of Health (1992-1993). He was appointed as Assistant Professor (1997), and then Professor (2005) both in the Department of Organic Chemistry, Universidad de Buenos Aires. He has published more than 70 scientific publications and is a named inventor of 5 U.S. patents. His fields of interest are the design of antiparasitic and antiviral agents as well as total synthesis of compounds of pharmacological importance.

Dr. Nagendran Tharmalingam is a Microbiologist/ Medical laboratory scientist. He finished his Bachelors and Masters from the Department of Microbiology, Bharathidasan University, India. After working as a Microbiologist for a while, he went to South Korea to pursue his Doctoral studies from Yonsei University. Later, he moved to the U.S.A and worked as a Research Associate at the Rhode Island Hospital. He is actively involved in various anti-infective research projects and teaching research to graduate students. His research interests include novel anti-infective molecules, repurposing clinical molecules as anti-infective and its evaluation in vitro and in vivo against Helicobacter pylori and ESKAPE pathogens.

Dr Da-Yong LU did Ph.D and MS from the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2005 and 1986 respectively. He is working as an associated professor at Shanghai University, Shanghai, PR China. His interest is focused on the basic studies of cancer biology, pathology, treatment, origins of life, human suicide study, human viral infectious diseases, human metabolic diseases and other field of science disciplines. He is serving as an editorial member of several reputed international journals. He is the corresponding author of more than 100 original scientific articles in the international journals and three books published by UK, US and Germany-based publication companies.

Dr Faissal TARRASS, Md, PhD, is a private practice nephrologist, serving patients at the Center of Hemodialysis 2 Mars in Casablanca, Morocco. Dr. Tarass is internationally recognized in the Marquis Who's Who of the World. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of many peer-reviewed medical Journals, and he is an author of numerous articles, paper presentations and book chapters. His research interests are focused on environmental nephrology and sustainable issues in healthcare. Dr. Tarrass received numerous awards and recognition for his work. He received the award of the outstanding clinician by The Venus International Foundation in 2019.