Current Chemical Biology

Dr. D’Auria is the Director of the Institute of Food Science, CNR, Avellino, and an Associated Professor at INRS, Laval, Canada. He also heads the Laboratory of Protein Biophysics and Biosensor Development at ISA-CNR, Avellino, Italy. The main interests of Dr. D’Auria Lab are focused on the design and realization of advanced bio/sensors for safety and security. Dr. D’Auria has authotred more than 200 publications on international journals and several national and international patetnts .

Dr. Wen Zhang has been a full professor at the Second Military Medical University (Shanghai, China) since 2008. He has held a joint professorship with Tongji University (Shanghai, China) since 2013. Dr. Wen Zhang is currently the director of Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Marine Drugs. He also serves as the Vice Chairman of Marine Drug Division of Chinese Pharmaceutical Association. He has published more than 100 scientific articles and patents, focusing on the chemical and pharmacological investigation of marine natural products with antifungal, antitumoral, and immunomodulatory activities.

Pier Giorgio Cozzi (PG) is full professor of organic chemistry at the at the University of Bologna. He is the president of the Master degree in Chemistry. Among his scientific interests, the development of new, enantioselective catalytic reactions, the design of new chiral ligands, and the formation of quaternary stereocenters using new synthetic methodologies are the principal. Recently, he has focused his research on the growing area of asymmetric photoredox catalysis. Professor P. G. Cozzi has been a visiting professor in many Universities in Europe and abroad. He was the coordinator of the Fp7 project CATAFLU.OR and he has participate to other European projects. He recently received a JSPS fellowship for visiting Japan, and he was awarded in 2015 with the Piero Pino Gold Medal from Italian Chemical Society.

Prof. Ducki obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Chemistry from the University of Manchester UK. Currently Prof Ducki holds positions as a Professor in Organic and Medicinal Chemistry at the French Graduate School SIGMA Clermont and as the vice-president of the Foundation Analgesia Insitute. Among her previous positions are lecturer in Chemistry at the University of Salford UK, Research fellow at Arizona State University (AZ) and Emory University (GA) USA. She has published more than 50 scientific publications and is named as an inventor in over 10 patents.

Research activity in the field of protein structure, bioinformatics and computational biology applications, analysis of “omics” data. Author of more than 100 full articles in international journals and 5 patents and copyright. Teaching activity for italian universities, and other specialistic schools organized by research institutions, was in the field of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Protein structure, Proteomics, Bioinformatics. Member of the International Society of Computational Biology and of the BITS Bioinformatics Italian Society. Since April 2010, he is member of the BITS Steering Committee. Since September 2012, he is Secretary of BITS. Editors of special issues, proceedings of meetings, and member of Editorial boards of scientific journals, referee for many journals in biochemical area. Referees for Research Projects for national and international evaluations.

Dr. Gowda is a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State University College of Medicine, Hershey. He obtained PhD in Chemistry from the University of Mysore, India. He was an awardee of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship, Germany; a Research Associate Professor at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington DC; an Instructor at NYU School of Medicine, New York; a Lecturer of Chemistry at the University of Mysore. His research for the past 35 years has been on glycobiology, malaria immunity and pathogenesis, and placental malaria. Dr. Gowda has published 130 research papers. He has been an editorial member of Journal of Biological Chemistry and of Infection and Immunity.

Herbert Höpfl studied chemistry at the University of Munich. In 1997 he obtained the Ph.D. degree from the Chemistry Department of the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados del IPN (CINVESTAV), Mexico, in the field of Inorganic Chemistry. Since 1997 he is working as Professor at Morelos State University in Cuernavaca, Mexico. His research focuses on crystal engineering and macro- and supramolecular assemblies of boron and tin compounds. He has published more than 180 scientific publications and two U.S. patents.

Prof. Ivo Iavicoli obtained his degree in Medicine and his specialty in Occupational Medicine (both cum laude) at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome, Italy. He completed a Ph.D. in Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene at the University of Milan. At present he is Associate Professor of Occupational Medicine at the Department of Public Health of the University of Naples ‘Federico II’. He is also Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Health and Health Sciences of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, U.S.A. He is the author of more than 250 publications in national and international journals.

Irene Izzo received in 1994 a Magna Cum Laude degree in Chemistry from the University of Salerno where in the same year she began her PhD courses. She received her doctoral degree in Chemistry in 1998 from the University of Salerno. (Title of the thesis: "Synthesis of Biologically Active Marine Steroids and Cholestane Analogs. Thesis supervisor: Prof. Guido Sodano). In 1998 she received a post-doctoral fellowship, working at University "Louis Pasteur" of Strasbourg (France). Since March 2006 she is Associate professor at Department of Chemistry and Biology of the University of Salerno.

Paul Keller completed his BSc(Hons) and PhD at the University of New South Wales, Australia, before undertaking an Alexander von Humboldt funded post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Wuerzburg, Germany, working in collaboration with Gerhard Bringmann. Since 1994, he has worked at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and is currently Professor in Organic and Medicinal Chemistry. His interests lie in the drug design and development of new generation anti-infectives with a particular emphasis on anti-virals and multi-drug resistant anti-bacterials, new cascade chemistry of indigo and chiral ligand design for sterically hindered metal-catalysed reactions.

Reza Khodarahmi(Professor in Biochemistry) was born in Nahavand-Iran, 1974. He received his Bsc degree in general Biology from the Razi University-Kermanshah and then graduated in Biochemistry (Msc) from the Tarbiat Modarres University-Tehran, and finally received his PhD degree in 2005 from the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the University of Tehran for his studies on the effects of artificial chaperones on protein misfolding and aggregation. Since 2007, he has held a position in the school of Pharmaceutical Sciences (and Medical Biology Research Center), Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences. His research interests focus on the in vitro characterization of oxidative events accompanying amyloid aggregation, drug-protein interaction and enzyme inhibition, using both experimental and computational tools.

Professor Koide obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Tokyo, and a PhD in chemistry at the University of California, San Diego, under the guidance of Professor K. C. Nicolaou. He conducted post-doctoral research with Professor Gregory L. Verdine in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. He then began his independent career in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh. His current research interests include development of new synthetic methods, total synthesis and chemical biology of natural products, and development and applications of fluorescent chemosensors.

Dr Nikolaos Labrou received his BSc degree in Chemistry from the University of Patras, Greece (1987-1991) and his PhD in Enzyme Biotechnology from the Agricultural University of Athens (1992-1996). He has conducted postdoctoral research, as Marie Curie fellow, in Leeds UK (1996-1998) and then at Agricultural University of Athens (1998-2001). Dr Labrou started his career as Assistant Professor (2002) and he is currently full Professor with tenure and Director of the Enzyme Technology Lab at the Department of Biotechnology, Agricultural University of Athens. He has authored more than 115 peer-reviewed articles in leading international journals, 26 book chapters and he has edited two books. His research covers many areas of biotechnology including enzyme and protein engineering, immobilised enzymes, biosensors, drug design, protein downstream processing, microalgae technology as well as the characterization of therapeutic enzymes, proteins and other biomolecules.

Huimin Ma is a Professor of Chemistry at the Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Living Biosystems, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICCAS). He received his B. Sc. in 1983 from Shandong University and Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry in 1990 from ICCAS (supervisor, Prof. Shuquan Liang), followed by doing 2-year postdoctoral research at Wuhan University with Prof. Yun’e Zeng. He was granted a research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, working at Bremen University with Prof. Wolfram Thiemann in Germany (1996−1997). In 2005, he was granted the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars in China. He has contributed more than 150 journal articles as well as 20 invited book chapters and reviews, and is a member of the Editorial Board of several chemical and biological journals. His research interests focus on the design and synthesis of new spectroscopic probes and their analytical applications.

Dr. Anna Marabotti obtained her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in at the University of Turin. She worked as post-doc fellow in several Italian universities, public and private research institutions. Since october 2012 she is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biology “A. Zambelli” of the University of Salerno at Fisciano. Her main research interests are the studies of structure-dynamics-function relationships of proteins, protein-ligand interaction and allosteric regulations using a combination of experimental and bioinformatics techniques. She is co-author of more than 70 full papers and of about 100 short communication to congresses.

Enrica Migliaccio has many years of research experience in the fields of signal transduction, molecular biology and aging. She has expertise in cell biology, molecular biology and animal models. She graduated from the University of Naples, in Italy, and gained her postgraduate degrees from the Open University of London, UK. She worked in Pier Giuseppe Pelicci's group as Ph.D. student, then as postdoctoral scientist and now as a staff scientist. In 1992, she cloned the p66Shc, gene that is a master regulator of oxidative stress response in mammals, and has been working on p66Shc function and biology since then. Now, her research focuses on the characterization of pathway that involves both p53 tumor suppressor protein and p66Shc that is involved in cancer and aging mechanisms. She carried out educational activity at the University of the Studies of Siena (Italy), as teacher in the course: “Mechanisms of aging”.

Luis S. Monteiro obtained his BsC in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1988 by the University of Porto (Portugal). He was awarded his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Minho (Portugal) in 1994 in the area of electrochemical cleavage of amine protecting groups, under the supervision of Professor Hernâni L.S. Maia and in collaboration with the research group of Professor Ulf Ragnarsson at the University of Uppsala (Sweden). He is at present associate professor at the University of Minho where he has been interested in the development of methods for synthesis and application of non-proteinogenic amino acids, namely, dehydroamino acids, β,β- disubstituted amino acids, N-akylamino acids and Cα,α-dialkylglicines.

Dr. Muñoz-Torrero holds a PhD in Pharmacy (Medicinal Chemistry) from the University of Barcelona. Currently Dr. Muñoz-Torrero is Associate Professor of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry and Vice-Dean of Research at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences of the University of Barcelona. He has authored more than 80 papers, 9 patents, and 3 book chapters, and guest-edited 5 special issues (Current Pharmaceutical Design, Current Medicinal Chemistry and Molecules) on anti-Alzheimer and multitarget drugs and 5 E-books on recent advances in pharmaceutical sciences. His research focuses on the design and synthesis of novel drug candidates against Alzheimer’s disease, malaria, and trypanosomiases.

Brief Biography: Kazuo Nagasawa obtained his Ph.D. in 1993 from Waseda University. In 1993, he joined RIKEN (The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research) as a researcher under Professor Tadashi Nakata. From 1997 to 1999, he worked in Kishi’s group at Harvard University. He moved to the University of Tokyo (IMCB) in 2001, and to the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology in 2004 as an associate professor. In 2009, he was appointed to his current position as a professor. He has received the TORAY Award for Synthetic Organic Chemistry Japan (1999) and Pharmaceutical Society of Japan Award for Young Scientists (2003).

Biography: Steve is currently Professor of Proteomics at University College Dublin, Ireland (since 2003). He is a chemist and biochemist by training (BSc Imperial College London and PhD University of Cambridge). Steve has given over 150 invited presentations at international events, published over 75 scientific papers as well as edited and contributed to several books. He is on the editorial board of several journals including in a more senior capacity for 'Proteomics' and 'Journal of Proteomics’ and regularly reviews manuscripts and grants for a number of international organisations. Steve is the lead organizer of 16th HUPO World Congress which willl be held in Dublin in September 2017.

Dr. Pittalà is an Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Department of Drug Sciences at the University of Catania (Italy). She attained her MSc in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Technologies, and subsequently completed her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Catania. Upon completion of these programs, Dr. Pittalà moved to Milan (Italy) to join Pharmacia Corporation as a research scientist. She worked as member of Combinatorial Chemistry Group (R&D) and contributed to the discovery and identification of danusertib being co-inventor of bicyclopyrazoles chemical class. Subsequently, she returned to the University of Catania as Assistant Professor where she currently conducts teaching and research activities. Dr. Pittalà is a highly motivated drug discovery scientist and research project leader with more than fifteen years’ experience and proven leadership capability, interpersonal skill, independence and efficiency in achieving given objectives. Major area of interest: heme oxygenase-1 inhibitors and inducers, antitumor, GPCR serotonergic and adrenergic ligands. Chemical modification of natural products to enhance activity and reduce side effects/toxicity. During this time, her research resulted in over 50 patents and peer-reviewed papers in prestigious journals and similar number of abstracts and presentations in international congresses. She is also serving as an editorial board member of 3 other journals and reviewer of several international journals.

Claudio Santi received the PhD in Chemical Sciences from the University of Perugia under the supervision of Prof. Marcello Tiecco. Currently he is professor of Organic Chemistry and teaches the courses of Spectroscopy for Organic Chemistry and Organic Chemistry of Natural Compounds. He leads the group of Catalysis and Organic Green Chemistry in the department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and is worldwide recognized expert n organoselenium chemistry. His research interest range from the application of selenium reagents in green chemistry to the development of new orgaselenium containing drugs. He is author of more than 130 publications including review articles and book chapters.

Marvin A Soriano-Ursúa has completed his PhD from Escuela Superior de Medicina del Instituto Politénico Nacional, México. He is a Member of the National System of Researchers, and he is Head of the Physiology Laboratory. He has focused on the rational drug design having boron-containing compounds as main moiety, as well as, the different effects of these compounds on human physiology, particularly on G-Protein coupled receptors. He has authored more than 50 publications, and he has been serving as an Editorial Board Member and Reviewer of repute scientific journals.

Pr. V. Sorrenti is Associated Professor of Biochemistry in University of Catania where she teaches Biochemitry, Nutritional Biochemistry, Biology. During her career Pr. Sorrenti obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Biology and Medical Biochemistry. Research fields of Pr. V. Sorrenti are: Oxygen and nitric oxide toxicity and cellular defences in various pathophysiological conditions; Pathway ADMA/DDAH/NOS in various pathophysiological conditions; Evaluation of activity of natural drugs and new synthetic compounds. Pr. V.Sorrenti has published 80 scientific publications, co-authored 2 books (“Aspetti molecolari dell’apoptosi e ruolo fisiopatologico” and “Flessibilmente: un modello sistemico di approccio al tema della flessibilità”: Flessibilità e biologia-Organismi viventi come esseri flessibili”) and co-edited “Recent Research Developments in Chemistry and Biology of Nitric Oxide-

Derek S. Tan received his BS in Chemistry from Stanford in 1995, with Prof. Dale G. Drueckhammer, and his PhD in Chemistry from Harvard in 2000, with Prof. Stuart L. Schreiber. After postdoctoral training with Prof. Samuel J. Danishefsky at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, he began his independent career at MSK in 2002. He is currently a tenured Member and Chairman of the Chemical Biology Program at MSK, a Tri-Institutional Professor at Rockefeller University and Weill Cornell Medicine, and Director of the Tri-Institutional PhD Program in Chemical Biology. His research focuses on diversity-oriented synthesis and rational drug design.

Dr. Teplow is a Professor of Neurology at UCLA. Dr. Teplow received undergraduate training at UC Berkeley; a Ph.D. from the University of Washington; and was a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech. Before coming to UCLA, Dr. Teplow was a faculty member in the Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Teplow was a founding editor of the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience, Current Chemical Biology, and currently is Associate Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Neurodegenerative Disease. Dr. Teplow is a member of numerous national and international scientific advisory boards.

Emmanuel A. Theodorakis received his B.Sc. Degree in Chemistry from the University of Athens, Greece, and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. Degree in Organic Chemistry from Paris XI University, France. His M.Sc. studies were performed at the Institute of Chemistry of Natural Products (ICSN-CNRS) under the direction of Professor H.-P. Husson, while his Ph.D. studies were performed at Texas A&M University under the direction of Sir Derek H. R. Barton. Following a postdoctoral appointment at TSRI with Professor K. C. Nicolaou, in 1995 he joined the faculty at UCSD where he is currently a Professor and the T.G. Traylor Scholar at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. His research focuses on the synthesis and biological studies of natural products and development of small molecules as probes in imaging and sensing.

Valentin Wittmann obtained a PhD from the Technical University of Munich (Germany). Subsequently, he carried out postdoctoral research at the Goethe-University of Frankfurt (Germany) and at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California (USA). In 1997 he returned to Frankfurt to start independent research. Since 2003 he is professor of organic/bioorganic chemistry at the University of Konstanz (Germany). From 2006 until 2011 he was Dean of Studies and since 2016 he is head of the Department of Chemistry. His main research area is the chemical biology of carbohydrates including metabolic glycoengineering, investigation of multivalent carbohydrate-protein interactions, and RNA-targeting antibiotics.