Current Medicinal Chemistry

Sir John Bertrand Gurdon, FRS, FMedSci, MAE (born on 2^nd October, 1933), is an English developmental biologist and is best known for his pioneering research in nuclear transplantation and cloning. Sir Gurdon was made a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1971, and was knighted in 1995. In 2004, the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Institute for Cell Biology and Cancer was renamed in his honour as The Gurdon Institute. In 2005, he was elected as an Honorary Member of the American Association of Anatomists. Sir Gurdon was awarded the 2009 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research award, and, in 2014, delivered the Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians. In 2012, Sir Gurdon was awarded, jointly with Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for, “the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.” His Nobel Lecture was called, “The Egg and the Nucleus: A Battle for Supremacy.”

Jean-Marie Pierre LEHN is Professor at the University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study (USIAS), Chair of Chemistry of Complex Systems, Honorary Professor at the Collège de France, Paris and Emeritus Professor at the University of Strasbourg. He served as the Director of ISIS (Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires), Strasbourg, 1997-2004, and the Director of the Laboratoire de Chimie Supramoléculaire, ISIS, Université de Strasbourg. He completed Bachelor of Sciences from the University of Strasbourg in 1960, Ph.D from the University of Strasbourg in 1963 and completed Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University in 1964. He remained the Professor of Chemistry at the University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg during 1970-1979, Professor at Collège de France, Paris, Chair of Chimie des Interactions Moléculaires from 1979-2010 and a Visiting Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, 1972 (Spring), 1974 (Spring), and on a part time basis until 1980. He won a number of awards, such as Bronze Medal of the CNRS, 1963; Adrian Prize of the Société Chimique de France, 1968; Silver Medal of the CNRS, 1972 and Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1987. He is the Honorary Member of the Académie des Sciences Inscriptions et Belles Lettres de Toulouse, 2005, Charter Fellow, National Academy of Inventors, 2012, Hong Kong Academy of Science, 2014, President of the Academia Bibliotheca Alexandrinae, 2004. He has 966 publications to his credit. Aventis (until merger with Sanofi). He was Science Advisor of the Reliance Innovation Council, Mumbai, Sanofi-Aventis (2010-2011) and Novartis Venture Fund.

Dr. Mariam Matar is a visionary and a change-maker in the field of health-care and the emerging sciences of genetics and molecular biology.
Multi-award winning International Leader, and Mentor, she is recently recognised as 'Pioneering Arab Woman in healthcare innovation 2019' by 21st Pioneer Leadership Award in Healthcare, Kuwait.
She is leading the scientific and healthcare community of the Arab region through a fundamental progressive shift in thinking about genetics and preparing the stakeholders to embrace the science of genetics, technology and tools available for empowering the Arab nations.
As the Founder and Chairperson of UAE Genetic Diseases Association, her grass root community research on the most common genetic disorders in UAE and recommendations have resulted in five legislations for pre-marital screening, newborn screening, preventive genetic testing in the UAE. Since then she has founded 14 nonprofit organisations and mentored thousands of community workers and volunteers.
Dr. Matar is instrumental in leading a core team of researchers and voluntary genetics and molecular biology scientists who are responsible for gene mapping in the United Arab Emirates. Her work has placed the UAE on the global map of genetic research and innovation. A global leader, she works with leading research and academic centers as an advisor and is on the panel of the Global Commission to End the Diagnostic Odyssey for Children with a Rare Disease.
Her strategic work in Government is still used as the foundation of several of the UAE's national policies.
Dr. Matar was the first woman Director General in Dubai Government, heading the Community Development Authority, UAE which undertakes to formulate social policies and deliver social services that are in line with and contribute to the achievement of the social development objectives of Dubai Strategic Plan 2007 – 2015, launched by H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum on February 3rd, 2007. In 2005, Dr. Matar was the leader of the executive team that set up social development strategies for the Dubai Strategic Plan.
She is also the first Emirati woman undersecretary in the Dubai Government with the Minister of Health.
A believer in serving through leadership, she is on a personal mission to inspire young leaders, especially women leaders to reach their fullest potential.
Recognized as the most powerful scientist in the UAE since 2014, she is also recognized among the top 20 Arab scientists with the biggest contribution to humanity by the British Scientific Community in 2016. She has received over 50 global and regional awards for her outstanding achievements.

Dr. Richard N. Zare is the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Natural Science at Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. He is a graduate of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA where he received his B.A. degree in Chemistry and Physics (in 1961), and his Ph.D. degree in chemical physics (in 1964). In 1969, he was appointed to a full professorship in the Chemistry Department at Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, becoming the Higgins Professor of Natural Science in 1975. Dr. Zare is renowned for his research in the area of laser chemistry, resulting in a greater understanding of chemical reactions at the molecular level. He has authored / co-authored over 900 publications and more than 50 patents, and has published four books.

Prof. Simone Carradori is an associate professor at the Department of Pharmacy of "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara (Italy). Prof. Carradori is mainly focused on the characterization and synthesis of natural/synthetic derivatives with potential biological activity, and has written a number of papers, book chapters, and is involved in a European patent and participated in numerous conferences. Prof. Carradori is the Editor-in-chief of "Anti-Cancer Agents in Medicinal Chemistry", co-editor of "Current Medicinal Chemistry", and Co-editor-in-chief of "Anti-Inflammatory and Anti-Allergy Agents in Medicinal Chemistry" (Bentham Science Publishers).

William J. Hoekstra, Ph.D. serves as Vice President of Medicinal Chemistry at Viamet Pharmaceuticals Inc., Durham, NC, USA. He is the inventor of the Phase 2B antifungal oteseconazole and the Phase 2 anticancer agent seviteronel. Prior to working with Viamet, Dr. Hoekstra held the position of Associate Director in Discovery Medicinal Chemistry at GlaxoSmithKline where he coordinated the introduction of a group of nuclear receptor modulator programs into the portfolio. From 1991 to 2000, he directed the discovery and lead optimization of NCEs such as the Phase 2B antithrombotic elarofiban in Johnson & Johnson’s Department of Drug Discovery. He has co-authored over 100 publications, holds 40 U.S. patents, and has presented several invited lectures.

Bernard Pirotte is a pharmacist by education (Université de Liège, Belgium, 1981). He received the Ph.D. degree in 1989 (Ph.D. thesis in medicinal chemistry) and the Agrégation de l'Enseignement Supérieur degree in 2001 from the same university. He worked as an F.N.R.S. researcher between 1990 and 2002 and became a Professor at the University of Liège in 2002 (currently, Full Professor in Medicinal Chemistry). His main fields of interest are the design and synthesis of new ion channel modulators, positive allosteric modulators of ionotropic glutamate receptors, anticancer drugs, innovative approaches in the identification of new drug targets (metabolomics, GPCR deorphanization).

Massimiliano Peana is assistant professor at the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy, University of Sassari, Sardinia, Italy, where he teaches Inorganic and General Chemistry, Environmental Chemistry and Sciences Applied to Cultural Heritage. His current research interests are focused on metal interactions with biological targets and molecular mechanisms of metal toxicity, carcinogenesis, neurodegeneration, chelating agents for toxic metals and role of microelements in health and diseases.

Dr. Antonio Scilimati is the Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Pharmacy – Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Bari, Italy. He remained a Research Fellow of the University of Bari and for one year at School of Pharmacy of the University of Wisconsin (Madison - USA) during 1984-1994. He was a member of Italian Cluster Health (APRE) in 2020), he was the Scientific Director of Project POR (financially supported by Puglia Region) for the development of PET radiotracers for prostate cancer diagnosis during 2010-2012, and a Member of Multicentre Italian Trials in Ovarian Cancer(MITO). He got a Degree in Chemistry cum laude in 1982. He was a Research Associate at the School of Pharmacy (University of Wisconsin - Madison) in 1988, Visiting Professor c/o la Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia PA in 2017. He has 104 scientific publications and 20 patents to his credit.

PROF. EDUARDO SOBARZO-SÁNCHEZ is a Full professor and researcher at the University of Chile (CHILE) and University of Santiago de Compostela (USC, SPAIN), wherein he continues as associate researcher in the Department of Organic Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy (USC) in the field of Natural Products-Medicinal Chemistry and Phytochemistry. His two main research lines can be described; 1) Synthesis of compounds from natural sources or synthetic ways with pharmacological activity (neuro-degenerative dysfunctions and mood disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases and depression-anxiety, respectively), and; 2) Synthesis of supramolecular system derived from natural/synthetic polymers for the transport and controlled release of drugs.

Dr. Yuan received his M.D. in 1984 from Jilin Medical College, Msc in Pathology in 1991 from Dalian Medical University in China, and Ph.D. of internal medicine in 1997 from Linköping University, Sweden. In 2006, he was appointed as an associate professor in experimental pathology by the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Linköping University. Between 2011-2017, he completed internal medicine residency training in Sweden and since 2017, he has worked as a specialist physician and adjunct senior lecturer in occupational and environmental medicine at Linköping University, Sweden. From 2019, he has been the subject representative in Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Linköping University. He has published more than 70 scientific publications in SCI and 76 abstracts in conferences, cited 3210 times with h-index 34 and i10-index 52 in Google Scholar. He has received regional and national foundations (more than 9 475 000 SKr) to support his work in atherosclerosis, cell death and cancer, including the Swedish Medical Research Council, Swedish Research Council, Heart Lung Foundation.

Dr. Wolf-Rainer Abraham is the head of Chemical Microbiology at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig, Germany. He holds a Ph. D. in chemistry and has 40 years of experience in the discovery of bioactive natural products from microorganisms and plants. His focus is currently on multi-species biofilms and immune cells where he studies the impact of bioactive compounds on carbon flux in the cell using 13C-labeled compounds over time by isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS). He published his results in more than 230 peer-reviewed articles and 12 patents.

Pier Giovanni Baraldi became a Full Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in 1987 at Bologna University and in 1992, he had moved to Ferrara University where he is now a Full Professor of Medicinal Chemistry. He has published more than 400 scientific papers including about 50 patents. He has participated in more than 90 Medicinal Chemistry meetings as a plenary speaker. His research interests have been focused on the design and synthesis of minor groove alkylating agents, combretastatin analogs, ligands for Adenosine Receptors, Cannabinoid Receptors, and Transient Receptor Potential channel modulators. He has several scientific collaborations with national and international pharmaceutical companies.

Prof. Marcus Tullius Scotti studied Chemical Engineering at Universidade de São Paulo (USP - São Paulo University) and finished his degree in 1999. He further started to study specialization in Industrial Administration and in 2003 he completed his post-graduation in Organic Chemistry. He obtained a Master degree in 2005 and PhD in 2008. He started working as Professor of Organic Chemistry at Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brazil. He is presently serving as an Associate Professor of the Chemistry Department of the Universidade Federal da Paraíba. Prof. Marcus research interests are in the area of chemistry of the natural products, acting on the following subjects: Databases, Virtual Screening, QSAR, and chemotaxonomy using cheminformatics methods. Published 142 papers, 17 chapters book and 157 abstracts in conferences.

Prof. Donatella Marazziti received her degree in medicine and surgery from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy. Besides psychiatry, she has also specialized in clinical biochemistry. She is affiliated as a professor of psychiatry and director of the Laboratory of Psychopharmacology at University of Pisa. Dr. Marazziti is a member of the WPA section for OCD, and a member of the International Council for OCD etc. She is on the editorial board of World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, Current Medicinal Chemistry, Life and Annals of Psychiatry. Dr. Marazziti also serves as reviewer of projects of different European research agencies. Her research interests are focused on biological markers in psychiatric and normal conditions, emotions, attachment, psychopharmacology and clinical psychiatry. She has authored many papers mainly in international journals, book chapters, a few books, two essays and one novel.

Prof. Anna Artese received the bachelor degree in Pharmacy in 2004 from University "Magna Græcia" of Catanzaro. In 2005, she specialized in Software Development and in 2008 she received her PhD in Medical Microbiology and Immunology from University of Rome "Tor Vergata". Currently, she is Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University "Magna Græcia" of Catanzaro. Prof. Artese serves as reviewer and guest editor for several scientific journals in the field of drug design and medicinal chemistry. She has published 76 articles in SCI-indexed journals related to medicinal chemistry. Her scientific expertise is related to the application of new computational algorithms to analyze the drug receptor intermolecular interactions and to design anticancer, antiviral and analgesic agents.

Stefano Bruno graduated in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and technology cum laude in 1998 from the University of Parma. He obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemical Sciences from the University of Torino. He was a research fellow at Oxford University from 2001 to 2004. He became a Researcher at the University of Parma in 2004 and Associate Professor in 2015. He has taken part in projects funded by the Italian Ministry for Research (MIUR), by the National Antarctic Research Program, by the US National Institute of Health and by the European Union.

Dr. Giovanni Di Bonaventura received a Biology Degree from University of Bologna. He Specialized in Clinical Microbiology and Virology from University TorVergata, Rome, Italy. He received his PhD in Clinical Microbiology from G. D’Annunzio University of Chieti. Currently he is an Associate Professor of Clinical Microbiology at G. D’Annunzio University of Chieti. He is an Ad-hoc reviewer and guest editor for several scientific journals in the field of clinical and applied microbiology. Dr. Giovanni is also a member of several national and international scientific societies. Scientific research mainly focused on the characterization of biofilms formed by bacterial pathogens in cystic fibrosis patients, and the evaluation of natural and synthetic compounds with antibacterial activity.

Dr. Buehler is a pharmacologist and toxicologist in the Department of Pathology, University of Maryland School of Medicine. He has more than 15 years of experience as a regulatory researcher in the US FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. An important aspect of Dr. Buehler’s work is to identify ways to slow, reverse or prevent the effects of intra- and extravascular hemolysis induced pathobiology using plasma and recombinant constructs of haptoglobin, hemopexin and transferrin as well as identifying methods to upregulate these proteins in states of acute and chronic depletion.

Dr. Hui Cao is currently a researcher at the University of Vigo, Spain. She received her PhD in Analytical Chemistry from the Central South University, China in 2015, during the PhD period, Dr. Cao spent two years studying at the University of Würzburg, Germany. Following two years post-doc at the University of Macau. Dr. Cao has extensive experience in nutritional and phytochemical composition. Dr. Cao has published a number of peer-reviewed journals including Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Biotechnology Advances, Trends in Food Science & Technology, Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, Food Chemistry, which were cited over 4000 times with h-Index 38. Dr. Cao also works as the committee member to organize ISPMF2015, 2-ISPMF (2017), 3-ISPMF (2018), 4-ISPMF (2020) and 5-ISPMF (2021).

Rafael Coveñas Rodríguez is an associate professor at the University of Salamanca (Spain). His research is performed at the Institute of Neurosciences of Castilla and León (INCYL) and involved the peptides in cancer. He studied the involvement of the substance P/neurokinin-1 receptor system in the development of tumors and how neurokinin-1 receptor antagonists exert an antitumor activity. He has published more than 230 articles in international journals and written 38 book chapters and 4 books. He serves as an editorial board member for scientific journals, such as Cancers, Receptors, and Anatomia, and the guest editor and referee of more than 30 journals.

M. Cristina Caroleo received her Medical Doctor ́s degree in 1986 and Medical Specialization in Pharmacology in 1990. She received a PhD Degree in Neuroimmunopharmacology from the University of Rome Tor Vergata – Italy in 1995. Since 1994, she has been an Assistant Professor at the University of Calabria-Italy. From 1998 – 2004, she was P.I. at the Nobel Prize Rita Levi Montalcini Laboratory- Institute of Neurobiology and Molecular Medicine -CNR -Rome. Since 2010, she has been the Director of the Laboratory of Growth Factors and Nutrients-Food Chemistry at UNICAL-Italy. She has published more than 90 papers in international scientific journals, reviews and chapters of books.

Prof/Dr Cheorl-Ho Kim received his MS and PhD from The University of Tokyo during the period of 1985-1990. Since 2006, he is a professor and chair of Department of Biological Sciences, College of Science, Sungkyunkwan University and Samsung Advanced Institute of Health Science and Technology (SAIHST), Korea. He has successfully completed his Administrative responsibilities as Genome Program Head, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology in 1990-1996 and Chairman, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Oriental Medicine, Dongguk University during 1996-2006. His research included the molecular biology of gene expression, ER-Golgi glycosyltransferases, oncogenesis, cancer metastasis and angiogenesis. He has authored 368 research articles/books with H-index 66. He is a member of International Scientific Advisory Board Member, International Symposium for Glycosyltransferases (GlycoT 2006), IUBMB symposium, Tsukuba and International Symposium for Glycosyltransferases (GlycoT 2008), Emory University, GA, USA, 2010 Tokai University GlycoResearch Center and 2015 Visiting Professor of The Ohio State University.

Joan-Lluis Vives-Corrons is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Barcelona. He is currently leading the Red Cell Pathology and Haematopoietic Disorders Research Group at the Institute for Leukaemia Research Josep Carreras (IJC) of Barcelona. His current research topic is the rheological characterisation of red blood cells (RBC) in rare anaemias by Density Gradient Ektacytometry (LoRRca) combined with microfluidics technology and their final genetic diagnosis using New Generation Sequencing (NGS). He is currently the coordinator of the European Network for Rare and Congenital Anaemias (ENERCA) and of the Scientific Board of Rare Anemias International Network.

Dr. Roberta Fusco completed the bachelor degree in chemistry and pharmaceutical technologies from the University of Naples Federico II in 2014. Dr. Roberta Fusco completed PhD in Applied Biology and Experimental Medicine in the year 2019 by University of Messina. Additionally, she worked at Yale University School of Medicine. She worked as a researcher for studies on preclinical pharmacology activities (in vitro primary cultures and in vivo experimental models), for the Epitech Group, biological pharmacology company. Now she is a Researcher at the University of Messina. She has published more than 70 articles in reputed journals about biochemistry, oxidative stress and pharmacology. Dr. Roberta Fusco has knowledge about animal research, biochemical and molecular biology and immunohistochemical analysis.

Mafalda Laranjo is an investigator at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra. She is associated with the Coimbra Institute for Clinical and Biomedical Research (iCBR)/Centre for Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology (CIBB). Her main scientific interest is Photodynamic therapy (PDT) applied to cancer treatment. In this field, she has developed and patented new compounds and has demonstrated its selective cytotoxicity in several cancer types, both in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, Dr. Laranjo has been working in multidisciplinary teams focusing on oncology, dentistry, and other medical specialties.

Dr. Giuseppe Lanza is a Senior Academic Researcher and Assistant Professor at the University of Catania, Italy. After graduation with honors in Medicine, he trained at the School of Neurology and got an international PhD. As Clinical Research Fellow, he further trained in Clinical Neurophysiology at Newcastle University, UK. He obtained the Master of Science in Clinical Research and the National Scientific Qualification as a Full Professor. From 2013 to 2018 he worked as a Consultant Neurologist at Oasi Research Institute–IRCCS in Troina, Italy, a WHO Collaborating Center. He authored more than 100 scientific publications and serves as Editor and Reviewer of several Journals.

Professor Huanxiang Liu received her PhD degree from Lanzhou University in 2005. She is a professor of medicinal chemistry at Lanzhou University. Her research interests mainly include the misfolding and aggregation mechanism of amyloid-related proteins, drug resistance mechanism, structure-based drug design, etc. She has published more than 180 SCI papers in the relevant fields.

Dr. Giovanni Lentini studied Medicinal Chemistry and Technologies at the University of Bari where he graduated with maximum vote and honour. During his PhD, he was a visiting scientist at the Neurochemistry Centre of the Scientific National Research Centre, Strasbourg. There he got his Diploma in Advanced Studies in Pharmacology/ Medicinal Chemistry. He got his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Italy. He was appointed as a Researcher and then became an Associate Professor at the University of Bari. His research work is focused on chiral drugs and relevant results are reported in 106 scientific papers of ISI journals.

Dr. Yu Ligen is a Manager (Bibliometrics Analysis) in TRACS Office at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He obtained his Ph.D. in Materials Engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, China in 1996. He worked as an Associate Professor at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and then as a Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University till 2012. His research is focused on Bibliometrics Analysis, Scientometrics, Integrated Digestive-Immune System, Microbiology, Nutrition and health, Luigi Cornaro Diet, Starvation-Induced Autophagy, Spark plasma sintering, High energy laser surface modification, Powder metallurgy, Surface coating technology, Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, and X-ray diffraction.

Dr. Mozzarelli is a Full Professor in Biochemistry, University of Parma, Parma and the Vice Director of the Interdepartmental Center for Food Safety, Innovation and Technology (SITEIA.PARMA), Parma Technopole. He is serving as a Coordinator of the Protein Group of the Italian Biochemical Society. He has served more than forty years in the field of Protein Sciences. His investigations are aimed at understanding of the structure-dynamics-function-regulation relationships for heme-containing proteins and coenzyme-containing enzymes, strategies for protein encapsulation, complementary experimental and computational approaches for drug discovery, development of haemoglobin-based blood substitutes, and application of proteomics to food characterization. He has authored more than 180 papers and three patents, with an H-index of 37.

Dr. Michael Spartalis is an Attending Cardiologist, Certified Electrophysiology Specialist, and Certified Cardiac Device Specialist. Currently, he is an Academic Scholar at the 3rd Department of Cardiology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Clinical Scholar at Harvard Medical School, and an expert on medical devices at the European Commission. His work focuses on cardiac electrophysiology, device therapy, and sudden cardiac death, and encompasses a wide array of studies related to diabetes, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, cardiac resynchronization therapy, rhythm disturbances, and technology innovations including new disruptive wearable technologies improving healthcare delivery.

Dr. Zhongmin Tang received Ph.D. in Materials Physics and Chemistry from Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2019). He held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) from August 2019 to July 2021, and currently holds a Research Associate position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has so far published >40 peer-reviewed papers in prestigious journals such as Nature Reviews Materials, Chemical Reviews, PNAS, Nature communications, Advanced Materials, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Matter, Chem, Chemical Society Review, Nano Today, Advanced Science, Nano Letters, Materials Horizons etc.

Dr. Andrés Trostchansky obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay in 2007. Since 2010 he has been an Associate Professor at the Department of Biochemistry at the Facultad de Medicina. He is Co-PI of the Laboratory of Oxidative Lipid Biochemistry and a member of the Centro de Investigaciones Biomedicas (CEINBIO). Dr. Trostchanksy’s main research is focused in lipid metabolism, lipidomics studies in health and disease, nitro-fatty acids and their biological roles in arachidonic acid metabolism (COX and LOX) and reactive oxygen species (NOX and PDI). He served as a mentor for Ph.D. students in Uruguay and Brazil. He has authored/co-authored more than 50 manuscripts and book chapters on a variety of subject matters. He is among the editorial board of Frontiers of Experimental Pharmacology and Drug Discovery, Current Drug Target, and also a Section Editor of Current Medicinal Chemistry.

Dr. Giovanni Tarantino, MD, was Born in Avellino (Italy) on September 23, 1946. He received his degree from the Medical School of Naples in 1970. He is a specialist in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases. He served as a Past Chief of the outpatients clinic of the Department of Medicine for liver diseases at the Medical School of Federico II University, Naples, Past Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine and currently, he is affiliated to the Department of Clinical Medicine of Federico II University as expert in the field of Hepatology and performs senior investigation in the area of NAFLD.

Dr. Bin He is currently a professor of medicinal chemistry at Zhengzhou University (China). His research interests are mainly focused on new drug discovery. To date, he has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and co-edited two book chapters for Elsevier and Springer Nature. He currently serves as the section editor for Current Med Chem, associate editor for Front Drug Discov, review editor of Front Chem, editorial board member of Acta Pharm Sin B, Chin Chem Lett, Chin J Nat Med and Pharm Front and managing guest editor of Eur J Med Chem, Pharmacol Res, Curr Topic Med Chem and Chem Biol & Drug Des.

Professor Mustafa Yilmaz (Professor of Organic Chemistry) is a head of nanotechnology department, University of Selcuk, Turkey. His principal areas of expertise are synthesis of supramolecules, ion transport, catalyst, biocatalyst and the use of supramolecules in anticancer studies. He has published more than 250 articles in international journals and written several books and book chapters on different areas of chemistry. Dr. Yilmaz has been serving as an editorial board member of some reputed journals and is also involved in peer review activities. He had participated in more than 50 projects and carried out 6 international projects. He serves as an editorial board member, Referee and Reviewer of many scientific international journals.

Dr. Andrey A. Zamyatnin Jr. is currently a Professor, Head of the Institute of Molecular Medicine in Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, Moscow Russia. He earned his PhD in Virology and later DSc in Virology and Molecular Biology in Lomonosov Moscow State University. His current research interests are molecular markers, molecular targets, development of immunotherapy and enzymatic therapy approaches. Additionally, his research interests include programmed cell death, RNAi, virus-host interactions. His scientific publications include more than 120 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Zamyatnin acts as an expert in several scientific funds.

Prof. Rosa Amoroso completed her Master’s Degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology (CTF) at the University of Bologna, Italy, in 1989. She received her Ph.D. at the Department of Chemistry in Bologna, carrying out a study on asymmetric synthesis of amino acids. In 1994, she was appointed as a Research Associate and since 2001 she is an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Department of Pharmacy of the University G. d’Annunzio, Chieti, Italy. Prof. Amoroso has consolidated experience in the synthesis of molecules of pharmaceutical interest, with knowledge of the various synthetic and analytical approaches aimed at obtaining high purity products. Her main research interests are inhibitors of Nitric Oxide Synthases and modulators of the PPARs receptors.

Dr. Firoz Anwar did his Bachelors of Pharmacy from Luqman College of Pharmacy, Gulbarga, Karnataka, India in 1996. He then completed his Ph.D. in Pharmacy from Jadavpur University, India in 2002. Since 2015, he has been serving as a Professor at the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah.

Prof. Bimal Krishna Banik is a Professor at the Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Prof. Banik was the First President's Endowed Professor at the University of Texas and Vice President of Research & Education Development of the Community Health System of Texas. Prof. Banik was awarded $7.25 million in grants from the USA NIH and USA NCI. Prof. Banik has published many papers and mentored numerous students and postdoctoral/research scientists. Prof. Banik received more than two dozens of national and international awards on teaching, mentoring, advising, public service and research.

Dr. Janina Baranowska-Kortylewicz obtained her degree in M.Sc from Politechnika Wrocławska in Poland, and her doctorate from the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky. She continued her postgraduate studies first at the Albert B. Chandler Medical Center and then at Harvard Medical School. She is currently a Research Professor at the College of Pharmacy, University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. Her research activities are focused on cancer-targeted theranostics. She holds several U.S. and international patents, serves as a member of the editorial boards of various scientific journals, and is a member of a number of national and international scientific organizations.

Prof. Gildas Bertho, Ph.D. works inside an interdisciplinary environment of research at Université Paris Cité, France. As the CEO of MetaboParis-Santé, Prof. Bertho is working to promote NMR in human health projects for his transfer to a clinical environment. Since 2012, he has been supervising studies with hospitals to evidence the application of NMR-based metabolomics in clinical biology. He identified biomarkers of chronic kidney disease (CKD), explained the recurrence of acute porphyria by the presence of a key compound, and highlighted metabolite profiles for different phenotypes in endometriosis and adenomyosis.

A Graduate Research Professor Emeritus (active) at the University of Florida, Dr. Bodor has published more than 520 research articles and holds over 250 patents. The soft steroid Loteprednol Etabonate, designed by Dr. Bodor based on his retrometabolic concepts, is on the worldwide market. He is elected fellow of AAPS, APhA, AAAS and AACP, other honors include election to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; the Volwiler Award and the AAPS Distinguished Pharmaceutical Scientist Award. He is a member of the American Chemical Society’s Hall of Fame, and founded Bodor Laboratories in 2006 in order to further develop his drug design strategies.

Dr. Maria Laura Bolognesi completed MS in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology at the University of Bologna in 1990 before undertaking PhD studies with Prof. Carlo Melchiorre. In 1994, she moved to a post-doctoral position at the University of Minnesota with Prof. Philip Portoghese. In 1998, Maria Laura was appointed as an Assistant Professor in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Bologna. In 2005, she was promoted to Associate Professor. From June to August 2009, she was a visiting professor at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid and "Special Visiting Researcher" of the University of Brasilia for the 2014-2016 period.

Emeritus Professor John Bremner holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the Australian National University, Canberra. He was a former Professor of Organic Chemistry in the School of Chemistry, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia. His research interests cover heterocyclic and medicinal chemistry, including the design and development of new anti-bacterial agents. He has more than 220 scientific publications, and served as an Editorial Board member of a number of journals.

Terrence Burke received his Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Washington (Seattle) and has spent most of his professional career within the Intramural Program of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He is currently a Senior Investigator at the Chemical Biology Laboratory (National Cancer Institute). He has published more than 300 scientific publications and is a co-inventor of 20 issued U.S. patents.

Przemyslaw Bozko received his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Chemistry, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland. He is the Lab head of the Dept. Internal Medicine at Tübingen University Hospital, Tübingen, Germany since 2012. His research interests include interactions between tumor suppressors and oncogenes, during both tumor, formation and anticancer therapy and infection biology. Besides, he has published several articles in well-reputed journals.

Dr. Bharate obtained B.Pharm. from the University of Pune, and then he received M.S.Pharm and PhD degree from NIPER-Mohali (India). He has industrial experience (Dr. Reddy's Lab, Piramal Life Sciences) and has done postdoctoral studies at University of Montana (USA) in the area of neuroscience. Presently, he is working as a Principal Scientist in the Medicinal Chemistry Division of CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine. His current research interests are in the field of medicinal chemistry of natural products to discover new therapeutics for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. He is recipient of several innocentive awards, and three young scientist awards (NASI, CSIR, OPPI). He is a reviewer for various international journals. He has published 136 papers and has 17 patents on his credit.

Jean Michel Brunel was graduated from the School of Chemistry of Marseille (France) in 1991. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1994 from Université Aix Marseille in the field of asymmetric organophosphorus chemistry. In 1994, he joined the group of Pr. H. B. Kagan (Université Paris Sud) as a postdoctoral fellow working on the enantioselective catalytic oxidation of sulfides. In 1997, he joined the CNRS as Chargé de Recherche and is now working at the Centre de Recherche en Cancérologie de Marseille. His research program is focused on the development of novel classes of antimicrobial and anticancer agents.

Dr. Baell is a research-only Professor in Medicinal Chemistry at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University. He is also a Director of the Australian Translational Medicinal Chemistry Facility. He is an Australian National Award-winning medicinal chemist with a battery of medicinal discoveries with 40 granted patents and more than 100 publications inclusive of Nature, Nature Chemical Biology and frequently in Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. His research interests include high throughput screening library design, hit-to-lead medicinal chemistry, infectious and neglected diseases, epigenetic modifiers, and peptidomimetic design and synthesis. He was the principal architect for Australia’s 370,000 small molecule HTS library. As of 2016, his 2010 PAINS publication in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry has already been cited more than 500 times. Dr Baell is also the co-Senior Editor of Future Medicinal Chemistry and Editorial Advisory Board member for Biology as well as Journal of Medicinal Chemistry , and Review Editor for Frontiers in Chemical Biology. He is a founding Director of the International Chemical Biology Society, and currently he is the Secretary. He is a Scientific Advisory Board member for TopoGEN Inc. (Colorado) and Regen Biopharma Inc. (San Diego).

Dr. Beretta is an Assistant Researcher at the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale Tumori of Milan. Dr. Beretta obtained a degree in Biology at the University of Milan, a Ph.D in Biochemistry and Clinical Chemistry, and a Master in Oncology Pharmacy and Pharmacology. Among the fields of interest of Dr. Beretta are the molecular and biochemical pharmacology of antitumor agents and the strategies to overcome drug resistance. Dr. Beretta has experience in preclinical and translational studies and has participated in the development of novel antitumor drugs and of nanovectors for nucleic acids delivery. Dr. Beretta has authored 71 papers and book chapters.

Anna Carbone graduated in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology, and completed her Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry in 2003 from the University of Messina. During 2011 to 2020, she was Assistant Professor at the University of Palermo. Since October 2020, she is Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Pharmacy at the University of Genoa. She gained remarkable expertise in the design, synthesis, biological evaluation and SAR studies of nitrogen polycondensed heterocyclic systems endowed with antiviral, antitumor, photosensitizing, anti-biofilm and antifibrotic activity. Her scientific activity is documented in 73 peer-reviewed publications, 1 Italian Patent, and by more than 60 conference proceedings.

Professor Anna Capasso received her Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences in 1992 from University of Naples Federico II, Italy. During her Ph.D. , she studied the interferences between glucocorticoids and the opioid system. From 1993 to 2002, she was a researcher in pharmacology and from 2002 till date, she is an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Salerno, Italy. Professor Capasso is founder and editor-in-chief of the journals: PharmacologyOnLine, The Open Biochemistry Journal, associate editor of The Open Neurology Journal, and co-editor of Current Drug Safety. She is a board member in a number of journals such as, Current Medicinal Chemistry, Current Medicinal Chemistry-Central Nervous System Agents, Letters in Drug Design & Discovery, Medicina, Biomedical Research etc. Prof. Capasso is a member of Italian Society of Pharmacology, Italian Society of Neurosciences and International Narcotics Research Conference Group. Prof. Capasso has been involved in many publications including full papers, book chapters and congressional papers, with current H-index: 30. Her research topics are: general pharmacology, neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry, addiction.

Guido Cavaletti graduated in Medicine at the University of Milan in 1984, and specialized in Neurology in 1989. In 1990, he obtained a clinical position at the Department of Neurology of the S. Gerardo Hospital in Monza. Since 2001, he is a Professor of Human Anatomy at the School of Medicine of the University of Milan-Bicocca, where he is the coordinator of the PhD program in Neuroscience and head of the Experimental Neurology Unit. He is a member of the Italian Society of Neurology, of the Peripheral Nerve Society, of the Italian Society for neuro-Immunology and past-president of the Italian Peripheral Nerve Association. He coordinates the activity of the European/US/Australia CI-PeriNomS group on the standardization of outcome measures in Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neurotoxicity. He authored more than 230 papers in the international peer-reviewed journals.

Prof. Fener Chen received a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Sichuan University. He joined the Wuhan Institute of Technology in 1988 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to full Professorship in 1996. In 1998, he moved to Fudan University as a full professor. His current research interests focus on the development of new asymmetric catalysis methodologies, asymmetric total synthesis of natural products, process chemistry, and computer-assisted mechanism-based drug design (CADD). Prof. Chen has published a number of papers in scientific journals including Chem. Rev., Nat. Commun., Chem. Sci., and J. Med. Chem. He was a visiting professor at numerous prestigious universities, including Washington University and King's College London. Prof. Chen is currently an Academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Dr. Agata Copani is professor of pharmacology at the University of Catania, Italy. She holds a medical degree, two medical specialties, in neurology and in clinical biochemistry, and a Ph.D. in neurobiology. She has published many peer-reviewed papers in the field of neuropharmacology and, as of April 2023, her scholar h-index is equal to 63. Her main research interests are Alzheimer's disease, glutamate transmission, neuronal apoptosis, proliferation and differentiation of neural cells.

Dr. Alessia Carocci studied Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology, Summa Cum Laude, at the University of Bari, Italy, in 1992. She received her Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from the same University in 1998. A post-doctoral position and a research grant in Medicinal Chemistry were held by Dr. Alessia between 1999 and 2001. Since 2017, she is an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the department of Pharmacy-Drug Sciences of the University of Bari. She is the author of more than 65 papers in high IF international journals and 6 chapters in books. She serves as a reviewer for several international scientific journals. Her research interests regard the synthesis of biologically active compounds in antimitotic, antiarrhythmic, antitumor, antibacterial and melatonergic drugs.

Alessia Catalano graduated in Pharmacy (University of Bari), with maximum vote and honor in 1994 and received her Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry in 1998. She became researcher in 2002 and Associate Professor in 2017. She is author of more than 60 papers published in leading international peer-review journals, in addition to book chapters and poster and oral presentations. She is a peer reviewer for international journals. Her main research interests are the synthesis and evaluation of structure-activity relationships of biologically active compounds: antiarrhythmics, antimyotonics, antihypertensives, antimicrobials and antitumor agents. She is member of the Teaching Committee for Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Dr. E. Cichero obtained the degree in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies in 2005 at the University of Genoa while in 2009 she received her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences. From 2014 she is Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Genoa. From more than ten years she has expertise in molecular modeling and computational chemistry strategies applied to medicinal chemistry. Her research topics include the development of compounds targeting GPCRs, such as cannabinoid receptors and trace-amine associated receptors as well as of drug-like molecules for the treatment of cystic fibrosis. She has authored 60 papers and numerous poster communications.

Dr. Sunliang Cui is a professor in College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University. He got the Ph.D degree in Zhejiang University, and then worked as postdoc in Colorado University and University of South Florida. He started his independent research in 2012. He has 15 years of experience in the research of organic synthesis, medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. He has authored more than 40 manuscripts and 10 patents, and currently he is focusing on the drug discovery of antineoplastics and antiepileptics.

Loredana Cappellacci is Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the School of Pharmacy, University of Camerino, since 2007. In 1998, she spent one year as Visiting Scientist at Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. She is author of more than 90 papers published in leading international peer-review journals, 2 International Patents and 2 book chapters. Her main research interests are on design, synthesis and characterization of small molecules as: a) enzyme inhibitors (as anticancer, antibacterial, antiparasitic, and antiviral agents), b) adenosine receptor ligands. More recently, a topic of research is also the characterization and biological evaluation of essential oils and extracts from plants from different countries.

Dr. Nageswara Rao Desaboini completed his Ph.D. degree in 2016 from CSIR-IIIM, Jammu in Organic Synthesis. He then joined the Piramal Discovery Solutions in Ahmedabad, India as a Research Scientist. From Jan 2018 to Dec 2019, he worked in the Schiffer Lab as a Postdoctoral Researcher at UMass Medical School, USA. He is currently a Senior Level Postdoctoral Researcher with Prof. Stephen Miller at the same institute. His research interest includes antiviral drug discovery with avoiding drug resistance (HCV, HIV-1, DENV, and ZIKV protease inhibitors). Development of novel class of fluorescent probes for bioimaging studies in chemical biology applications.

Dr. Russell Dahl is the CEO and founder of Neurodon Corporation, a pharmaceutical company developing novel small molecules for diabetes and neurodegeneration. He previously led all small molecule research at Celladon Corp., where he was responsible for progressing a diverse pipeline into the clinic. He started his career in industry at Agouron Pharmaceuticals and progressed through positions of increasing responsibility at DuPont Pharmaceuticals, BMS, Vertex, and Kemia. Russell has been involved in many successful biotech startups and regularly serves as an advisor and consultant. His experience spans all phases of drug discovery and development and he has contributed to several IND filings, clinical candidates, and regulatory approvals. Russell has co- authored over 90 scientific publications and is an inventor on over 50 patents and applications. He is a former Professor of Neuroscience and Medicinal Chemistry. Russell received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of California, San Diego as a DuPont Fellow, and he has additional training in molecular pharmacology from Stanford University.

Dr. Sergey A. Dyshlovoy, Ph.D., D.Sc., trained in Chemistry, Biochemistry and molecular biology in Russia and Germany. In 2012, he completed his PhD in Chemistry, focusing on elucidation of structure and small-molecule marine bioactive compounds showing anticancer activity, from the G.B. Elyakov Pacific Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry (PIBOC), Russia. He was a senior scientist in both PIBOC and in the Far Eastern Federal University (2012) and currently a senior scientist in the Laboratory of Pharmacology, A.V. Zhirmunski National Scientific Center of Marine Biology. Since 2013, he has been working as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Oncology at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany. He has been a member of the Commission of Experts of the Russian Scientific Foundation since 2014.

Dr. Roberto Di Santo is Full Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, School Pharmacy and Medicine, “Sapienza” University of Rome Italy, and Vice-President of the Medicinal Chemistry Division of the Italian Chemical Society. He holds Master degrees in Chemistry and in Pharmacy at “Sapienza” University of Rome. Prof. Di Santo research is focused primarily on drug design and synthesis of new molecular entities endowed with biological activities. He devoted particular efforts in the discovery of antimicrobial and antitumor agents. Most part of scientific activity is focused on compounds active against HIV targets like integrase, ribonuclease H and polymerase functions of the reverse transcriptase, and protease. He is an author or co-author of books and over 130 publications and patents. Prof. Di Santo is an active member of EFMC and SCI.

Professor Dr. Prof. h. c. mult. Thomas Efferth is chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Biology, Institute of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany.

He is honorary professor at the Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, and at the Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, China. Moreover, he is visiting professor at the Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, Hangzhou, China.

Thomas Efferth has published >450 papers (Hirsch-factor: 60; citation rate: >15,000. His research topics are n tumor pharmacology and pharmacogenomics with a special focus on chemical entities from natural sources .

Mostafa El-Sheekh is a Professor of Psychology at Tanta University, Egypt. He has nearly 38 years of experience in the research and teaching in the field of algae, microbiology and its applications. Dr. El- Sheekh served as the Vice Dean and Dean Faculty of Science, Tanta University, Egypt and Cultural counselor in the Egyptian Embassy in Yemen and Uzbekistan. He also served as Vice president of Tanta University for postgraduate studies and research. He holds a Ph.D. in Phycology from Tanta University and Göttingen University, Germany as Chanel System fellowship. He is the recipient of fellowships in Germany, Hungary, India, Sweden, Czech Republic, and Japan. He is the author of more than 215 papers and, 13 Book chapters, and 4 books. He also serves as editorial member and reviewer for more than 92 peer reviewed Journals. He published several papers on the production of biodiesel, ethanol and hydrogen from algae. He was included in one of the World’s Top 2% of Scientists List published by Stanford University in 2020 and 2021.

Dr. Roberta Ettari is an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Messina. She is working in the field of protease inhibitors as antiparasitic or anticancer agents. In 2007, she received her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Messina. She had various experiences as a postdoctoral researcher: Galway University (2008), Messina University (2010-2011), Milan University (2012-2014). In 2011, she received the “Farmindustria Award for Excellence in Medicinal Chemistry Research. She also spent some research periods as a guest scientist at Merck Research Laboratories (Pomezia), Instituto Grifols (Barcelona), Würzburg and Mainz Universities (Germany).

Dr. De Filippis is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Padua, Italy, and has received the National Academic Qualification as Full Professor in General Biochemistry. His main scientific projects entail the development of novel anticoagulants and the study of the molecular mechanisms linking inflammation, oxidative stress and sepsis to thrombotic diseases. Dr. De Filippis authored more than 80 publication in peer reviewed Journals (total IF: 300; H-index: 24) and three international patents. Dr. De Filippis is also the Vice-Chair of the Degree Course in the Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technologies, University of Padua.

Stephanie Federico is an Assistant Professor in Medicinal Chemistry at the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Trieste. Her main research interests are focused on design, synthesis and characterization of heterocyclic compounds as ligands for specific target proteins. In particular, she has experience in the development of antagonists for adenosine receptors as also inhibitors of enzymes such as nucleotidases and kinases.

Since 1991, Prof. Caterina Faggio is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Chemical, Biological, Pharmaceutical and Environmental Sciences-University of Messina, Italy.

Her research topics encompass different research fields: effects of environmental contaminants and food additives on salt transports in teleost intestine; cell volume regulation and cytotoxicity in fish intestine, hepatocytes and digestive cell of mussels by the videometric method; mechanisms responsible for the eryptosis (apoptosis of human red blood cells); haematological and serological parameters in seawater teleosts that dwell in different habitats: lake, sea and fish farm; oxidative stress markers and health status in non-target aquatic organisms. She has numerous publications in prestigious international journals. Moreover, she is the President of Messina Section (SIBS), Italian Society of Experimental Biology. She performs referee activity for prestigious international journals.

Dr. Fiore is a researcher at the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology of the Italian National Research Council IBBC- CNR. He graduated in Natural Sciences and in Biological Sciences from the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. He received his PhD in Medical Sciences from the Psychiatric Department of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Dr. Fiore Potentiated his professional experience at the Institute of Zoology, Oxford University, UK and at the Department of Physiology and Behavior, the University of California at Davis, CA-USA.

Dr. Clara Grosso earned her degree in Plant Biology from the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon (2004) and a PhD degree in Biotechnology from the School of Engineering, University of Lisbon (2010). Since 2015, she has been an assistant researcher at REQUIMTE/ LAQV/Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto. Her field of research focuses on natural products, regarding aspects like extraction and identification of secondary metabolites and assessment of in vitro bioactivities with emphasis for oxidative stress and enzymes related with Alzheimer’s disease and depression. She is also interested in strategies to deliver drugs into the brain She is a reviewer for scientific journals and author of several papers and chapters in the areas of natural products, nanomedicine and neurosciences. She is also the editor of a book published by Springer, entitled "Herbal Medicine in Depression: Traditional Medicine to Innovative Drug Delivery” (2016).

Cesare Gridelli, MD, is currently Chief of Division of Medical Oncology and Director of Department of Hematology-Oncology at the “S.G. Moscati” Hospital, Avellino (Italy). His areas of expertise are lung cancer and cancer in the elderly. He is deeply involved in the clinical development of new anticancer targeted therapies and immunotherapy. He is the President of the Italian Association of Thoracic Oncology (AIOT). He is the author or co-author of more than 750 papers, of which more than 370 extended papers published in international indexed journals, and as several book chapters. His papers have about 16.378 citations on international indexed journals. Dr. Gridelli has an h-index of 62. On November 2013 the American agency Expertscape (Palo Alto, California) appointed Dr. Gridelli as the top most world experts on lung cancer.

Prof. Matthias Gaestel, PhD, is Professor of Biochemistry at Hannover Medical School, and head of the Institute of Cell Biochemistry, Hannover, Germany. Prof. Gaestel is focused on stress-dependent signal transduction in eukaryotic cells by post-translational modifications of proteins. Using genetic mouse models and cell biology, Dr. Gaestel has described the role of the p38 MAPK-activated protein kinases MK2/3 inflammation, cell death and the development of cancer.

Prof. Dr. Galanski received a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Chemistry from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. She holds the position of Associate Professor at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of the University of Vienna, Austria. Dr. Galanski has (co)authored more than 150 publications in the field of bioinorganic chemistry with focus on the development of platinum-based anticancer drugs.

Prof. Grassi is Associate professor in Clinical Biochemistry in the Department of Life Sciences of the University of Trieste, Italy; in 2014 he has became full professor. Prof Grassi has 25-years of experience in molecular biology and drug release. He authored 100 papers, 11 books/book chapters and 3 patents. He has been a Visiting Fellow in N.I.H, USA and Scientist Assistant in the University of Tuebingen, Germany. At present, he teaches “Clinical Biochemistry” in the Medical degree course and “Molecular Diagnostic” in the Medical Biotechnology degree course of the University of Trieste. He has also been president of the Master degree in Medical Biotechnology, University of Trieste.

Prof. Marco Guazzi is a professor of cardiology at the University of Milano and head of the Department of Cardiology at San Paolo University Hospital, Milano. His research primarily focuses on the pathophysiological and prognostic insights of heart failure syndrome and Group 2 pulmonary hypertension. He has also gained special expertise on functional evaluation of cardiac patients by cardiopulmonary exercise testing combined with stress echo. He established several clinical research programmes involving HF functional evaluation, therapy and pulmonary vascular disease. From 2005 and 2007, he served as chair of the Exercise Physiology and Rehabilitation Working Group of the Italian Society of Cardiology. From 2017 to 2019, he has been appointed to the Board of the European Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation of the European Society of Cardiology. He has been chair of the 2016 released ESC/AHA Guidelines on Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing and reviewer of ESC Guidelines on Heart Failure 2016. Prof. Guazzi serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Cardiac Failure, European Journal of Heart Failure and is associate editor of the European Journal of Prevention. He is the author or co-author of over 500 manuscripts with an H index of 65.

Dr. Guerrero received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Barcelona. He has been serving at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Barcelona and is currently the Professor of Research and leader of the Chemical Ecology Unit. He has also served as the Head of the Department of Biological Organic Chemistry at the Institute of Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (CSIC), and as the Councilor of the International Society of Chemical Ecology. He has published more than 180 papers, and is the author or coauthor of 7 patents. He has been serving as a reviewer for a number of national and international funding agencies.

Isabel Haro is a Research Scientist of CSIC working at the Institute of Advanced Chemistry in Catalonia. She obtained her Chemistry Degree from the University of Barcelona in 1982 and completed her Masters in Science at the Department of Biochemistry from the same University. In 1985 she moved to the Peptides’ Laboratory of CSIC and completed her PhD in 1988. After a post-doctoral training of two years spent between the CSIC in Barcelona and the Royal Free Hospital in London, she gained a permanent position in the CSIC, in 1990. Since then, she has been working on the use of synthetic peptides in the field of Biomedicine and has published more than 170 articles, 8 reviews, 30 chapters of books and 8 patents. However, she has been the Principal Researcher of 15 research projects and 3 contracts with the industry and has also supervised 12 doctoral theses.

After his PhD (1995), Dr Heymann successively was appointed as technician, engineer at the Nantes Hospital (FR), Associate-Professor (2001) and Professor of Histology and Embryology at the University of Nantes (2009). He heads an Inserm research laboratory studying the pathogenesis of bone sarcomas. He has authored more than 220 peer-reviewed publications. Since September 2015, He was the personal Chair of Bone Oncology at the University of Sheffield (UK) where he serves as head of a European Associated Laboratory (Sarcoma Research Unit) Inserm/Univ. Sheffield/Univ. Nantes.

Dr. Honek is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry, University of Waterloo, Canada. He received his B.Sc. /Ph.D. degrees at the McGill University. His Ph.D. research (supervisor: Dr. Bernard Belleau), focused on the design and synthesis of sulfur-based heterocyclic analogs of the anthracycline antibiotics. Postdoctoral research (MIT; supervisor: Dr. Christopher Walsh) explored the enzyme mechanisms involved in microbial methane production. Dr. Honek’s research is focused on the biological chemistry of the carbon-sulfur bond and on protein structure and function.

He is the author of numerous publications including a recent textbook (Biochemical Pharmacology by Palmer, Chan, Dieckmann & Honek, (2012) Wiley-VCH). He is the recipient of the Canadian Society for Chemistry Bernard Belleau Award (2014) for distinguished contributions to the field of medicinal chemistry.

Dr. Seyed Jalal Hosseinimehr obtained PhD in Radiopharmacy in 2002 from Tehran University of Medical Sciences. He is presently serving as a Professor at the Department of Radiopharmacy in Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. His Research experiences include Radiation Biology, Radio protective study in animal, Tumor bearing mice, Radiopharmaceuticals and cell culture. He has been recognized with several awards and honors such as Prize for top PhD student, Prize for top researcher, and others. He has contributed more than 170 publications, having citations around 2,958.

Prof. Dr. Jamshed Iqbal (Tamgha-i-Imtiaz), FRSC is the Head of Pakistan’s finest drug research center CADR at COMSATS University, Abbottabad Campus since 2013. He has completed his early education from Pakistan, while his MS and PhD degree was from University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK and University of Bonn, Germany, respectively. After doing 2 Postdocs from Germany and China, he opted to serve Pakistan and joined Department of Pharmacy, CUI, Abbottabad Campus. He has innovatory contributions in Pharmaceutical/Chemical sciences. Prof. Iqbal has more than 190 publications (Impact factor >550) in several top international journals and 2 international patents. In 2017, Prof. Iqbal has been awarded PAS-Gold Medal by Pakistan Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Jelkmann is the Director of the Institute of Physiology at the University of Luebeck (http://www.physio.uni-luebeck.de/). He received his medical degree in Hannover, Germany. After fellowships in Regensburg, New Orleans (Tulane) and Luebeck, he became a Professor of Physiology in Bonn before he moved to Luebeck in 1995. His research has focused on erythropoietin and other hematopoietic growth factors. He has authored more than150 original publications more than 130 review articles/book chapters and has edited 5 books.

Dr. Mankil Jung received his B.S. from Yonsei University and Ph. D. from Oxford University. Being a member of the faculty, School of Pharmacy, University of Mississippi, Dr. Jung has served as a professor of Chemistry, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. Dr. Jung's research interests focus on medicinal chemistry, organic synthesis of biologically active agents, and discovery of drugs for antimalarial, antidiabetes, antiaging derived from natural products.

Dr. Kalász is a Senior Scientific Adviser in the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy at Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary. Previously, he worked at Yale University and was a Visiting Professor in University of Cincinnati and United Arab Emirates University.

He earned his PhD at the Kossuth Lajos University, Debrecen, Hungary; he was awarded the title of doctor of chemical sciences by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and obtained his medical habilitation in pharmacology at Semmelweis University.

He has authored over 250 papers. His activity covers analytical and preparative scale separations, distribution of drugs in the body and development of novel instrumentation.

Dr. Khan obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. Currently, he is a senior Scientist at FDA and an Adjunct Professor in the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine. He has published more than 60 scientific publications and is a named inventor of 10 issued U.S/international patents.

Professor Matthew Kiernan is the Co-Director of the Brain and Mind Centre - Discovery and Translation. His role is to foster multidisciplinary research across the clinical neurosciences, to improve research outcomes and facilitate the translation of research innovations directly into clinical practice for the benefit of patients and the community

Professor Matthew Kiernan is the Bushell Chair of Neurology at the University of Sydney. He is a Professor of Neurology and Staff Specialist at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. He is also a Senior Scientist at Neuroscience Research Australia.

Dr. Kratz is a medicinal chemist with more than 25 years of pertinent experience in the preclinical development of anticancer prodrugs and protein conjugation chemistry. He has successfully transferred aldoxorubicin, CytRx clinical lead compound, from bench to bedside that is based on an innovative drug delivery platform exploiting circulating albumin as an endogenous drug carrier. He serves as an Editorial Board member for Bioconjugate Chemistry, Current Medicinal Chemistry, Current Bioactive Compounds, and Pharmacology & Pharmacy and has authored approximately 265 scientific publications, book articles and proceedings, and 20 patents/patents applications.

Dr. Kyle is the Vice President, Discovery Research of Purdue Pharma L.P. He has 30 years of experience in the areas of CNS, pain and inflammation. Previously, Dr. Kyle served as Director in Discovery Research at Nova Pharmaceutical Corporation and Scios, Inc. He received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Texas Tech University. Dr. Kyle is an inventor of more than 60 issued US patents and has published nearly 200 manuscripts, review articles and abstracts. He serves on the editorial advisory board of multiple journals for chemistry and pharmacology and is a member of the Dean’s CSLA advisory board at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Prof. Guoyin Kai obtained his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Shanghai Jiaotong University, China (2005). He worked as a visiting scholar in Brookhaven National Laboratory in USA (2012-2013). He currently working as Professor, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, China. Previously worked as associate Professor (2005-2012) and Professor (2012-2017) in Shanghai Normal University, China (2005-2017). Prof. Dr. Kai had more than 100 scientific publications including Metab Eng, Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr, Trends Food Sci Tech, Food Chem, J Agr Food Chem, Food Chem Toxicol, J Exp Bot and PNAS etc. His research mainly focused on phytomedicine, natural product and functional food.

Marcello Leopoldo obtained the degree in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies (honors) at the University of Bari in 1991. At the same University, he was appointed Research Associate in Medicinal Chemistry (1992) and then Associate Professor (2001). He has received the Habilitation as Full Professor in 2015. He has published 115 papers focused on the development of selective ligands for dopamine, serotonin and formyl peptide receptors. Various selective 5-HT7 receptor agonists have been identified in his lab, including LP-211 which has been extensively used to explore the therapeutic potential of 5-HT7 receptor activation. He is inventor of eight patent applications.

Feng-Huei Lin is the president of the Formosa Associate of Regeneration Medicine, Taiwan. He is a tenure distinguished professor, Ins. of Biomed. Eng., National Taiwan University, Taiwan. Besides, he is also an adjunct lecturer at National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan. Dr. Lin has published a number of scientific papers and book chapters. Besides, he has been awarded 74 patents and transferred 21 technologies to industry to the final product. His research interests have been enhanced through proper discussions with clinical doctors every week. His research studies aimed at scaffolds for tissue engineering, nano-technology for drug and gene delivery, bio-nano-science for cancer hyperthermia, biomaterials for stem cell research, and hydrogel for vitreous body substitutes. He has intense experience both in academic and industrial research to design and formulate commercial products. He is an international fellow at the International College of Biomater. Sci. & Eng. (ICBSE), international fellow at the World Association of Preventive & Reg. Med. (WAPRM) and fellow of the American Institute of Medical & Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Prof. Dr. Xinyong Liu received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shandong Medical University, in 1984 and 1991, respectively. From 1997 to 1999, he worked at Instituto de Quimica Medica (CSIC) in Spain as a senior visiting scholar. He obtained his Ph.D. from Shandong University in 2004. Presently, he is the director of Institute of Medicinal Chemistry, Dean of the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Shandong University. He is currently serving as Editor of the “Journal of Chemistry” and on the editorial board of more than 20 academic journals. In his medicinal chemistry research of antiviral and cardiovascular drugs, he has published more than 300 paper and 6 monographs and granted 34 patents presently.

Dr. Tian Liu is a professor at Dalian University of Technology (DUT), China. He received his Bachelor and PhD from DUT in 2003 and 2009, respectively. His research interest is focused on the insect cuticle. He studied the component and formation process of insect cuticle to find new targets and technologies for pest control, to find new inspiration to design biomaterials, and to develop new biocatalysts for the utilization of biological resources. He has published more than 50 papers in reputed international journals.

Vincenzo Lionetti is an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine at Institute of Life Sciences of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa, Italy) since 2014. He graduated in Medicine at the University of Bari (Italy) in 1999 and received the Specialization in Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine at the University of Turin (Italy) in 2003. He received the PhD in Innovative Strategies in Biomedical Research at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa in 2007. He is a member of the panel of experts of the Research Executive Agency of the European Commission for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions.

Dr. Hao Lin is a Professor of the Center for Informational Biology at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. He received his Ph.D. from Inner Mongolia University, P.R. China in 2007. His researches focused on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology. He has published over 110 peer-reviewed papers in SCI-indexed journals.

His scientific career started in 1996 as Lecturer in medicinal chemistry at University of Palermo. In the first years, he worked on synthesis of heterocyclic compounds with antiproliferative activity. After the experience in USA, where he worked in the research group of Prof A.R. Katritzky, his interests were driven to molecular modelling. He is co-author of 96 papers published on ISI recognized international journals, with H-index 27. He has been involved in several research projects and he has actively participated in the elaboration of several of them. He is expert evaluator for HORIZON2020."

Enza Lacivita obtained her PhD in Medicinal Chemistry in 2001 at the University of Bari Aldo Moro. She was appointed as Associate Professor in Medicinal Chemistry in 2017 (Department of Pharmacy – Drug Science) at the same University. Her research activities have been focused on the study of structure-activity relationships of “drug-like” ligands for GPCRs involved in neuropsychiatric disorders, such serotonin and dopamine receptors, and in neuroinflammatory processes. Enza Lacivita is co-author of more than 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals and co- inventor of four patent applications. She has been Principal Investigator of several national and international research projects.

Prof. Liu is currently a professor at Lanzhou University (China). He received his BE degree from Northwestern Polytechnical University (China) in 1996 and Ph.D. from Lanzhou University in 2001. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, CAS from 2001 to 2003, and a visiting professor at Akita Prefectural University (Japan) from 2011 to 2012. His research interests mainly focus on the design of micro-/nano-structured functional polymeric materials and composites and their applications in the biomedical field. He has authored many original research papers and reviews in SCI-indexed journals and 6 invited book chapters for international publishers, such as Wiley and Elsevier. He serves as the editorial advisory board member of Molecular Pharmaceutics, Current Medicinal Chemistry and Current Organic Chemistry.

Mauro Maniscalco is the Director of the research laboratory on “Inflammation of Airways” at the Research Institute Fondazione S. Maugeri of Telese and Consultant of Respiratory Medicine at the Hospital of Casoria (Italy). He completed his PhD from the department of Pharmacology at Karolinska Institute of Stockholm carrying out research on exhaled Nitric Oxide. Currently, he is carrying out research on the characterization of biomolecular markers in EBC of patients with respiratory disorders. During his career he has authored more than 80 peer reviewed scientific papers and has served as reviewer for more than 50 peer reviewed medical journals.

Dr. Ana Martinez is a research professor at the Biological Research Center (CIB) of Spanish National Council for Research (CSIC). Her interest is focused on neurodegenerative disorders, thus leading her to numerous research projects on the medicinal chemistry and rational drug design of new drugs for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and multiple sclerosis. She is author of many scientific publications and active patents in the field and editor of several books. She is the founder of ANKAR PHARMA and she acts as scientific advisory board for several SMEs in the biotech field.

Prof. Dr. Nahum Mendez-Sanchez is a Doctor of Medicine and also specialized in Gastroenterology and Hepatology. He is a Professor of both Master's and PhD programs at the School of Medicine National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). After obtaining his Medical Degree at UNAM, Mexico, in 1984 and becoming board certified in Gastroenterology in 1990, he became the Doctor of Medicine with specialization in Gastroenterology and Hepatology. He also obtained Academic Masters and PhD degree in Medical Science from the UNAM School of Medicine UNAM and Post-doctorate from the Brigham & Women's Hospital & Harvard University, USA. He is a Past-President of both Mexican Association of Hepatology and Latin American Association for the Study of Liver, Founding Editor of Annals of Hepatology (2002–2018) and editorial board member of Hepatology (the official journal of AASLD) and American Journal of Gastroenterology (official journal of the ACG). He is a member of several International and National Associations such as the American Association for Study of Liver Diseases (FAASLD), European Association for Study of the Liver, American Association of Gastroenterology (AGAF), etc. He received several awards such as the "Gabino Barreda Medal" and first place in medical works of the National Academy of Medicine. Professor Mendez-Sanchez has a long-lasting research interest in gastroenterology and hepatology, his research lines include: Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, bilirubin metabolism, bile acids physiology, obesity and metabolic disorders. He is the author of 18 published books, co-author of 180 chapters in the national and international books and 329 articles in PubMed.

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.

Dr. Mangalagiu is a Professor of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry and Vice-Rector of research at Alexandru Loan Cuza, University of Lasi, Romania. Dr. Mangalagiu is the former Dean, Vice-Dean and Head of Organic Chemistry Department at Faculty of Chemistry. He has nearly 30 years of experience in research, focusing in the area of Heterocyclic Compounds. He has over 160 publications, 13 patents and 3 chapters of international books. He was Visiting Professor and guest speaker in prestigious foreign universities such as Ludwig Maximilianus University (Germany), University of Florence (Italy), Universite D’Angers (France) while also being the recipient of numerous prizes and honors such as DAAD and NATO award, Costin D. Nenitescu Medal and Special Award of Croatian Association of Inventors.

Liang Ma received B. Sc. and Ph. D. degrees from Chemistry College of Sichuan University. I now focus on the study of medicinal chemistry for kidney diseases and the involved mechanisms. Now I am an associate Professor of Nephrology at the Kidney research lab, Division of nephrology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University. I have authored 80 publications in international journals including J Med Chem, Eur J Med Chem, and Curr Med Chem, so on. I served as an official reviewer for more than 10 international journals. I have received several national funds to support his work in the fields of Nephrology, Medicinal chemistry and Pharmacology.

Dr. Clementina Manera received her Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry and Master's Degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology from the University of Pisa, Italy. Currently she is an Associate Professor in Medicinal Chemistry at the Department of Pharmacy of the same University. She has authored over 90 publications on peer-reviewed pharmaceutical chemistry journals of international repute. She has over 20 years of experience in research and development of drug candidates for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and anticancer. In recent years, she has focused on the design, synthesis and pharmacological evaluation of modulators of endocannabinoid system and on the development of new analytical methods for the determination of biologically active small organic molecules.

Dr. Douglas Noonan did BA from the College of Wooster in 1979 and a Ph.D. in cell biology from Case Western Reserve University in 1985. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1985 to 1988. He became interested in AIDS associated KS, HIV-Tat protein described angiogenic factor and chemokine-like activities. He published key articles in the field. He is actively investigating the mechanisms of the action of these drugs on innate immune cells, their effectors in angiogenesis and how to alter their phenotype for efficacious tumor therapy. He has authored a number of publications, book chapters and a few international patents. He has an h-index of 64, and he is the principal investigator of several research funded projects.

Dr. Narasimhan is a Professor in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Maharshi Dayanand University, India. His key areas of research includes synthesis, QSAR, anticancer and antimicrobial screening of medicinal compounds. Dr. Narasimhan has 160 publications (140 International and 20 National) in SCI indexed journals. He also serves as an Editorial Board Member and Reviewer in a number of national and international journals. Dr. Narasimhan is the recipient of APTI-Best Pharmaceutical Scientist Award (2015) and APP-Young Pharmaceutical Scientist Award (2015).

Dr. Orazio Nicolotti received his Ph.D. in Drug Sciences in 2001 from the University of Bari (Italy).. He then completed his post-doctorate at the University of Sheffield (UK). He was appointed as Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in 2016 at the University of Bari (Italy), where he currently serves as head of the molecular and data modeling laboratory. His research interests are in molecular and data modelling, drug design, QSAR, predictive toxicology, combinatorial library design, evolutionary algorithms, docking and molecular dynamics. He has authored about 90 publications, 4 book chapters and 1 international patent. He is the Principal investigator of several research funded projects and industrial agreements for technology transfer.

Prof. Yoshihiro Oka MD, Ph.D. is an endowed chair professor of the Department of Cancer Stem Cell Biology, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine. He graduated from Osaka University Medical School in 1980. He studied basic immunology as a scientific member of Basel Institute for Immunology from 1992 to 1995. In 1995, he recommenced his career as a physician scientist at Osaka University. He and his colleagues demonstrated that WT1 is a superior target of cancer immunotherapy (cancer antigen), and he is a pioneer of research of WT1-targeting cancer immunotherapy. WT1 was ranked first among many cancer antigens, and multiple groups have been involved in developing WT1-targeting cancer immunotherapy using multiple modalities.

Dr Milan M. Obradovic is a senior research associate in the Department of Radiobiology and Molecular Genetics at the "VINČA" Institute of Nuclear Sciences - National Institute of The Republic of Serbia, University of Belgrade, Serbia. He received his PhD in molecular endocrinology from the University of Belgrade. He has experience in basic and clinical science research. His investigative interest is to clarify the role of different hormones in normal cardiovascular biology and in pathophysiological conditions, such as obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases. He serves as the guest editor in three journals, he is editorial board member in four journals, and also serves as a reviewer in 30 scientific journals. He has published many papers, few book chapters, and a number of conference presentations.

Federica Pellati is an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Life Sciences at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy, where she is Principal Investigator of the group "Natural Products for Medicinal Chemistry". Her research is dedicated to the study of bioactive natural compounds as new leads in medicinal chemistry. Her interest is focused on bioactive compounds from plants, in particular from Cannabis sativa L., and on the investigation of their biological activity in hyper-proliferative disorders and CNS chronic diseases, including neuropathic pain and epilepsy. She has many international and national research collaborations. She is the author of more than 100 papers in international scientific journals (h-index = 32 from Scopus), 2 patents and more than 90 congress communications. She is an editorial board member for many international journals in the areas of medicinal chemistry and pharmaceutical analysis, including Antioxidants, the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Molecules, Antibiotics, the Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research.

Prof. Riccardo Petrelli is an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the School of Pharmacy, at the University of Camerino (Academic discipline – Pharmaceutical Chemistry). His scientific interests are: 1) enzyme inhibitors involved in NAD pathways; 2) nucleosides and nucleotides as antitumor and antiviral agents and their prodrugs; 3) adenosine receptor ligands and 4) natural products research, traditional medicine, ethnobotany, and phytochemistry. He is the co-author of a number of scientific publications in leading international journals mainly related to the synthesis of nucleoside/nucleotide analogs and naturally-occurring compounds, besides a full U.S. Patent Application (US 2012/0329747 A1, entitled: Novel Hydrazone derivatives having potent antitumor activity toward multi-drug resistant tumor cells), a few book chapters, many poster communications at national and international meetings, and some oral communications are to his credit. His publications have been cited nearly 3000 times and with an H-index of 30.

Prof. Carmelo Puglia is Associate Professor in the Department of Drug and Health Sciences, University of Catania. He is a teacher of Pharmaceutical Technology, Socioeconomics and Regulations for the undergraduate course in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology of the University of Catania. Prof. Puglia has authored and co-authored more than 100 scientific publications on peer-reviewed international journals and about 50 conference papers (H index: 35). The research theme carried out by Prof. Puglia concerns the formulation and the evaluation of nanocarriers as drug delivery systems to increase the bioavailability and stability of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) through different routes of administration.

Prof. Jens Pietzsch (Ph.D., M.D.) is the Head of the Department of Radiopharmaceutical and Chemical Biology at the Institute of Radiopharmaceutical Cancer Research, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Germany. He is also a Professor of Pathological Biochemistry at the School of Science, Technische Universität Dresden. He has more than 20 years of experience in research, now focusing on preclinical molecular imaging of cancer and cancer-associated inflammation. His main topic of interest is targeted radionuclide-based theranostics of malignant melanoma and pheochromocytoma. He has authored of more than 160 articles, reviews, and book chapters. Currently, he serves as an Associate Editor of Frontiers in Chemistry, and as Editorial Board Member of Current Medicinal Chemistry, Amino Acids, Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation, and Journal of Cellular Biotechnology.

Prof. Athanasios G. Papavassiliou is a professor of biochemistry and head of the Department of Biological Chemistry, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Greece. He received M.D. in 1984 from the School of Medicine of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and Ph.D. in cellular, molecular, and biophysical studies from Columbia University, New York, NY, USA in 1989. He received postdoctoral training from the Department of Microbiology, College of Physicians & Surgeons of Columbia University and at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg, Germany during 1989-1991. He then served as staff scientist in a faculty position during 1991-1996. He has published a number of original research and review articles in international peer-reviewed journals [2021 JCR® cumulative impact factor (CIF): 4280; mean impact factor (MIF): 9.30; h-index: 84; i10-index: 356; total citations: >23650]. He has also authored a number of chapters in international biomedical books/monographs, and served as guest editor of 3 journal thematic issues and was invited editor of 2 international biomedical books/monographs. He serves as editor or editorial board member and reviewer in a number of peer-reviewed biomedical journals, and evaluator of various national and international research programs/proposals. He is the recipient of numerous national and international research awards, such as "ICAAC Young Investigator Award". His research interests focus on the study of signal transduction to transcription factors in cell differentiation, tumorigenesis and certain disease pathobiologies.

Dr. Perego is a senior staff scientist at the Molecular Pharmacology Unit of the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale Tumori, Milan, Italy. She obtained a degree in biology, a diploma of specialization in applied genetics, and a Ph.D. in translational biomedicine. She has experience in preclinical development of antitumor agents and in translational studies. Dr. Perego's fields of interest are molecular/biochemical pharmacology of conventional and targeted antitumor agents, as well as the mechanisms of drug resistance with particular reference to the role of deubiquitinases and their targeting as a strategy to overcome drug resistance, her H-index is 48.

Professor B. Montgomery Pettitt is the Robert A. Welch Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry, and director of the Sealy Center for Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics. He is a faculty member of Pharmacology and Toxicology and both professor and interim chair of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He came to UTMB in 2012 from the University of Houston, where he had been chair of Chemistry, chair of Computer Science, Associate Dean of Computational Science and Associate Dean for Research. His research applies theoretical chemistry to solve computational problems in molecular biophysics.

Prof. John M. Pezzuto is a professor and dean at the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Western New England University in Springfield, Massachusetts. He has authored or co-authored over 600 publications that have been cited over 50,000 times (H-index = 116). Based on his citation impact, Prof. Pezzuto is among the top 0.08% in the world and the top 0.0004% in his discipline.

Dr. Priebe obtained a Master of Science in Organic Chemistry degree from the University of Warsaw in Poland and a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Organic and Medical Chemistry from the Institute of Organic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences in Poland. He is a Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and also holds the title of Professor of Chemistry in the Republic of Poland. Prof. Priebe is noted for his successful development of new therapeutic entities for the treatment of cancer. Five of his drugs entered clinical trials and several others are in different stages of preclinical development. He has published more than 200 scientific publications and his work has led to over 50 patents.

Dr. Laszlo Prokai is the UNT Health Science Center's first Chair in Biochemistry endowed by the Houston-based Welch Foundation, one of the United States' oldest and largest private funding sources for chemical research. Dr. Prokai has maintained an actively funded research program supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is recognized nationally and internationally for his work on discovery, medicinal chemistry and chemical biology of central nervous system agents, the chemical biology of neuropeptides and proteomics, as well as mass spectrometry. He also serves as Courtesy Professor in the Departments of Medicinal Chemistry and Anesthesiology at the University of Florida.

Tadeusz Robak, MD, PhD, is Professor of Hematology at the Medical University of Lodz , and Head of the Department of Hematology at Copernicus Memorial Hospital in Lodz, Poland. He is Chair of the chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) subgroup of the Polish Adult Leukemia Study Group and President of the Polish Society of Hematology. His special interests are in CLL and lymphoma, with particular emphasis on the use of purine analogues and targeted drugs. Professor Robak has been selected by the World Scientists Forum of the International Research Promotion Council for the “Eminent Scientist of the Year 2010” award in haematology-oncology.

Prof. Giovanna Romeo holds a degree in chemistry from School of Chemistry, University of Naples, Italy. He is an associate professor of general pathology in the Department of Medico-Surgical Sciences and Biotechnologies, School of Pharmacy and Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. He has been serving as the president of Nursing and Midwifery Sciences School from 2012 to date. He has been involved in teaching biochemistry, immunology and general pathology. His major research interests are HPV-induced tumorigenesis; inflammatory tumor microenvironment, microRNA profiling, extracellular vesicles. He is on the editorial board of a number of indexed journals. He is the PI of various national and international research projects.

Dr. Manuela Rodriquez has attained a degree of Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry sciences. She is presently serving as an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Department of Pharmacy, University of Salerno (Italy), where she teaches Medicinal Chemistry to undergraduate students. She has contributed more than 57 publications, having citations around 991. Dr. Manuela’s research focuses on regulation of epigenetic post-transcriptional chemical modification, molecular diversity oriented synthesis, microwave-assisted synthesis and total synthesis of pharmacological active natural products as lead compound for drug optimization, and as chemical tools to study dynamic biological processes.

Vincenzo Russo, MD PhD MMSc, is an Assistant Professor of Cardiology at School of Medicine - University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” and Consultant Cardiologist and Electrophysiologist at Monaldi Hospital in Naples, Italy. His research interest are in the areas of Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy, Thrombosis and Hemostasis, Cardiac Rhythm Disorders, Cardiac Pacing, Clinical Electrophysiology, Syncope, Neuromuscular Disorders, Sudden Death, and Hematological Disorders.

Prof. Giulio Rastelli received M.Sc. in chemistry cum laude in 1990 and Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in 1993. In 1994, he became the fellow in computational biophysics at the University of California San Francisco with Prof. Daniel Santi and Peter Kollman. Since 1996, he has been the assistant professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, then, he was promoted to associate professor in 2005 and full professor in 2021. Prof. Rastelli is head of the Molecular Modeling & Drug Design Laboratory (MMDDLab) at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. His research is focused on computational design of drug candidates and the implementation of new drug design methodologies. Research interests include the rational design of "ad hoc" targeted drugs related to a specific disease, with special focus on anticancer drug targets. The overall goal of the research in Prof. Rastelli's lab (MMDDLab) is to develop and apply innovative computational methodologies to design and discover new drug candidates and, more in general, to address problems that lie at the interface between chemistry, biology and medicine. His research methodologies focus on a number of integrated ligand-based and structure-based computational procedures, including big data science and artificial intelligence. He is the author of a number of publications in peer-reviewed international journals and one patent. He has been coordinator of several grants from EU, MIUR, AIRC, Regione Emilia Romagna, Spinner, Foundations, and private pharma and biotech companies. Prof. Rastelli is serving as the editorial board member of Current Medicinal Chemistry, Molecules, Frontiers in Chemistry, etc.

Professor Satyajit Sarker is the Director of School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University. He is a Professor of Pharmacy and leads the Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products Research Group. He has years of experience in research on various aspects of bioactive natural products. He has authored over 400 publications, including popular books like, Natural Products Isolation, and Chemistry for Pharmacy Students, the latter is also translated into Greek, Japanese and Portuguese languages. He is the Vice-President of the Phytochemical Society of Europe, and the Editor-in-Chief of Phytochemical Analysis. He serves in the Editorial Boards of several journals.

Dr. Schmidhammer is a Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Center for Molecular Biosciences Innsbruck (CMBI), University of Innsbruck, Austria. He has more than 35 years of experience in drug discovery and development of medications aimed to treat neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g. pain, addicition, depression, anxiety, epilepsy) and immunological diseases. He has been a Visiting Scientist at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA and other research institutions worldwide. Dr. Schmidhammer has authored more than 130 original research articles, 9 book chapters and 21 patents. The scientific achievements of Dr. Schmidhammer have been recognized by many grants, several honors and awards.

Prof. Schaffer is the head of the Institute of Oncology at Barzilai Medical Center, Ben-Gurion University, Israel. He has experience in research, and clinical work in radiation oncology. His main fields are selective and specific radiosensitizers, hyperthermia, and photodynamic therapy. Previously, he served as a deputy chairman in the Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Munich, Germany. He completed his Ph.D. in 2004 from Munich University. He has a number of manuscripts, a few patents and book chapters to his credit. He is serving as associate editor in five scientific Journals. Prof. Schaffer is also an adjunct faculty member, and teaches radiation therapy and radiation biology.

Alessandro Serretti MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Bologna University, Italy. He is a Coordinator of a research unit active in genetic and clinical studies of major psychoses. Alessandro Serretti has authored more than 480 scientific papers in peer reviewed journals with an H-Index of 66. He has served as a reviewer and editorial board member of 170 journals and funding agencies.

Rafael Coveñas Rodríguez is an associate professor at the University of Salamanca (Spain). His research is performed at the Institute of Neurosciences of Castilla and León (INCYL) and involved the peptides in cancer. He studied the involvement of the substance P/neurokinin-1 receptor system in the development of tumors and how neurokinin-1 receptor antagonists exert an antitumor activity. He has published more than 230 articles in international journals and written 38 book chapters and 4 books. He serves as an editorial board member for scientific journals, such as Cancers, Receptors, and Anatomia, and the guest editor and referee of more than 30 journals.

Gabriele Stocco is Assistant Professor in Pharmacology at the University of Trieste since 2012. His research interest focuses on translational studies on pharmacogenetics and therapy personalization of antimetabolites and biologics used in chronic and oncologic pediatric diseases. Gabriele Stocco has received a degree in Medicinal Chemistry with honors from the University of Trieste, a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Trieste and a doctoral and post-doctoral training from St.Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, USA, where he attended in 2003 and from 2006 to 2011 the laboratory of prof. William Evans. His scientific effort has been witnessed by more than 50 scientific publications.

Mikhail Soloviev received an MSc in Molecular Biology in and Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1996. He conducted his research in the MRC Molecular Neurobiology Unit, Cambridge and since 1993 at the Royal Free Hospital London. In 1997 he joined MRC Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit Oxford, to work on the biology of metabotropic glutamate receptors. In 2001 he joined Oxford Glycosciences Ltd, as Head of Protein Assays, to develop affinity proteomics technologies and to enhance cancer biomarker discovery platform. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway University of London. His main research interests include (i) Rational engineering of therapeutic and stimuli-responsive proteins and (ii) Molecular biomarkers of cancer. Analytical Biochemistry and Nanobiotechnology have been long-term research passion.

Tatjana Stanojković was born in Belgrade on June 26, 1966. She graduated from the Faculty of Biology of the University of Belgrade, Department of Molecular Biology and Physiology. She has been employed at the Institute of Oncology and Radiology of Serbia since 1997, since July 2014, as head of the Department of Biological Response Laboratory, Department of Experimental Oncology. Field of expertise: Experimental oncology, Medicinal Chemistry, in vitro investigation of the anticancer activity of novel synthesized compounds, natural product and marine organisms. Member of the Editorial Board, BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine since 2012.

Dr. Petri Turhanen, Ph.D, is university researcher at University of Eastern Finland (UEF), School of Pharmacy. He received M.Sc. in organic chemistry at University of Jyväskylä in 1997 and Ph.D. in synthetic organic and medicinal chemistry at University of Kuopio in 2003. His scientific interests are focused on synthetic chemistry with green chemistry aspect; mainly on organophosphorus chemistry (like bisphosphonates and ATP analogues) and novel applications of prepared compounds. Dr. Turhanen has authored more than 50 publications and conference presentations being a main author in most of them, he also has 2 patents.

Nikos Tagmatarchis is a Deputy Director in the Theoretical and Physical Chemistry Institute, at the National Hellenic Research Foundation, in Athens, Greece. He has studied chemistry and received his PhD from the Chemistry Department, University of Crete, Greece (1997). Dr. Tagmatarchis accomplishments are reflected in over 180 scientific peer-reviewed research articles, while his work has been cited more than 8200 times associated with an h-index of 37. He has been the recipient of the European Young Investigator Award (2004), Visiting Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2011-2012) and Invited Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in Japan (2013-2014).

Dr. Igor V. Tetko obtained his MSc degree (with honor) from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (USSR), received his PhD from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and Habilitation in Chemoinformatics from the University of Strasbourg. He is group leader of Chemoinformatics at the Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany where he coordinates Horizon2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN) “Big Data in Chemistry”. Dr. Tetko is also the CEO of BIGCHEM GmbH, which develops and licenses software technologies for big data analysis in chemistry and life sciences. Dr. Tetko is on the list of The Most Cited Researchers in Computer Sci. & Eng.

Prof. Jakob Troppmair did PhD in 1982 from the University of Innsbruck, Austria. During a stay abroad at the NCI/NIH (Frederick, MD, USA, 6 years) and at the University of Würzburg (Würzburg, Germany, 9 years) Prof. Troppmair returned to Innsbruck, where in 2007, Prof. Troppmair was appointed as full professor for Molecular Transplantation Biology at the Medical University of Innsbruck. Prof. Troppmair's laboratory dissects the role of mitochondria in the response to cellular stress (i.e. oncogenic transformation, ischemia-reperfusion injury), with the goal to exploit this knowledge for the development of novel therapeutic approaches in the area of cancer and solid organ transplantation.

Michele Tonelli is Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Pharmacy, University of Genoa (Italy), since 2020. He graduated in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology (2003) and received his Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry in 2007. For over ten years, he has gained experience in the synthesis of heterocycle compounds endowed with different biological activities. He has authored more than 50 papers published in reputed international peer-review journals, in addition to several poster and oral presentations. His main research interests are in the field of antiviral, antiprotozoal and anticancer agents, TAAR ligands and MTDLs for Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Wei Wang received his Ph.D. in 2006 from Peking University, after a postdoctoral fellow stay during 2007-2011, at the University of Mississippi, Dr. Wang came back to the Hunan University of Chinese Medicine. In 2020, Dr. Wang received the award of the Yangtze River Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education, People's Republic of China. Dr. Wang's current research interests are focused on the material basis of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) in Hunan, the new method of screening the activity of TCM based on specific target, and the targeted synergistic effect of active components of TCM.

Dr. Zbigniew J. Witczak obtained his Ph.D. from the Medical University of Lodz, Faculty of Pharmacy, Lodz, Poland. After the postdoctoral work with Roy L. Whistler at Purdue University he briefly worked an industry (A. E. Staley) and joined in 1990, a Faculty in School of Pharmacy at the University of Connecticut. He moved to Wilkes University, Nesbitt School of Pharmacy in 2000 where he became a full Professor. He has published over hundred research papers and book chapters, edited six books and he holds six patents in the fields of carbohydrate medicinal and biological chemistry.

Professor Wong is the dean of science, chair professor at the Division of Life Science, and director of Molecular Neuroscience Center at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He obtained his PhD in pharmacology from the University of Cambridge and conducted postdoctoral training at the University of California San Francisco. His research is focused on the molecular pharmacology of G protein-coupled receptors and its application in drug discovery. As a highly accomplished researcher, Prof Wong has published a number of scientific papers in international journals and holds a few patents.

Dr. Xu is a Professor & Founding Director of Research Center for Drug Discovery at the Sun Yat-Sen University. He has more than 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, practicing medicinal chemistry, chemoinformatics and computer-aided drug design in the fields of discovering anti-infectious, and anti-metabolic syndrome agents. Previously, Dr. Xu served as the Director of CADD at DPI/Biofocus, Principal scientist at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., R&D director at BIO-RAD Sadtler Division. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Science & Technology of China. He has authored more than 80 publications and 10 patents. Dr. Xu is also an adjunct Professor of University of Pittsburgh and Melboune RMIT University. With nearly 50 scientists, his labs are facilitated for herbal medicine studies, structure biology, pharmacology, and high performance computing.

Professor Zhang received the Ph.D. degree in 2000, and completed Postdoctoral research from Georgetown University and Harvard Medical School during 2002-2004. He was promoted to Instructor of Harvard Medical School in 2004 and received Alfred Pope Young Investigator and Adam Corneel Young Investigator awards. In 2006, he received the Hundred Talent Project award from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and became the Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM). In 2011, he was awarded the Distinguished Young Investigator award from the Chinese Natural Science Foundation. He has authored or co-authored over 110 publications and 40 patents. Several drug candidates from his research group are now under clinical or preclinical studies.

Dr. Peng Zhan is currently working as Associate Professor in Shandong University. In 2012, he was appointed as a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow in Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Japan. His research area involves discovery of novel antiviral anticancer and neurodegenerative diseases-related agents based on the rational drug design approaches. So far, he has published more than 100I academic papers, more than 20 patents as co-inventor, and received the first prize of Shandong Province Science (2010), CPA-Servier Young Investigator Awards in Medicinal Chemistry (2016), and and many other honors and awards.

Dr. Wen Zhang is a full professor at Ningbo institute of marine medicine, Peking University. He holds a joint professorship with Tongji University and serves as the director of Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Marine Drugs, and the vice chairman of Marine Drug Division of Chinese Pharmaceutical Association. Many scientific articles and patents are to his credit. His main focus is on the chemical and pharmacological investigation of marine natural products with antifungal, antitumoral, and immunomodulatory activities.

Dr. Pavlos Zarogoulidis, M.D, Ph. D Director of Pulmonary Department, Bioclinic Private Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece has a MS.c in "drug, design, development and therapy" and his Ph. D is regarding inhaled chemotherapy for lung cancer. He is a member of the European Respiratory Society (ERS), American Thoracic Society (ATS), European Association for Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology (EABIP), and more. He is an editor in "Journal of Thoracic Disease", editor in "Translational Lung Cancer Research", editor in "Journal of Nanomedicine and Biotherapeutic Discovery" and many more. He has more than 369 publications. He is a junior lecturer of pulmonary oncology for the past four years in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece.

Ning Zhang graduated from Nankai University, China, and received his Ph.D. degree in bioinformatics in 2010. He worked as a post-doctor in Nankai University from 2011 to 2012, and as a visiting scholar in Griffith University, Australia from 2016 to 2017. Now he is an associate professor in Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tianjin University. His interests include bioinformatics, computational biology, system biology, biomedical imaging analysis, database, and software design. He has published over 60 research papers in outstanding journals, and was evaluated as "Top 1%" highest cited Chinese author in Biology field by Royal Society of Chemistry, UK, in 2015.

Dr. Yongmin Zhang got his Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from South Paris University in 1986. He is currently first class research director at the CNRS, Ph.D, supervisor at Sorbonne University. He has received many research awards, such as "Prize of medicinal chemistry research" which he got from the 25th International Conference on Medicinal Chemistry. Dr. Yongmin Zhang has published many original research papers, and supervised more than 50 doctoral theses and post-doctoral works. His current research interests include biologically active oligosaccharides, glycosphingolipids, sugar vaccine, modified cyclodextrins, and fullerene chemistry, aiming at the carbohydrate-based drug development.

Professor Zhang received the Ph.D. degree in 2000, and completed Postdoctoral research from Georgetown University and Harvard Medical School during 2002-2004. He was promoted to Instructor of Harvard Medical School in 2004 and received Alfred Pope Young Investigator and Adam Corneel Young Investigator awards. In 2006, he received the Hundred Talent Project award from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and became the Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM). In 2011, he was awarded the Distinguished Young Investigator award from the Chinese Natural Science Foundation. He has authored or co-authored over 110 publications and 40 patents. Several drug candidates from his research group are now under clinical or preclinical studies.

Dr. Mirjana B. Čolović, a research associate, employed at University of Belgrade, Serbia, from 2005. Her research activities are in the field of enzymology, toxicology, biosensors, physiologically active compounds and their interaction with biomolecules. She has published 36 papers in impacted international journals, 4 chapters in books, 3 articles in national scientific journals, and over 60 abstracts in international and national scientific meetings. She served as a reviewer in over 20 international journals and 9 international projects.

Ebrahim Mostafavi is currently at Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, Stanford School of Medicine. His research interests revolve around the use of cardiac iPS cells to design and develop in vitro models for cardiovascular disease modeling and drug screening as well as CRISPR/Cas gene-editing for cardiovascular diseases. During his PhD, he also received training at both Harvard Medical School & Northeastern universities on engineering and development of (nano)biomaterials and 3D scaffolds to create biologically complex tissues and organs for tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and translational applications. His scholarly work consists of more than 70 publications with an H-index of 22 (i10-index= 35) on Google Scholar Profile. He currently serves as the Associate Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Nanomedicine (IF=6.4, Q1) at Dove Medical Press/T&F, and an Editorial Board Member of several biomedical and materials engineering journals, including, Nature Scientific Reports (IF=4.379), Springer Nature Journal of Nanostructure in Chemistry (IF=6.39, Q1), MDPI Functional Biomaterials (CiteScore=9.4, Q1), BMC Biotechnology (IF=2.563, Q1), Frontiers in Oncology & Frontiers in Pharmacology, etc. He also contributed to more than 15 book chapters and was selected as the editor of several books.

Dr. Adrián Alejandro Schcolnik Cabrera obtained his degree in medicine from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico. He is affiliated with the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, University of Montréal, Montréal, Canada. His research mainly focuses on Cancer Stem Cells, ELISA, Western Blot, Flow Cytometry, Bioinformatics Analysis, Cell Culture, Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, Metabolomics, Cancer Biology, and Cancer Metabolism. Dr. Cabrera has published more than 30 articles in various journals of international repute, accumulating more than 390 total citations.

Dr. Andrea Angeli received a degree in 2014 in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology from the University of Florence (IT). In 2019, he received his Ph.D. in drug research and innovative treatments from the University of Florence (IT). He was appointed as a postdoctoral fellow at University of Florence, Neurofarba department. His research was focused on metallo-enzymes and their modulators of activity. He is a co-author of a number of publications in peer-reviewed international journals and some book chapters.

Dr. Pankaj Attri is an Associate Professor at the Center of Plasma Nano-Interface Engineering, Kyushu University, Japan. Dr. Attri obtained his Ph.D. from the Department of Chemistry, University of Delhi, India, in 2013. He worked as an Assistant Professor at Department of Electrical and Biological Physics and in Plasma Bioscience research center, Kwangwoon University, Korea, from 2013-2017. Dr. Attri has received many honors such as long term fellowship at Kyushu University, Japan, in 2016. Dr. Attri is the author of more than 90 publications and 8 book chapters of reputed publishers and has earned 4 Patents. Dr. Attri is currently working as an Editorial Board Member of Scientific Reports Journal in Chemical Physics panel.

Professor Sergey Bachurin received the Ph.D. degree in 1980 and Doctor of science degree in 1994 in Moscow State University. Since 1981, he is working at the Institute of Physiologically Active Compounds Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) in Chernogolovka city. From 2006 till 2018 he remained the Director of the Institute. Since January 2019, he is a scientific supervisor of IPAC RAS and Head of the Department of Medicinal and Biological Chemistry. In 2003, he was elected as a member of Russian Academy of Sciences. His research activity related to the discovery of novel agents for neurodegenerative diseases treatment, in particular for Alzheimer’s disease. He is the main author of the investigative drug for Alzheimer’s disease Dimebon, which successfully passed Phase 2 clinical trials on AD patients (Lancet 2008,372(9634):207-15) and number of novel neuroprotective agents that have passed preclinical trials (Mol Neurobiol. 2018,55(1):335; Sci Rep. 2015, 2017, 2019). He is the author of more than 250 articles in peer-reviewing journals and about 40 patents. His h-index is 29 in WoS datebase. Bachurin was an invited lecturer at the University of California (San Francisco), and at the Tufts University (Boston). He is the Chairman of Scientific Council of RAS on “Medicinal Chemistry”, Head of Moscow Chemical Society and Council member of European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry.

Simone Brogi is Research Fellow at the University of Naples "Federico II" Italy, in the Dept. of Pharmacy from 2017 till date. He is responsible for the computational part of the project "Bioinformatics studies on innovative targets for developing new natural product-based drugs" with scientific advisor Prof. Ettore Novellino. From 2012-2017, he was Head of the Molecular Modeling Unit in the Department of Biotechnology, Chemistry and Pharmacy at the University of Siena, Italy. He completed Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences (XXIII Cycle) from University of Siena – Dept. Pharmaceutical and Applied Chemistry in 2010, M.Sc. in Drug Design and Synthesis from the same university in 2008. Dr. Brogi has over 10 years of experience in applying the knowledge of molecular modeling to solve problems inherent to medicinal chemistry research. He has been the thesis correlator in a number of theses. He received a number of awards such as, Outstanding reviewer award for European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (Elsevier). He has been the Principal Investigator in a funded project. He has 58 publications to his credit with an H Index of (Scopus/Google Scholar) 17/19. His number of citations are (Scopus/Google Scholar) 672/792.

Dr. Anna Bersano obtained her medical degree in 1997 from Milan University Medical School, Milan, Italy. She is affiliated with the Cerebrovascular Unit, Foundation IRCCS Carlo Besta Neurological Institute, Milan, Italy. Her areas/fields of primary expertise include stroke, pathogenesis, genetics, cerebrovascular circulation, Moyamoya Disease, Cerebrovascular Disease, etc. Dr. Bersano has published more than 150 articles in various journals of international repute, accumulating more than 3,710 total citations.

Dr. Rodrigo Valenzuela Báez is an Associate Professor at the University of Chile. He completed his PhD at the Department of Nutrition, University of Toronto, Canada. His research interests include lipids in foods, diet induced obesity and liver steatosis models, cytoprotective effect of bioactive compounds, clinical trials related with fatty acid metabolism and dairy products in human nutrition. Dr. Rodrigo Valenzuela has authored over 70 publications in peer-reviewed journals and in 15 books of diverse topics.

Dr. Guido Crisponi is a Full Professor of Analytical Chemistry at Cagliari University, Italy. The majority of Dr. Crisponi works deal with analytical studies on the distribution of toxic elements in various human tissues, solution equilibria studies on the interaction between metal ions and bio-molecules by potentiometric, spectrophotometric and NMR techniques. In the last twenty years, his research group has been mainly involved in studies concerning chelation therapy to treat the toxic effects of metal ions in humans. He is a member of the Editorial Board of various international journals and is the author of more than 170 publications.

Dr. Rosanna Chianese got her master’s degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, in 2004. She completed her PhD studies in Comparative Endocrinology from the University of Padova, Italy during 2005-2008. During 2009-2011, she obtained a research fellowship entitled “Mesothelioma and biomarkers”, from the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Italy. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Experimental Medicine, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli. She also obtained the National Scientific Qualification to work as Associate Professor. She is a member of the teaching staff of PhD School in “Biochemical and Biotechnological Sciences”. She has a wide experience as reviewer for international journals and she has been the Editor of Special Issues and e-book. She has national and international collaborations; she has been involved in numerous research projects. She has published over 70 papers in various peer-reviewed international journals, books, proceedings and abstract books. She was an invited speaker at national and international conferences. She is an expert in biology of reproduction, sperm quality and epigenetic transgenerational inheritance. She has firstly identified circular RNAs in human and mouse spermatozoa.

Dr. Xianting Ding is a Professor at the School of Biomedical Engineering and is the Deputy Director of Institute for Personalized Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of California, Los Angeles, USA. His research interests are single cell protein analysis, personalized medicine with trace clinical specimens and portable bio-sensors with microfluidics. He participated in the early development of 3 multi-million-USD international research centers. He is part of the Editorial Board for Scientific Reports and SLAS Technology (JALA) and is the reviewer for 20 SCI journals. Dr. Xianting Ding is the author of 90 peer-reviewed SCI papers and has filed 30 national and international patents.

Dr. Hao Lin is a Professor of the Center for Informational Biology at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. He received his Ph.D. from Inner Mongolia University, P.R. China in 2007. His researches focused on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology. He has published over 110 peer-reviewed papers in SCI-indexed journals.

Dr. Kuen-Song Lin is a Senior Professor of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan. He is also the Director of Environmental Technology Research Centre (ETRC) and the Dean of Research and Development (R&D office) in Yuan Ze University. His research topics include waste reutilization, on-site soil and water pollution remediation, environmental and photocatalytic catalyst preparation technologies, hydrogen storage, carbon capture and sustainable energy generation. Dr. Lin has published more than 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Dr. Latronico graduated in Biology with a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy. Currently, Dr. Latronico is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the Department of Biosciences, Biotechnologies and Environment of University of Bari Aldo Moro. Dr. Latronico's research interests are mainly focused on the role of proteolytic enzymes in the pathogenetic mechanisms of neurological and infectious diseases and on the use of nanotechnologies for drug delivery in the central nervous system. Dr. Latronico has an expertise in cell biology, in vitro and in vivo model of neuroinflammation, techniques with particular reference to the purification of glial cells from newborn rats and setting up of artificial model of blood-brain barriers.

Cristina Maccallini received her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2002 from the University of Chieti, where she is currently assistant professor at the Department of Pharmacy. Her main research interests is focused on the design, synthesis and biological evaluation of small molecules targeting proteins involved in inflammation and cancer development, such as the inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase, the Carbonic Anhydrases, the Aromatase and PPARs. She is author of over 60 publications in the Medicinal Chemistry field and 1 book chapter. She is a member of the Editorial Board of various international journals and member of the Italian Chemistry Society.

Prof. Donatella Marazziti received her degree in medicine and surgery from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy. Besides psychiatry, she has also specialized in clinical biochemistry. She is affiliated as a professor of psychiatry and director of the Laboratory of Psychopharmacology at University of Pisa. Dr. Marazziti is a member of the WPA section for OCD, and a member of the International Council for OCD etc. She is on the editorial board of World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, Current Medicinal Chemistry, Life and Annals of Psychiatry. Dr. Marazziti also serves as reviewer of projects of different European research agencies. Her research interests are focused on biological markers in psychiatric and normal conditions, emotions, attachment, psychopharmacology and clinical psychiatry. She has authored many papers mainly in international journals, book chapters, a few books, two essays and one novel.

Dr. Jelena Popović-Djordjević is a Professor of Organic Chemistry in the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. She graduated from the University of Belgrade, where she received her B.A. degree in Applied Chemistry and her Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry in 2010. She is the author of more than 150 publications in leading international peer-reviewed journals, 2 book chapters and 40 papers on the international and national conferences. Her main research is related to Natural Products, Biological activity of Natural and Synthetic Compounds, Food Chemistry and Environmental Chemistry. She is a member of the Serbian Chemical Society, the Serbian Water Protection Society and the Editorial board member of Ecological Safety and Balanced Use of Resources.

Dr. Giuseppe Pappalardo graduated with majors in electrical engineering from the University of Catania, Catania, Italy, in 1983. He carried out research in Computer Science at the University of Catania, Politecnico of Milan, and the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in Computing Science and held a position as Research Associate. He is currently affiliated with the Institute of Crystallography, National Research Council (CNR), Catania, Italy. His main research focuses on Neurodegeneration, Bioinorganic Chemistry, Neuroprotection, Proteins, Peptides, Cell Culture, Neuroscience, In Vitro Cell Culture, Alzheimer's Disease, Neurodegenerative Diseases, etc. Dr. Pappalardo has published more than 115 articles in various journals of international repute, accumulating more than 2,880 total citations.

Dr. Róża Pawłowska graduated from the University of Lodz in 2005 with majors in biology, specializing in biochemistry. She is affiliated with the Division of Bioorganic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poznan, Poland. Her areas/fields of primary research expertise include Cancer Stem Cell, Glioblastoma, and Brain Neoplasms. Dr. Pawłowska has published more than 15 articles in various journals of international repute.

Dr. Ornelio Rosati graduated from the University of Perugia (Italy) in chemistry and pharmaceutical technologies in 1988. He did a Ph.D. in bioecology of entomophagous and biocontrol in the agroecosystem in 1993. Dr. Rosati is a permanent researcher at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Perugia. His research activity is essentially focused on the organic synthesis, catalysis, isolation and structural determination of natural compounds and their analogues with potential biological activity. Dr. Rosati is the author / co-author of a number of publications with a total H-index of 32.

Dr. Christos Savopoulos received his Ph.D. in 2002 from the Medical School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He currently serves as a Professor of Internal Medicine at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and also as the Head of the first Medical Propaedeutic Department of Internal Medicine at AHEPA University Hospital. He was one of the principal establishers of a Stroke Unit in the University Hospital of AHEPA, Thessaloniki, Greece, and thereafter the Head of this Stroke Unit. He is a member of 17 Greek and International Medical Scientific Societies, Associations and Working Groups. Dr. Christos Savopoulos has authored about 140 publications in international journals and 27 book chapters.

Dr. Chuanling Si obtained a medical degree from Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, South Korea. Dr. Si is affiliated as a Director & Distinguished Professor in the Department of Plant Chemistry & Fine Chemicals, Tianjin University of Science & Technology, Tianjin, China. His research expertise lies in the areas/fields of plant chemistry, fine chemicals, and wood science and technology. Dr. Si has published more than 250 articles in various journals of international repute, accumulating more than 5,510 total citations.

Dr. Xinhua Shu is an Associate Professor at Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland. He received his PhD in Pathobiology from the Hunan Medical University, China, in 1999. He received the honor of Fellowship at the University of Glasgow (1999-2001), Scotland, where he worked on the Human Pathogen Paracoccidioides Brasiliensis. In 2001, he was appointed at MRC Human Genetics Unit, Edinburgh, Scotland, to work as an Investigator Scientist for five years and then Senior Investigator Scientist. His research interests are Diabetic Retinopathy, Retinal diseases, the Disease Mechanisms of Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) and age related macular degeneration (AMD). Dr. Shu has about 110 publications.

Tatjana Stanojković was born in Belgrade on June 26, 1966. She graduated from the Faculty of Biology of the University of Belgrade, Department of Molecular Biology and Physiology. She has been employed at the Institute of Oncology and Radiology of Serbia since 1997, since July 2014, as head of the Department of Biological Response Laboratory, Department of Experimental Oncology. Field of expertise: Experimental oncology, Medicinal Chemistry, in vitro investigation of the anticancer activity of novel synthesized compounds, natural product and marine organisms. Member of the Editorial Board, BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine since 2012.

Dr. Domenico Trombetta has a Master's degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology, a Master's degree in Pharmacy, and a Ph.D. degree in Pharmacognosy. He is affiliated as Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Messina (Italy), in the Department of Chemical, Biological, Pharmaceutical and Environmental Sciences (ChiBioFarAm). His areas/fields of research expertise include antioxidants, phytochemicals, natural product chemistry, nutraceuticals, natural product pharmacology, phytochemical Analysis, bioactivity, and oxidative Stress biomarkers. Dr. Trombetta has published more than 175 articles in various journals of international repute, accumulating more than 7,520 total citations.

Dr. Jacopo Troisi is Adjunct Professor for Ph.D programme in translational medicine at Salerno University (Italy). He is a research scientist and COO at the European Biomedical Research Institute of Salerno (EBRIS), co-founded by the Harvard University and the Salerno Medical School. He is also co-founder and CEO at Theoreo srl, a spin-off company of the University of Salerno. Dr. Troisi research is related to metabolomics. In particular, he is studying the metabolomic fingerprint of several human disease as a diagnostic tool and as a mechanistic hypothesis generator. He got several international patents and awards for diagnostic tests based on metabolomic profiling.”

Dr. Chi-Meng Tzeng is a Full Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Xiamen University, China. He served the Chinese military as an MD Captain in Tri-Service General Hospital (1993-1995). He then received graduated training in Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology from Stanford University Medical School, USA, (1995-2000). Dr. Tzeng was appointed as principal Investigator in Medical R&D and industrialization at Academic Sinica (Taiwan) and at National Taiwan University Hospital (2000-2005). His research interests include Translational Medicine among Liquid Biopsy, Microbiota, Neoantigen, Immune-Cell Therapy, AI-Big Data, Herbal Medicine and Combination Theranostics. Dr. Tzeng has authored over 60 SCIs, 4 book chapters, and 13 patents and is also responsible for 14 commercial products, IVDs, supplements and medication.

Dr. Wu’s current research interests focus on the development of functional polymeric materials for pharmaceutical applications in terms of controllable drug delivery or gene delivery, with over 70 publications on Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., ACS Nano, Adv. Mater., Small, Adv. Healthcare Mater., Biomacromolecules etc and personal H-index of 25 (Google Scholar).

Dr. Cheng Wang graduated from China Pharmaceutical University in 2012 with a B.S. in pharmacy and received his M.S. degree in pharmacy in 2015 from China Pharmaceutical University. Currently he is affiliated with the School of Medicine, Changzhou University, Changzhou, China. His research interest is focused on nano-calcium carbonate based drug delivery systems, aggregation-induced emission (AIE)-active drug carriers and polymeric drug carriers. Dr. Wang has published more than 150 articles in various journals of international repute, accumulating more than 6,430 total citations.

Dr. Kang Xu received his M.M. degree from Hubei University of Chinese Medicine and his Ph.D. degree from Chongqing University, China. He studied Stem Cell Engineering and Molecular Therapy as a researcher in University of California, USA. Currently, he is serving as an Associate Professor at the Hubei University of Chinese Medicine. His research interests are Chemical Based Therapeutic Mechanism on Cardiovascular Diseases, Anti-Inflammation Activity on Arthritis of Natural Synthesized Compounds, Wound Repair and Regeneration. Dr. Kang Xu is the author of over 30 publications on Phytotherapy research, Frontiers in Pharmacology, Cell Proliferation, Wound Repair, Regeneration and Pharmaceutical Biology.

Dr. Peng Zhan is currently working as Associate Professor in Shandong University. In 2012, he was appointed as a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow in Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Japan. His research area involves discovery of novel antiviral anticancer and neurodegenerative diseases-related agents based on the rational drug design approaches. So far, he has published more than 100I academic papers, more than 20 patents as co-inventor, and received the first prize of Shandong Province Science (2010), CPA-Servier Young Investigator Awards in Medicinal Chemistry (2016), and and many other honors and awards.

Prof. Kun Zhang is a Research Fellow and a PhD advisor who comes from Shanghai Tenth Peoples’ Hospital. Nowadays, he is the Deputy Director of Ultrasound Research and Education Institute, Tongji University, School of Medicine. He has published 18 SCI papers as the first author or corresponding author in different journals. He has been chosen as the reviewer of some top journals including Advanced Materials, ACS Nano, Advanced Functional Materials Advanced Sciences, Biomaterials, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, and Theranostics. He is also elected as the members or committee members of several academic organizations. He is engaged in molecular imaging and corresponding probe design involving MRI, fluorescence imaging and ultrasound imaging as well as multi-modal imaging, and he is also an expert in immunotherapy, gene editing, tumour microenvironment modulation & monitoring, regenerative medicine, nanomedicine and interdisciplinary research.