Carbonic Anhydrases: Biochemistry and Pharmacology of an Evergreen Pharmaceutical Target

Dr. Claudiu T. Supuran received his BSc in chemistry from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romania (1987) and PhD in chemistry at the same university in 1991. In 1990, he became Assistant and then Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Bucharest. He was Visiting Scholar at the University of Florida, Gainesville, United States, at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, and Visiting Professor at University of La Plata, Argentina. In 1995 he moved to the University of Florence, Italy, where he is currently Full Professor in the Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Medicine and Child Health. His main research interests include design of enzyme inhibitors and activators, heterocyclic chemistry, chemistry of sulfonamides, sulfamates, and sulfamides, biologically active organo-element derivatives, QSAR studies, X-ray crystallography of metallo-enzymes, metal complexes with biologically active ligands (metal-based drugs), carbonic anhydrases, cyclooxygenases, serine proteases, matrix metalloproteinases, bacterial proteases, and amino acid derivatives among others. He has published more than 1900 papers in these fields.

Dr. Alessio Nocentini currently works at the Department of Neuroscience, University of Florence, Italy. He recently concluded his PhD thesis, which dealt with several aspects of carbonic anhydrase, spanning from drug-design, synthesis of inhibitors, and molecular modeling to biological evaluations of carbonic anhydrase modulators. He is now a post-doctoral researcher in Professor Supuran’s research team.