Daniel Becker earned his PhD at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana and worked in the pharmaceutical industry in Searle, Pharmacia, and then Pfizer as a Project Leader and Research Fellow developing new treatments for cancer, arthritis, and cardiovascular diseases. He moved from industry to join Loyola University Chicago in 2004 where he serves as a full Professor of Chemistry performing research in synthetic organic and medicinal chemistry, especially in the discovery of new antibiotics and treatments for cancer, as well as in supramolecular chemistry. He has published more than 50 scientific papers in various areas of chemistry and is an inventor on over 50 U.S. patents.

Our research is focused on the design and synthesis of metalloenzyme inhibitors and also of serine protease and serine hydrolase inhibitors with antibiotic properties. In addition, we are interested in the synthesis and conformational dynamics of supramolecular scaffolds related to cyclotriveratrylene (CTV) with applications in host-guest chemistry. Other active research areas involve synthetic methodology including cascade reactions and metal-catalyzed functionalization reactions.

Orazio Nicolotti is Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Bari. Major interests in molecular and data modeling, drug design,
QSAR, predictive toxicology, combinatorial library design, evolutionary algorithms, docking and molecular dynamics. So far, author of 99 research papers, 7 book chapters, 1 international patent. Editor of the book “Computational toxicology” published in 2018 by Humana Press. Principal investigator of many research funded projects and industrial agreements for technology transfer.

Computer Aided Drug Designing

Prof. Alex R. Khomutov, Ph.D., D.Sci, principle investigator, Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology, Moscow, Russia. He graduated Chemical Faculty of Moscow State University in 1976. He got Ph.D and later D.Sc. degrees in Bioorganic Chemistry in Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. The main field of the interests are design and synthesis of the inhibitors/unnatural substrates of the enzymes of amino acids metabolism, including those related to biosynthesis and catabolism of biogenic polyamines spermine and spermidine, and investigation of the interaction of these analogues with enzymes and activity in cell cultures. In 2017 he was a chair of Polyamines Gordon Research Conference. A.R.Khomutov is a co-author of more than 120 papers in per-reviewed Journals.

Molecular Biology

Daniela Andrei earned her Ph.D. at Florida International University in Miami, Florida and after her graduation in 2006, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow for the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Cancer at Frederick, Maryland. She joined Dominican University in River Forest in 2008 where she serves as a full Professor of Chemistry performing research in synthetic organic and medicinal chemistry. Her research work is on nitric oxide chemistry. She has been working on the synthesis of small biological active molecules known as diazeniumdiolate or NONOates with the goal of expanding the availability of primary amine diazeniumdiolates. She has published several scientific papers in different areas of organic chemistry and is an inventor of 2 U.S. patents.

Medicinal Organic Chemistry

Karol Bruzik received his BSc. degree (1972) from the Technical University of Lodz, Poland, and his PhD. (1980) and DSc. (1987) degrees from Polish Academy of Sciences. After postdoctoral work at The Ohio State University (1981-83 and 1990-93), he joined the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy at the University of Illinois at Chicago as Assistant Professor, and is now Professor and Associate Head. He is an author of more than 100 peer review publications in the area of organic and bioorganic chemistry, enzyme mechanisms, phosphoinositide signaling and allosteric modulators of ligand-gated ion channels, with emphasis on GABA-A receptors.

Advances in Medicinal Chemistry

James Bashkin completed his D.Phil. at the age of 24 years from Oxford University and postdoctoral studies from Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry. He is Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Co-Founder and Director of Chemistry at NanoVir LLC, an antiviral company. He also worked at Monsanto, Pharmacia, and Pfizer, has published more than 73 papers in reputed journals, and has served as an editorial board member and/or associate editor of numerous journals, most notably as an Editorial Advisory Board member of Chemical Reviews from 1991-2014.

Anti-Infective Agents in Medicinal Chemistry.

Dr. Letizia Giampietro has completed Degree in Pharmacy (2000) and received her PhD in Medicinal Chemistry (2003) from the University “G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti (Italy). From 2006 to date, she is Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Analysis. She has published more than 45 papers in reputed journals.

The research interests of Dr. Letizia Giampietro include medicinal chemistry and are above all focused towards the design, synthesis and biological evaluation of fibrate derivatives active on Peroxisome Proliferator-Activate Receptors (PPARs). Lately, her research is direct to the synthesis of small molecules with anticancer, neuroprotective and antioxidant activity.

Sadaf Fatima completed her PhD from Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit, Aligarh Muslim University, India,She is now working as Assistant Professor in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India. She is expertise in the field of protein biochemistry and aggregation. Recently she has started working in the field of Ayurvedic Biotechnology. She is working on projects related to medicinal chemistry in the field of protein aggregation.

Modern Ayurvedic Biotechnology.