Professor Claudiu Supuran

Professor Claudiu Supuran

Professor Supuran is a professor of medicinal chemistry at the Neurofarba Department, Section of Pharmaceutical and Nutriceutical Sciences, University of Florence, Italy. His main research interest is on enzyme inhibitors, and especially carbonic anhydrase inhibitors, of which he discovered several new classes in recent years.

One of the sulfonamides discovered in his group entered Phase I clinical trials in 2014 for the treatment of advanced, metastatic solid tumors (being actually in Phase Ib). He is Editor-in-Chief of Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents, Journal of Enzyme Inhibition and Medicinal Chemistry, Current Enzyme Inhibition.
His laboratory, comprising 10 researchers, Ph D students and post-docs is involved in drug design studies, synthesis, enzymology, molecular biology, computational and X-ray crystallographic studies, mainly of enzyme inhibitors.

For the last 25 years the main interest of his research was focused on carbonic anhydrases and their modulators of activity. He has published more than 1350 papers, his Hirsch factor is h = 110 and the number of citations since 1995 is greater than 50100. In 2013 he was rated as the most cited scientists in Pharmacology & Toxicology by LabTimes.

Carbonic Anhydrases as Drug Targets | Wednesday 2 November 2016

Carbonic anhydrases (CAs) are proteins present in all organisms living on earth. They interact with carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for the hot house effects, which is generated by many organisms and used by plant for photosynthesis. The CAs rapidly convert carbon dioxide into bicarbonate, a weak base, and an acid, interfering with the acid-base balance in many tissues, in both plant, animals and microorganisms.

There are many types of such proteins in all investigated life forms. Interference with the activity of these proteins has pharmacological applications. Compounds that diminish their activity, i.e., CA inhibitors, have clinical applications as drugs (diuretics, antiglaucoma, antiepileptics and antiobesity agents). One such compound is currently in clinical trials in the USA and Canada as an anticancer/antimetastatic agent. By interference with the activity of the CAs from pathogenic microorganisms, antiinfective applications of the carbonic anhydrase inhibitors are also envisageable. In fact, antimalarials, antifungals and antibacterial agents belonging to such substances started to be explored in the last period.

The group at university of Florence is involved in research in all these fields: antitumor, antoconvulsants, antiobesity and antiinfective agents based on CA inhibitors