Carbonic Anhydrase Inhibitors

Neera Raghav

Dr. Raghav completed her PhD in Chemistry and has dedicated 30 years to the teaching profession. She has been working as a Professor since 2011 in the Department of Chemistry at Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, India. Her research interests include the synthesis and evaluation of enzyme inhibitors. Several of her research papers have been published in leading national and international journals. Her research group has filed a number of patents in the field of enzyme inhibitors and drug delivery systems—one has been granted, and others are currently under review.

Claudiu T. Supuran

Dr. Supuran has been a Professor of Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Florence, Italy, since 1995. He completed his PhD at the University of Bucharest, Romania, and subsequently worked as a visiting scholar at the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA, and at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. He has also served as a visiting professor at the University of La Plata, Argentina, and at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

His main research interest lies in the medicinal chemistry and biochemistry of carbonic anhydrases, a field in which he has made significant contributions. These include the design of numerous novel classes of enzyme inhibitors and activators, elucidation of their mechanisms of action at the molecular level, discovery of new isoforms and their roles in various diseases (such as cancer, obesity, epilepsy, neuropathic pain, and cognitive disorders), as well as the discovery and characterization of carbonic anhydrases from diverse organisms (including bacteria, fungi, corals, and non-human vertebrates).

Additional research interests include the X-ray crystallography of metalloenzymes, heterocyclic chemistry, the chemistry of sulfonamides, metal-based drugs, cyclooxygenases, serine proteases, matrix metalloproteinases, bacterial proteases, and amino acid derivatives. He has published more than 2,300 papers in these areas, and his Hirsch index is 170. One of the compounds discovered in his laboratory (SLC-0111) is currently in Phase II clinical trials for the treatment of advanced metastatic solid tumors.