pH-Interfering Agents as Chemosensitizers in Cancer Therapy

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. Carradori is a very prolific researcher with papers dealing with both synthetic and natural products characterized by promising biological activities. Regarding this topic, he has been involved in the study of HAT inhibitors, hCA IX and XII inhibitors, kinesin Eg5 inhibitors and natural compounds active in the field of oncology. Recently, he has been focusing on “drug repurposing” disclosing a patent on new roles played by antiparasitic benzimidazoles as anti-cancer agents. He also was Co-Guest Editor of several special issues, co-author of chapters for two books (one edited by Elsevier) and acts as Editorial Board member of several peer-reviewed journals.

• PART I General overview of the topic: An update1. General introduction about general mechanisms of resistance in cancer (hypoxia, efflux pumps, tumoral microenvironment) and use of chemosensitizers in association with drugs already in the market2. Clinical studies analysis3. Combination therapy4. OncoimmunologyPART II Chemosensitizing agents with a validated mechanism of action5. pH regulators of the tumoral microenvironment6. Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPIs) and other pH buffering agents7. Selective hCA IX and XII inhibitors8. Epigenetic modulators9. Photosensitizing agents10. Efflux pumps and ABC transporter subfamily inhibitors (e.g., cyclosporin A, verapamil)11. Metalloproteinase inhibitors (e.g., ADAM17)12. Kinesin inhibitors13. Drug repurposing14. Innovative and putative targets for chemosensitizers15. Patent survey on chemosensitizersPART III Chemosensitizing agents from natural sources16. Natural compounds as chemosensitizers: a lesson from plants17. Natural compounds: from food to clinicPART IV Chemosensitizing agents: Computational tools and technological approaches18. Virtual screening and chemoinformatics of new library of chemosensitizers19. Nanostructures overcoming cancer resistance

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