Patronage

In 2000 Prof. Grasso obtained the “Laurea” in Chemistry in Catania (110/110 cum laude) from the University of Catania and in 2004 the PhD in Chemistry from the University of Nottingham (UK). After several post-docs he finally got a permanent position at the University of Catania in 2010 where he is currently employed as an Associate professor. He also has the National qualification to become a Full Professor. He is the ERASMUS coordinator within the Erasmus+ Program, Key Action 1 – Mobility for learners and staff-Higher Education Student and Staff Mobility with universities from France, Poland, UK, Germany and Portugal. Currently he is at the UNIVERSITE DE CERGY-PONTOISE as a visiting Professor. In 2020 he has been elected President of the Bachelor Course in Chemistry at the University of Catania.

The research of Prof. Grasso is focused on the study of molecular interactions between biomolecules involved in certain neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. In particular, some metalloproteases involved with these diseases are studied and the possibility of modulating the enzymatic activity of these biomolecules for therapeutic purposes is investigated. The influence that metal ions such as copper or zinc have on the biomolecular mechanisms involved in neurodegeneration is also studied using various analytical techniques such as mass spectrometry, surface plasmon resonance, NMR, etc.

Giuseppe Grasso has authored or co-authored more than 80 papers and he has an h-index of 28. He has attended more than 60 international conferences, presenting his work either as an oral communication or as a keynote lecture.

Dr. Jeffrey M. Witkin, Ph.D., is a senior investigator in the Laboratory of Antiepileptic Drug Discovery that he founded with neurosurgeon Jodi L. Smith at Ascension, St. Vincent in Indianapolis, Indiana.  He is also an adjunct professor at the   University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he co-led the team to bring an a2/3-selective GABAkine, KRM-II-81, to ResprireRx Pharmaceutics Inc where he now serves as a Senior Research Fellow.  Dr. Witkin is one of the co-founders of Gilgamesh Pharmaceutics and his due diligence has help to foster several new start-up companies.  For 17 years, he directed a neuroscience discovery group at the Lilly Research Labs that discovered multiple antidepressants and novel glutamate and GABA receptor neuromodulators.  Key scientific contributions from his work have enabled the discovery and development of anxiolytics, antidepressants, and antiepileptic medicines.   Dr. Witkin’s work on AMPAkines has been one of the primary mechanistic guides to the discovery of rapid-acting antidepressants.  His laboratory was the first to disclose the antiepileptic effects of the neuroactive steroid ganaxolone that was recently approved as a medicine.  His biological leadership over the studies of LY2940094 (BTX-246040), a novel NOP receptor antagonist, led to the first proof-of-principle study of antidepressant activity in patients for this mechanism.  He is the patent holder for the invention of the antiepileptic effects of LY3130481 (ES-481), the first g-8 TARP-dependent AMPA receptor antagonist under development for intractable epilepsy.  He is most excited about bringing an mGlu2/3 receptor antagonist for IV and oral use to the scientific community.  He is a world class scientist with over 250 peer-reviewed publications, and recently edited the book, Neuropsychopharmacology, for Elsevier.  He has been awarded several invention patents and multiple scientific honors.

Vladimír Havlíček studied organic technology and received a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry at the Prague Institute of Chemical Technology. After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Washington in Seattle, he began conducting proteomics, lipidomics, and metabolomics experiments in the Czech Republic, focusing on mass spectrometry imaging and ambient ionization techniques. Since 2006 he has been appointed the Chair of the Laboratory of Molecular Structure Characterization at the Institute of Microbiology (Prague, Czech Republic), now harboring microbiology, mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance, and electron microscopy equipment. In the 2022 four-month sabbatical, he received training in analytical chemistry and infection microbiology from K.A. Schug (UTA, Texas) and D.A. Stevens (CIMR, California). In medical topics, his laboratory members provide instrumental support to research groups on campus & overseas with focus to both non-communicable and infectious diseases. Laboratory central analytical concept, named infection metallomics, exploits host-microbial consortia interactions moderated with antimicrobial therapies in the lung, central nervous system, and urogenital tract infections.

Agnieszka Zelek-Molik is an assistant professor in the Department of Brain Biochemistry, Maj Institute of Pharmacology, Polish Academy of Sciences, in Kraków, Poland. In her scientific work, she focuses primarily on studying the processes accompanying the development of mental disorders related to stress and drug addiction. She gained her scientific experience also abroad, especially at the Medical University of South Carolina, working in in JF McGinty Lab of the Neuroscience Department.

Agnieszka Chocyk, PhD is a assistant professor in the Laboratory of Pharmacology and Brain Biostructure, Department of Pharmacology of the Maj Institute of Pharmacology, Polish Academy of Sciences. Her scientific experience and interests focus on the effects of early-life stress on brain maturation and functions and the mechanisms of susceptibility and resilience to stress-related psychopathologies.

Rachel Smith is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University in the USA. Her lab studies the behavioral neuroscience of drug addiction and is focused on understanding the behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms underlying habitual and compulsive behaviors.

Vittorio Maglione is a neuroscientist with over 25 years of research experience in molecular genetics, molecular and cellular biology and biochemistry and with the use of multiple study models (from primary cells to mouse models) in context of Huntington disease (HD) and other neurological disorders including Parkinson’s disease and Rett SynDr.ome. Vittorio Maglione has completed his PhD in Neurobiology from University of Catania (Italy) and postdoctoral studies first from Neurological Institute “IRCCS Neuromed” (Italy) and successively from University of Alberta (Canada). After he have been awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship, he became Group Leader at “Neurogenetics Lab” of IRCCS Neuromed. Dr. Maglione’s major interest is the investigation of the biochemical and genetic mechanisms underling neuronal dysfunctions and neurodegeneration. Over the last ten years Dr. Maglione’s research has demonstrated that the alterations in the metabolism of (glyco)sphingolipids are a critical determinant in the pathogenesis of HD and other neurological disorders and may represent a potential therapeutic target. Thanks to this research Dr.. Maglione filled a patent granted in USA in 2015 (US9023812B2). Other projects include the development of gene therapy as therapeutic approach for neurodegenerative diseases. Dr.. Maglione is author of more than 60 scientific peer-reviewed papers and is Associate Editor for Frontiers in Neuroscience – Neurodegeneration and Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience. He is also Member of the “European Huntington Disease Network” (EHDN), “Huntington Study Group” (HDS) and of both European and International Neurochemistry Society (ESN and ISN). Dr. Maglione is currently the Scientific Secretary of the International Association “Sphingolipid Club”.

Professor Alessandro Prinetti, PhD was involved in research activities within the field of sphingolipid biochemistry and cell biology since 1984. His scientific personality was shaped in two of the leading laboratories worldwide in this research area: the laboratory of Sphingolipid Biochemistry at the Dept. of Medical Chemistry, Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Milano, under the guidance of G. Tettamanti, and the laboratory of S. Hakomori at the Dept. of Pathobiology /Pacific Northwest Research Institute, University of Washington (Seattle, WA, USA). In the early years of his scientific activity, he contributed to elucidate glycosphingolipid metabolic pathways in the nervous system, and in particular to define the metabolic mechanisms responsible for the generation of bioactive sphingolipids. More recently, his studies contributed to define the concept of lipid rafts. In particular, his research highlighted the importance of sphingolipids in modulating the generation of signals at the plasma membrane by either determining the dynamic properties of specialized membrane signaling platforms, or affecting the activity of plasma membrane signaling complexes via specific sphingolipid-protein interactions. His achievements shed a new light on the role of sphingolipids in the physiopathology of nervous system and in tumor cell biology. In particular, AP studied sphingolipid patterns, metabolism and function related to neuronal differentiation and neurodegeneration, myelin formation and repair, neoplastic transformation, tumor cell adhesion and invasiveness. His current main research projects deal with the role of sphingolipids in myelin formation and repair of damaged myelin. His scientific activity is documented by 124 papers in peer-reviewed journals or book chapters (5,987 citations, h-index: 42) and more than 100 communications to scientific meetings. Prof. Prinetti has been actively engaged in scientific societies. He has been Council Member, Secretary and President of the European Society for Neurochemistry. He has been the Chair of the Programme Committee of the 24^th ESN Biennial Meeting – 8^th Conference on Molecular Mechanisms of Regulation in the Nervous System After being Council Member and Chair of different committees within the International Society for Neurochemistry, he is now the Treasurer of ISN (2021-2025).

Justyna Barut is a PhD student in the Department of Brain Biochemistry, Maj Institute of Pharmacology, Polish Academy of Sciences, in Kraków, Poland. Her PhD thesis is about creating new transgenic mice models of the early phase of Parkinson’s disease and the involvement of noradrenergic transmission in this process. She is also interested in astrocytes and their role in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease, which she investigates in her research project.

Dr. Musazzi graduated in Pharmaceutical Biotechnologies in 2004 and obtain the PhD in Pharmacological Sciences in 2008, at the University of Milano (IT). From 2009 to 2015, she worked as postdoctoral associate in the Laboratory of Neuropsychopharmacology and Functional Neurogenomics, directed by Prof. Maurizio Popoli. In 2010, she won a European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) research grant for young scientists and spent 12 months at the Aarhus University (DK), learning stereological approaches.

From 2015 to 2018, she was Assistant Professor in Pharmacology at the University of Milan and in 2020, she became tenured Associate Professor in the University of Milano-Bicocca (Department of Medicine and Surgery). Her main research interest are the investigation of the regulation of synaptic function, neuroplasticity, and gene expression in acute/chronic stress and study of the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders as well as mechanisms of psychotropic drugs.

She published over 60 articles in peer-reviewed international journals.

Yonatan Kupchik is an associate professor in the Department of Medical Neurobiology, IMRIC, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and a head of the Center for Addiction Research at the Faculty of Medicine of the Hebrew University. His lab is interested in understanding the neurobiological processes that turn normal motivated behavior into an addiction. They investigate this by combining state-of-the-art tools with behavioral models of pathological motivation to target and manipulate specific circuits in the reward system and evaluate synaptic plasticity in drug addiction and overeating.

Prof. Marta Dziedzicka-Wasylewska works at the Institute of Pharmacology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków, and at the Jagiellonian Uniwersity, Faculty of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Biotechnology.

Her research interests revolve around the mechanisms of action of antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs, with a particular focus on membrane receptors important in neurotransmission, such as dopamine and serotonin receptors. Series of papers concerning heterodimerization of G protein-coupled receptors and the role of that phenomenon in the mechanism of action of various psychotropic drugs, including clozapine and antidepressant drugs have been recently awarded by the prestigious Jedrzej Śniadecki Award of Division V Medical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2019).

More recent research is focused on mechanisms responsible for susceptibility and resilience to stress as well as on biomarkers of resilience, with a particular focus on microRNAs. In a series of papers, we’ve recently shown that certain microRNAs may serve as biomarkers of response (susceptibility or resilience) to acute and chronic stress in experimental animal models. The results in this field published in a series of papers: „Determination of the role of selected microRNAs as biomarkers of stress resilience” was awarded in 2022 by Division V Medical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences with the team prize.

In her work, prof. M. Dziedzicka-Wasylewska applies methods from the scope of biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology and cell biology as well as behavioral techniques used in psychopharmacology.

Barbara Błasiak obtained her PhD degree in physics in 2011 and habilitation in 2018. Her research focused on magnetic resonance imaging. Her career began with the rf coils design for MRI, multinuclei MR Spectroscopy and low field MRI. Currently she is working as a Professor in Institute of Nuclear Physics Department of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Krakow. She made many foreign internships at the University of Victoria, University of Calgary and National Research of Council in Canada where she was involved in the applications of nano-technology in medicine and molecular imaging of brain, breast and prostate cancer.

Dr. Jakub Wlodarczyk obtained his PhD in Physics from Warsaw University (Poland) in 2006 and a postdoctoral training in Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (Goettingen. Germany). Since 2012, he leads a Laboratory of Cell Biophysics at the Nencki Institute (Warsaw, Poland). In 2020 he was nominated Professor of Natural Sciences. The main field of his interest is aberrant synaptic plasticity underlying stress related disorders and stress resilience. He studies structural and functional synaptic modifications regulated by posttranslational modifications. He develops and employs novel imaging based techniques and mass spectrometry methods to assess the reorganization of activity patterns accompanied by local volumetric and molecular changes at the synapses.

Christian P. Müller was born in 1972 in Annaberg-Buchholz, a small place in former German Democratic Republic. After German reunification, he studied Psychology and Philosophy at the Universities of Düsseldorf and Oxford, UK. He obtained a Diploma in Experimental Psychology from Düsseldorf University, where he studied and worked in Joe Huston’s lab for many years. After several research visits at the Primate Center of Brasilia University, Brazil, and Syracuse University, US, he got his PhD in 2003 from Düsseldorf University and in 2006 his Habilitation. His own research focused on the serotonergic system and its role in behavior and behavioral pathologies. In 2007 he moved as a Senior Lecturer to the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, UK, where he built up a rodent lab focusing on the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders, and particular drug addiction. Since 2010 he is Professor for Addiction Medicine at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. With that, research scope widened with a strong interest in brain lipids and translational approaches from cell systems, rodent and primate models up to human behaviors and their evolutionary origin. So far, Christian P. Müller has published more than 160 papers and book chapters (h-index: 51). He currently serves in the editorial boards of several journals, like ‘Addiction Biology’, ‘Brain Research Bulletin’, ‘Pharmacological Reports’, ‘Psychopharmacology’, and ‘Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience’. He is Editor-in-chief of the journal ‘Behavioural Brain Research’

Shigeyuki Chaki, PhD, received a B.S. in Pharmacy from Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences (Tokyo, Japan) in 1985, an M.S. in Biochemistry from Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences in 1987, and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Tohoku University (Miyagi, Japan) in 1995. From 1990 to 1993, he was trained at the Department of Biochemistry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (Nashville, TN), where he had worked on peptide GPCRs under supervision of Dr. Tadashi Inagami. He joined Taisho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, in 1987, and has led several projects including CRF1 receptor antagonists, V1b receptor antagonists, MCH1 receptor antagonists, mGlu2/3 receptor agonists/antagonists and glycine transporter 1 inhibitors for the treatment of depression or schizophrenia. He has been responsible for leading drug discovery and development for psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, depression and anxiety at Taisho. Currently, he is Fellow at Taisho.

Dr. Chaki received a B.S. in Pharmacy from Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences (Tokyo, Japan) in 1985, an M.S. in Biochemistry from Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences in 1987, and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Tohoku University (Miyagi, Japan) in 1995. From 1990 to 1993, he was trained at the Department of Biochemistry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (Nashville, TN), where he had worked on peptide GPCRs under supervision of Dr. Tadashi Inagami. He joined Taisho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, in 1987, and has led several projects including CRF1 receptor antagonists, V1b receptor antagonists, MCH1 receptor antagonists, mGlu2/3 receptor agonists/antagonists and glycine transporter 1 inhibitors for the treatment of depression or schizophrenia. He has been responsible for leading drug discovery and development for psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, depression and anxiety at Taisho. Currently, he is Fellow at Taisho.

Józef Dulak

Danilo De Gregorio obtained a Pharm.D. degree from the University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy, followed by a Ph.D. in Neuropharmacology from the University of Campania “Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy. He trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal (QC), Canada under the supervisions of Prof. Gabriella Gobbi and Prof.  Nahum Sonenberg. Since March 2021, he holds the position of Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University. By combining cutting-edge in vivo behavioral and electrophysiological techniques in animal models, Danilo has made contributions to the understanding of the psychopharmacology of psychoactive compounds including hallucinogens and cannabinoids and their role in mental disorders.  His work has been published in relevant scientific journals (including Nature, PNAS, Nature Communications). He has received numerous awards for his work including the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) grant and the Fonds pour la recherche en Santé du Québec.

Dr Morisset-Lopez obtained her PhD in Molecular Pharmacology from Paris V University (France) in 1999 and joined the Center of Psychiatry and Neurosciences in Paris in 2002 as CNRS (The National Center for Scientific Research) researcher. She contributed to better understand the molecular mechanisms regulating the histamine H₃ receptor activity. She is currently a senior scientist at the Center for Molecular Biophysics (Orléans, France) where she co-leads the department of Biology (BioBRAT) and heads the team « Neurobiology of receptors and therapeutic innovations” (NeuRIT).  The main field of her interest lies in G protein-coupled receptors pharmacology and neurobiological mechanisms of the pathophysiology of central nervous system disorders. Her ongoing studies concern the pharmacology of serotonin 5-HT7 receptor, its biased signalling and its role in neuro-oncology, pain and neuroinflammatory diseases such as multiple sclerosis. For that purpose, her team sets up various cellular assays, based on BRET, nanoBRET and Phage display methods for drug screening and also develops animal models of neuropathologies in mice and Drosophila in order to evaluate the therapeutic potential of new 5-HT7 ligands.