Prof. Alexander H. Dalpke is the Medical Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases, Medical Microbiology at University Hospital Heidelberg and serves as Full Professor for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene in the Medical Faculty.
Previously he was head of the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Virology at Technical University Dresden.
Alexander Dalpke is a board certified medical microbiologist and a trained immunologist. He is member of various collaborative research centers, amongst others TRR319 “RMaP: RNA modification and processing”.
Alexander Dalpke is also member of the German Center of Infectious Diseases (DZIF) and the German Center of Lung Research (DZL).
Furthermore, Alexander Dalpke is appointed member of the german STIKO (Standing Committee on Vaccination).
His research focuses on immunostimulation by nucleic acids. Specifically, he studies the importance of RNA modifications and RNA processing in TLR7/8 stimulation. In a second research field he studies microbiome alterations in cystic fibrosis aiming at interactions of commensal and pathogenic bacteria.
Antonello Merlino is Full Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy. He graduated and got his PhD in Chemical Sciences in the prof. Lelio Mazzarella’s group, in Naples, working on the structural determination of monomeric and domain swapped dimeric forms of ribonucleases.
His most recent research activity focuses on the structural determination of adducts formed upon reaction between V-, Rh-, Ir-, Ru-, Au- and Pt-based drugs and proteins.
He published more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles. He serves in the Editorial Board of BBA Proteins and Proteomics, Biomed Research International, International Journal of Molecular Sciences and Pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Demetres D. Leonidas is a Professor of Biochemistry at the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology of the University of Thessaly. He graduated from the Department of Chemistry of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1987) and holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the Department of Biology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bath, UK and at the Harvard University School of Medicine, USA. Since April 2024 he is the President of the Regional Research and Innovation Council of Thessaly.
Dr. Leonidas’ research focuses on structural biochemistry and structure-driven drug discovery against type 2 diabetes, cancer, and inflammatory diseases.
To date, he has published 126 peer-reviewed journal articles, that have attracted more than 4000 citations (Scopus, h index 35). Of his published work, 64% refers to research work carried out in collaboration with researchers from abroad while 30% of his publications are in the top 25% of the most cited articles worldwide.
PIZZO Eliodoro is Full Professor in Biochemistry at the Department of Biology of the University of Naples Federico II, where he got Degree in Biological Sciences (Summa cum Laude, 2001) and PhD in Biochemistry and Cellular/Molecular Biology (2006).
In Biochemistry at the Department of Biology of the University of Naples Federico II
From 1 March 2009 to 31 August 2018 Researcher;
From 1 September 2018 to 22 October 2024 Associate Professor;
From July 2022 to present Coordinator of Master’s degree;
From 23 October 2024 to present Full Professor.
Main interests:
Functional and structural characterization of vertebrate RNases, peptides, linear and cyclic peptidomimetics.
Identification and evolutionary studies of ancestral vertebrate RNases.
Stress response properties in keratinocytes and neurons of human angiogenin and RNase 7.
Georgios A. Spyroulias is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacy at the University of Patras (GR). He graduated in 1989 from the Department of Chemistry of Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki and he joined the University of Crete for post-graduate studies and research at the field of Bioinorganic Chemistry until 1995. Then he started his Post-Doctoral research in Biomimetic Catalysis at the University of Paris V (1995-6). In 1997 he moved to the Center of Magnetic Resonance (U of Florence) and he started his research activities in the field of NMR investigation of protein through NMR Spectroscopy. His research was financially supported by the “Marie-Curie Research Training Grants” program, while in 2000 he returned in Greece, at University of Patras (UPAT) through an EU reintegration grant (“Marie-Curie Return Grant”). In 2003 he was appointed as a Faculty Member, while in 2013 he established a state-of-the-art NMR equipment, 700MHz, through a highly competitive EU Research Grant (FP7-Capacities, Research Potential).
His work is focused on conformational dynamics studies of biomolecular drug targets, supported by a number of EU FP6/FP7/H2020 and national projects (>40) and it has been published in ~150 scientific articles (h-index 32, 4200 citations) and in >60 data depositions in Protein Data Bank (PDB) and Biological Magnetic Resonance Bank (BMRB).
He has also been the Chair of UPAT Department of Pharmacy (2015-20) and he is a member is several scientific societies.
Prof. Ronald Raines received his Sc.B. degree in chemistry and biology at MIT. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry at Harvard University for research done with Jeremy R. Knowles. He was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow with William J. Rutter in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. He then joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he became the Henry Lardy Professor of Biochemistry, Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Biology, and a Professor of Chemistry. He was a Visiting Associate in Chemistry at Caltech in 2009. In 2017, he returned to MIT as the Roger and Georges Firmenich Professor of Natural Products Chemistry, an Extramural Member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Professor Raines is an author of over 420 peer-reviewed journal articles and an inventor on more than 65 US patents. He has advised over 100 graduate students and postdoctorates. Using techniques that range from synthetic chemistry to cell biology, the Raines group is illuminating in atomic detail both the chemical basis and the biological purpose for protein structure and protein function. The efforts of the Raines group are leading to insights into the relationship between amino-acid sequence and protein function (or dysfunction), as well as to the creation of novel molecules with desirable properties. For example, they have discovered an RNA-cleaving enzyme that is in a multi-site human clinical trial as an anti-cancer agent.
Dr. Antoni Benito is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Girona’s Department of Biology, where he leads the “Protein Engineering” research group.
His work aims to develop novel protein-based antitumor drugs, particularly those derived from ribonucleases and viral proteins like apoptin. Additionally, his research also focuses on designing recombinant protein variants to explore biological processes such as protein folding and aggregation, using ribonucleases as a model.
Dr. Benito has authored 70 publications, primarily in the field of ribonucleases, with an h-index of 20.
Brian Becknell, MD, PhD, is a pediatric nephrologist and physician scientist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Research Director of the Kidney and Urinary Tract Center at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute. He received his medical and PhD degrees from The Ohio State University (OSU), followed by pediatric residency and pediatric nephrology fellowship.
He is currently an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the College of Medicine at OSU. His clinical and research interests are focused on congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract, which account for over half of children with chronic kidney disease. Many of these children suffer from recurrent bacterial urinary tract infections (UTIs), which place them at risk for worsening kidney function.
For the past ten years, his team has studied the roles and regulation of the antimicrobial RNase A Superfamily during UTI.
Brian lives in Columbus, OH, USA with his wife and four children.
Frank J. Hernandez, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor (Wallenberg Fellow) and Group Leader of the Nucleic Acids Technologies Lab (NAT-Lab) at Linköping University, Sweden, as well as a Research Associate Professor (Ikerbasque Fellow) at the University of Navarra (TECNUN). He obtained his B.Sc. in Microbiology from the University of Antioquia, Colombia, in 2003, followed by a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University Rovira i Virgili, Spain, in 2008. His research focuses on nucleic acid-based technologies, spanning biosensing, drug delivery, and disease diagnostics. As a postdoctoral researcher in Denmark (University of Southern Denmark, 2008-2009) and the USA (University of Iowa, 2010-2013), he contributed to the development of innovative drug delivery systems and activatable fluorescence probes for bacterial detection.
At Linköping University, his current research explores nucleases as biomarkers for therapeutic approaches and has led to the pioneering of the drug delivery method Therapeutic OligonUCleotides Activated by Nucleases (TOUCAN), an innovative drug delivery system with high precision, utilizing oligonucleotides as nanocarriers to deliver nucleoside analogues and other drug cargo molecules.
Giovanni Gotte, who is born on February 17th, 1968 at Padova, Italy, got his Bachelor degree in Chemistry in 1994 at University of Padova and PhD degree in Biochemical Sciences in 2000 at University of Verona.
2001-2005:Post-doc grants.
2006:Research Assistant in the same Biological Chemistry Section, Biochemistry.
From Oct.2015 to date: Associate Professor in Biochemistry, belonging to the Dept of Neuroscience, Biomedicine and Movement Sciences, Biological Chemistry Section, University of Verona.
Expertise: protein structure-function: chromatography, electrophoresis, enzymatic kinetics, spectroscopic analysis, analyses after chemical modifications or protein aggregation.
Research topics: structural and functional investigations on pancreatic-type RNases and its oligomers produced upon chemical modifications and/or cross-linking, metalation, or through protein self-association. Studies in particular devoted to RNase A, onconase, RNase 5 (angiogenin) and RNase 1, in collaboration with national and/or international research groups. Investigations performed also on the dimerization-oligomerization of other proteins, thanks to other collaborations.
Dr. Douglas Laurents was trained by Nick Pace (Texas A&M), Buzz Baldwin (Stanford) and Manuel Rico (CSIC), three “ribonucleaseologists” interested in protein stability, folding, structure and dynamics. With Giovanni Gotte & Massimo Libonati, (U. Verona), Maria Vilanova, A. Benito & Marc Ribo (U. Gerona) he studied the mechanism of Ribonuclease A 3D domain swapping using NMR spectroscopy.
Currently General Secretary of the Spanish Biophysical Society, Member of the Editorial Board of J. Biol. Chem. and a senior staff scientist at the “Blas Cabrera” Institute of Physical Chemistry (CSIC, Madrid).
D. Laurents is interested in the conversion of the RNA-binding protein CPEB3 into a functional amyloid. This process is key to memory consolidation in all animals except sponges. In humans, there are only eight known ribozymes. One of them is a self-cleaving ribozyme inside the CPEB3 gene which regulates the CPEB3 protein; this will be the focus of D. Laurents’ talk.
Roeland Boer is a research professional in the field of structural biology, with experience in drug design and molecular recognition.
He routinely uses structural biology techniques, such as electron microscopy, single crystal diffraction and small angle scattering, to solve the structures of biologically relevant molecules.
His research interests include the initiation of DNA replication, DNA-binding drug-like molecules and transcription regulation.
