Alane Beatriz Vermelho is Full Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil, where she coordinates the Laboratory of the Biotechnology Network BIONOVAR - Biocatalysis, Bioproducts and Bioenergy Unit. She received her Ph.D. in Microbiology in 1991 from the Institute of Microbiology Paulo de Góes – UFRJ, Brazil, and in 2006 she carried out postdoctoral research at EMBRAPA, a research corporation affiliated with the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture. She acted as Director of the Microbiology Institute Paulo de Góes of UFRJ and member of the Executive Group of the Industrial Complex of the Life Sciences until 2016. She is currently a member of the Committee for Management and Evaluation of Intellectual Property of UFRJ and GT - Microbiology of the Brazilian Institute of Petroleum, Gas and Biofuels (IBP). She has been actively promoting the academia-industry interaction throughout her career, and is a member of the joint Management Committee UFRJ-Empresas / UFRJ of the technological park.Claudiu T. Supuran is a Full Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at Dipartimento Neurofarba, Universita` degli Studi di Firenze, Sezione di Scienze Farmaceutiche e Nutraceutiche, Florence, Italy. He received his BSc in Chemistry from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romania (1987), and Ph. D. in Chemistry at the same university in 1991. His research interests focus on drug development against Carbonic anhydrases and other enzymes. He has published 1700+ research articles on carbonic anhydrase enzyme research, being one of the most cited medicinal chemists worldwide. His research is also focused on enzyme inhibitors and activators, carbonic anhydrases, heterocyclic chemistry, chemistry of sulfonamides, sulfamates and sulfamides, X-ray crystallography of metallo-enzymes, biologically active organo-element derivatives, quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) studies, metal-based drugs, cyclooxygenases inhibitors, serineproteases, matrix metalloproteinases, bacterial proteases, antivirals, antitumor drugs, ophthalmologic drugs and amino acid derivatives. One sulfonamide carbonic anhydrase inhibitor discovered in his laboratory, SLC-0111, completed Phase I clinical trials as antitumor/antimetastatic agent in 2014 and is presently in Phase Ib/II clinical trials in Canada, being developed for the treatment of advanced, metastatic solid tumors.
