Antonio Lupia

Antonio Lupia was born in Catanzaro (Italy) on March 7th, 1989. In 2015 he received a degree in Pharmacy at the University "Magna Græcia" of Catanzaro (Italy), discussing an experimental thesis in computational chemistry titled "Identification of new selective bioactive ligands for phospho-tyrosine-phosphatase 1B" under the supervision of Prof Anna Artese. During this time, he worked in the Molecular Design Lab group at the Frëie University of Berlin - Institute of Pharmacy – in Gerhard Wolber's Lab. In 2019, at the University Magna Græcia of Catanzaro, he reached a PhD degree in Life Sciences defending a thesis entitled "Molecular modelling of epitopes recognised by neoplastic B-cells in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL)", also receiving the Paul Ehrlich Euro-PhD award. Antonio has been deeply involved in in-silico computational analysis of epitopic reactivity of tumour B cell clones in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL) by first analysing the structure of the idiotypic region of the B cell receptor (BCR), then by identifying the common chemical features of the peptides recognised by different CLL IgBCR, so-called cross-reactive (CR) Id-peptides (DOI: 10.1016/j.ejmech.2019.111838). During the PhD training program, he spent seven months at the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR) of Bellinzona, Switzerland, under the supervision of Dr Francesco Bertoni and Dr Eugenio Gaudio. Here, he acquired knowledge of new bioinformatics tools, including a novel algorithm for Detecting the Mechanism of Action based Network Dysregulation (DeMAND). Associated with the bioinformatic tool, he used in-silico computational methods to study tumour targets for promising ligands. The scientific interests concern the application of computational methods, including Pharmacophore, Molecular Docking, 3D-QSAR, Molecular Dynamics and Virtual Screening techniques, as well as a great interest in the study and application of processes based on Machine Learning (ML) to investigate the drug-receptor interactions, design and lead-optimisation of potential drugs. Further interests are related to assessing complex and atypical ligands/targets, such as protein-protein interactions or peptide-antibody. To date, the main research interest is focused on all Flaviviridae family (DENV 1-2-3-4), ZIKA, WNV, YFV, and in particular, NS3-NS3B protease complex, which has been established as a valuable target for drug design to treat all flavivirus infections. Antonio has collaborated with prestigious international research teams both in research-related Projects and as part of the Organizer Committee of national/international meetings. He is a co-founder of the Net4Science academic spinoff. All this underlines high flexibility and team-based workability chiefly in dynamic and changing circumstances, but always with a remarkable scientific curiosity.