Giacomo Paonessa

I have more than 40 years of expertise in molecular and cellular biology and, for most of that time, drug discovery in infectious diseases field has been my main interest. From 1999, I oversaw drug discovery efforts targeting Hepatitis C Virus for the identification and optimization of leads for pre-clinical development of inhibitors of Hepatitis C virus polymerase and protease. This work led to the discovery of Grazoprevir as approved therapy for HCV (as ZepatierTM). Since 2010, I worked with other flavivirus, such as Zika and Dengue virus, as well as on parasitic diseases caused by Plasmodium falciparum, Trypanosoma brucei, Trypanosoma cruzi and Schistosoma mansoni. My work is mainly concentrated on the development of cellular assays directed at the measurement of virus or parasitic replication. In many cases, such assays have been used for high throughput screening focusing on the search of novel therapeutic targets and therapeutic drugs.