Luigi Messori was born in Florence, on March 25, 1958。
He is a member of the Department of Chemistry, University of Florence. Since 1994 he has taught General and Inorganic Chemistry and Laboratory of General and Inorganic Chemistry to students belonging to the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and to the Faculty of Sciences, in Florence. His main research interests are in the field of bioinorganic chemistry. In a first phase he has been involved in the study of the solution behavior of metalloproteins, with emphasis on metal carrier proteins (transferrins and metallothionein) and on some selected zinc enzymes (carbonic anhydrase, carboxypeptidase), within the group of Prof. Bertini. Later on, his research interests moved to consider the role of metal ions in medicine. In particular, he directed his attention towards antitumor metal complexes (mainly ruthenium(III) and gold(III) complexes) and to their interactions with nucleic acids and proteins. He is responsible of the Florence Research Unit within a COST project on antitumor metallodrugs. He has given several lectures in Italy and abroad on the above topics. He spent about one year in Frankfurt in the laboratory of biophysical chemistry. He is author of more than 190 papers, published on international scientific journals