Full professor of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Milano-Bicocca, he also holds a permanent professorship at the Ecole Nationale Superieure (ENS) of Lyon (France). President of the MicrobiotaMi association (www.microbiotami.com), and is a Delegate of the Rector for the University of Innovation Foundation (www.u4i.it), an organism devoted to the valorization of innovation and providing decisional support to University start-ups. Founder and head of the scientific board of the academic spin-off CP2 Biotech (March 2020), whose focus is the valorization of new drug hits and the development of innovative therapeutic approaches to vaccine adjuvants and inflammatory diseases.
Research interests: drug discovery and development, chemical biology, in particular the use of small organic molecules to interrogate biological systems. His group developed and patented innovative modulators of the innate immunity receptor TLR4. Some of this compounds are in preclinical phase of development as vaccine adjuvants and a collaboration is ongoing with Croda/Avanti Lipids to enter the veterinary market. Other first-in-class drug leads against heart failure were discovered, in collaboration with the company Windtree (USA), now in clinical phase of development. Is group published more than 120 papers and he is inventor in more than 10 patents, he delivered more than 50 invited lectures to international congresses, H index = 36 (scopus), 42 (Google Scholar).