25/01/2019
In caso ve la siate persa, questa è l'intervista al nostro presidente per: / In the case you missed it this is the interview to our President for The European Federation for Medicinal Chemistry - EFMC
This week's is Michele Mari from the University of Urbino “Carlo Bo” Italy. He is also the president of small spin-off company from the same university (GLUOS). Would you also like to have your own company?
Where and when did you obtain your PhD diploma?
I obtained my Ph.D. at University of Urbino “Carlo Bo” Italy, spending 9 months also at ETH Zurich as visiting Ph.D. Student
What was the topic of your PhD project?
“Strategic indole functionalization for the synthesis of tryptophan containing alkaloids and biologically active tryptamines”, I’ve been into pretty much chemistry from total synthesis of natural products to new anticancer compounds.
Where did you have your postdoc position?
I have a postdoc position in the same University; I love to work in a quiet place like Urbino, surrounded by the beauty of an UNESCO site.
Where do you work at the moment and what is your current position?
At the moment I share my worktime between my postdoc position at University of Urbino and my start up company GLUOS (university spin off).
What are your current research interests?
We are working on a lot of things at the moment, I’m trying to push forward the pioneering work that our group did on melatonin receptors ligands, we are synthesizing some interesting natural products with antibiotic activity, another thing that we are always looking for is the development of novel antioxidant agents, finally I am also working on the analysis and biological activity of different natural extracts.
What is the most embarrassing thing you did in the lab while doing experiments, e.g. explosions?
It happened that when we were quenching some old reagents a one meter high green flame came out from the flask, but we were working safely so it was not a problem to manage it and dispose everything in the right manner to the waste.
Which scientist do you admire the most and why?
I cant talk for hours about this because I really consider myself a science nerd, and I love to follow also other people’s work, for sure a scientist that I really like is Prof. Paul Wender, with his reaserch that goes from chemistry to biology and medicine, I’m really passionate in particular in Organic Synthesis because I’m more a synthetic medicinal chemist, so I really like also the work of Prof. Phil Baran and Prof. Erick Carreira. I have to say that there are scientists I’ve been working with that really inspired me and I have them as models such as Prof. Jeffrey Bode and Prof. Giovanni Piersanti. Than I have to say Giulio Natta, our only Italian Nobel Prize in Chemistry and last but not least Prof. Robert Woodward that gave a touch of artistry to organic synthesis.
Which paper of yours you are the proudest of and why?
Every paper has a story and there’s so much work behind that you must be proud of everything you did. At the beginning it is not so easy to publish and you push a lot to reach the goal, so for sure my first paper has been quite hard work. Anyway, just have a look to my profile on google scholar and check out, there’s some pretty nice stuff that I’m proud of:
https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=x-zUbsIAAAAJ&hl=it
Which field of medicinal chemistry do you consider the most promising in the future?
I think that cancer is still the greatest problem of our era, we must improve the weapons we have against it, another emerging and urgent problem is improving our antibiotics pull to fight infections and bacterial resistance. So I would say that these two still remain the challenges to face in the future.
