Gabriele Fontana

GABRIELE FONTANA BIOSKETCH

Current Position: Gabriele Fontana PhD, is Director of Innovation and Business Intelligence at Indena Spa, a private Italian company specialized in the research, development and manufacturing of products from medicinal plants.

Biosketch and Research activity: Gabriele took his degree in Organic Chemistry in 1991 from the University of Milan, Department of Organic Chemistry Luigi Canonica, where in 1996 obtained also his PhD in Chemical Sciences. On the same year he moved as Research Associate to the Department of Chemistry at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK), where he worked the UK Cancer Research Campaign with Professors R.J. Griffin, B. Golding, H. Newell and H. Calvert to the design and synthesis of PI-3-kinases and cycline dependent kinases inhibitors. In 1998 Gabriele moved to the CNS Department of GlaxoWellcome in Verona (Italy) where he worked on the design and synthesis of drug for the control of pain in central and peripheral neuropathologies. In 2000 Gabriele joined Indena SpA in Milan (Italy), a private Italian company focussed on the research, development and manufacturing of drugs from natural sources, where he covered positions of increasing complexity. Since then Gabriele worked to a significant number of drug discovery and development projects on active ingredientes from medicinal plants. From that point Gabriele enriched his experience entering the world of the industrial manufacturing and responsible exploitation of natural resources, facing with the intriguing issues of sustainable supply of natural derivatives. The work done in that period, collaborating with centres of excellence in Organic Chemistry and Phytochemistry ended in more than 30 patents and 90 peer-reviewed scientific papers.