Members Agostino Bruno

Graduated on 2008-11-07 in Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry (Chimica e Tecnologia Farmaceutica, Italian ‘Laurea’) at University of Parma, final vote 110/110 cum laude, discussing an experimental thesis, by title “ Simulation and Analysis of the Dimerization process in Membrane of Two G-Protein Coupled Receptors” under the supervision of Prof. Gabriele Costantino.
On November 2008, he enrolled the PhD program in “Desing and Synthesis of biologically active compounds” at the University of Parma and since January 2009 he was a PhD Student under the supervision of Prof. Gabriele Costantino, and he started a project by title “MD Simulations and Conformational Sampling to Incorporate Protein Flexibility in the Design of Biologically Active Compounds. From March 2011 to June 2011 he worked at the GRIB center in Barcelona as visiting PhD, in the group of the Prof. Manuel Pastor under the supervision of Jana Selent. The aim of this collaboration is the study of the effect of the Cholesterol on the behaviour of different GPCRs receptors and dimer complexes, and he finally defended his PhD thesis in March 2012.
From January 2013 to January 2015 he worked as Post-doc in the group of Prof. Novellino contributing in several projects published in high impact factors journals.
Currently is working as Post Doc in the research group of Prof. Costantino.

Selected publications:

• Bruno, A., Scrima, M., Novellino, E., D'Errico, G., D'Ursi, A.M., Limongelli V. The Glycan Role in the Glycopeptide Immunogenicity Revealed by Atomistic Simulations and Spectroscopic Experiments on the Multiple Sclerosis Biomarker CSF114(Glc) (2015) Scientific Reports , 5, 9200. DOI: 10.1038/srep09200
• Generoso SF, Giustiniano M, La Regina G, Bottone S, Passacantilli S, Di Maro S, Cassese H, Bruno A, Mallardo M, Dentice M, Silvestri R, Marinelli L, Sarnataro D, Bonatti S, Novellino E, Stornaiuolo M Pharmacological folding chaperones act as allosteric ligands of Frizzled4. (2015) Nat Chem Biol , 3757 (4), pp. 280-6 DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.1770
• Preti D, Baraldi PG, Saponaro G, Romagnoli R, Aghazadeh Tabrizi M, Baraldi S, Cosconati S, Bruno A, Novellino E, Vincenzi F, Ravani A4 Borea PA, Varani K Design, Synthesis, and Biological Evaluation of Novel 2-((2-(4-(Substituted)phenylpiperazin-1-yl)ethyl)amino)-5'-N-ethylcarboxamidoadenosines as Potent and Selective Agonists of the A2A Adenosine Receptor. (2015) Journal of Medicinal Chemistry , Epub ahead of print DOI: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.5b00215
• Bruno, A., Lembo, F., Novellino, E., Stornaiuolo, M., Marinelli L. Beyond radio-displacement techniques for identification of CB1 ligands: the first application of a fluorescence-quenching assay (2014) Scientific Reports , 20 (4), 3757. DOI: 10.1038/srep03757
• Capelli, A.M., Bruno, A., Entrena Guadix, A., Costantino, G. Unbinding pathways from the glucocorticoid receptor shed light on the reduced sensitivity of glucocorticoid ligands to a naturally occurring, clinically relevant mutant receptor (2013) Journal of Medicinal Chemistry , 56 (17), pp. 7003-7014. DOI: 10.1021/jm400802b
• Moriconi A, Cunha TM, Souza GR, Lopes AH, Cunha FQ, Carneiro VL, Pinto LG, Brandolini L, Aramini A, Bizzarri C, Bianchini G, Beccari AR, Fanton M, Bruno A, Costantino G, Bertini R, Galliera E, Locati M, Ferreira SH, Teixeira MM, Allegretti M. Targeting the minor pocket of C5aR for the rational design of an oral allosteric inhibitor for inflammatory and neuropathic pain relief. (2014) PNAS , 111 (47), pp. 16937-42. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1417365111
• Colanzi A, Grimaldi G, Catara G, Valente C, Cericola C, Liberali P, Ronci M, Lalioti VS, Bruno A, Beccari AR, Urbani A, De Flora A, Nardini M, Bolognesi M, Luini A, Corda D. Molecular mechanism and functional role of brefeldin A-mediated ADP-ribosylation of CtBP1/BARS (2013) PNAS , 110 (24), pp. 9794-9. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1222413110
• Bruno, A., Costantino, G., de Fabritiis, G., Pastor, M., Selent, J. Membrane-sensitive conformational states of helix 8 in the metabotropic Glu2 receptor, a class C GPCR (2012) PLoS ONE, 7 (8), art. no. e42023, . DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0042023
• Guixa-Gonzalez, Bruno A, Marti-Solano M, Selent J. Crosstalk within GPCR heteromers in schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease: physical or just functional? (2012) Curr Med Chem , 19 (8), pp. 1119-34. DOI: 10.2174/092986712799320574
• Amori, L., Katkevica, S., Bruno, A., Campanini, B., Felici, P., Mozzarelli, A., Costantino, G. Design and synthesis of trans-2-substituted-cyclopropane-1-carboxylic acids as the first non-natural small molecule inhibitors of O-acetylserine sulfhydrylase (2012) MedChemComm, 3 (9), pp. 1111-1116. DOI: 10.1039/c2md20100c
• Bruno A, Guadix AE, Costantino G. Molecular dynamics simulation of the heterodimeric mGluR2/5HT(2A) complex. An atomistic resolution study of a potential new target in psychiatric conditions. (2009) J Chem Inf Model., 49 (6), pp. 1602-16. DOI: 10.1021/ci900067g