Pietro Spanu

We are interested in the role of innate immune activation and inflammation in the pathogenesis of major neurodegenerative diseases. Our targets are new small molecules able to modulate inflammatory processes useful in the therapy of neurological disorders, and we are working on design, synthesis and characterization of new caspase-1 inhibitors as lead compounds for neurodegenerative diseases. We discovered a new class of selective, non-covalent, non-peptidic caspase-1 inhibitors that mediate neuroprotection against glutamate toxicity and are able to cross the blood-brain-barrier.