PhD Nace Zidar
no.: 28905

medicinal chemistry, drug design, drug synthesis, antibacterial compounds, anticancer compounds, topoisomerases, voltage-gated ion channels

Nace Zidar graduated from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Ljubljana in 2006 and then joined the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry as a young researcher. In 2011, he completed his PhD thesis entitled "Design and Synthesis of Heterocyclic Inhibitors of MurC-E Ligases” under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Danijel Kikelj, for which he received the Krka Prize. In 2017, he completed his postdoctoral training at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Milan. His research focuses on the design, synthesis and evaluation of novel bioactive compounds targeting in particular antimicrobial resistance (bacterial topoisomerases and Mur ligases) and cancer (human topoisomerases and voltage-gated ion channels). He is also interested in the physicochemical characterization of compounds and the development of analytical methods important for pharmaceutical research. He has led a research project on bacterial topoisomerase inhibitors (2021–2024) and a postdoctoral project on voltage-gated sodium channel modulators (2013–2015), both funded by the Slovenian Research Agency. He has been involved in several EU-funded initiatives, such as the IMI ENABLE project (2019–2020) addressing Gram-negative antibiotic resistance, the MSC ITN INTEGRATE network (2015–2019) focusing on the validation of antibacterial targets, and the FP7 MAREX project (2011–2014) exploring marine-derived bioactive compounds. In addition, he has led bilateral collaborations with the United States and Japan and has been an active member of the management committee for several COST Actions.