Enrico Mini

Enrico Mini is an oncologist, pharmacologist, and academic. He is an emeritus professor at the University of Florence.

Mini's research interests include cancer pharmacology, tumor drug resistance, and the pharmacogenomics of anticancer therapies, with a focus on colorectal cancer, other gastrointestinal neoplasms, leukemia, and lymphoma. He was the director of the Unit of Translational Oncology at Careggi University Hospital and the head of the Laboratory of Cancer Pharmacology and Chemotherapy at the University of Florence.

Education Mini earned an M.D. from the University of Florence in 1977. In 1980, he received a specialty degree in Oncology from the University of Modena, followed by a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Toxicology in 1988 from the University of Florence.

Career Mini's academic career includes his appointment as a research scientist at the Departments of Pharmacology and Medicine of the Yale University School of Medicine from 1981 to 1984. He was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Siena from 1983 to 1987, and then began working as a lecturer at the University of Ferrara in 1988, a position he held until 1992. He was appointed as an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Florence from 1992 to 2001,

Mini was the chairman of the Cancer Section of the International Society of Chemotherapy from 2007 to 2013.

Research Mini's research contributed to clarifying the mechanisms of methotrexate (MTX), an antifolate chemotherapy agent and immunosuppressant that works by inhibiting an enzyme called dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR). In related research, it was demonstrated that polyglutamylation of methotrexate contributes to its selective cytotoxic effect.

Mini proposed that administering MTX before 5-fluorouracil produces a synergistic effect, since the polyglutamated MTX can replace 5,10-CH2-THF in the ternary complex. He further indicated that alterations in the balance of polyglutamylated MTX forms often lead to the development of drug resistance. His studies have led to the recognition of leucovorin as a biomodulator of cytotoxicity in preclinical experiments prompting a surge of phase I and II clinical investigations.

Mini, through his research, highlighted the negative role of permeability glycoprotein an ABC transporter with extensive substrate specificity in anticancer therapy for leukemia and other solid tumors. He then modified anticancer drugs to reduce -mediated efflux and underlined the need for creating drugs that are non- substrates to counter cancer resistance hindrances. In a collaborative study, he explored reversing multidrug resistance in a highly doxorubicin-resistant human colorectal adenocarcinoma cell line. The study investigated long-term treatment with an equimolar mixture of three unmodified antisense oligonucleotides targeting adjacent sites on mRNA (messenger RNA), delivered via a synthetic cationic lipid. He showed that the combination could downregulate mRNA in the doxorubicin-resistant cell line. Mini also explored the potential of gold-based complexes for their use as metallodrugs in cancer.

Selected articles