The aims of this volume are to highlight the tremendous pharmacological potential of protein kinase and protein phosphatase inhibitors, to provide a thorough overview of the most remarkable achievements in the field and to illustrate how beneficial these studies can be for the advancement of both basic knowledge on biological regulation and deregulation and for the clinical treatment of a wide spectrum of diseases. This goal is attained by contributions of leader investigators in the field, who address the issue from different angles.

The Editor (L.A. Pinna) is full Professor of Medical Chemistry at the University of Padova since 1975. He has been involved for over 30 years in the study of various aspects of protein phosphorylation, with special reference to the analysis of consensus sequences of protein kinases and the development of peptide substrates for the specific monitoring of individual members of this family of enzymes. In this field he has published more than 290 original pepers and a number of review articles in international journals. Over the last years he has provided major contributions to the molecular and structural enzymology of protein kinases implicated in cell fate decision and in the development of inhibitors of one of these enzymes.

The co-Editor (P.T.W. Cohen) is an authority in the field of protein phosphatases.