ESR 1: Daniele Narducci

ESR Fiche

Synthesis of dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) derivatives substituted by five or six membered-17-spiro substituents.

EuroNeurotrophin Research
Daniele will engage in the synthesis and characterisation of complex steroidal new compounds, to obtained Structure-Activity-Relationships of 17-spiro-DHEA derivatives agonists of neurotrophin receptors for optimum neuroprotective activity. The multistep and multicomponent synthesis will be carried out in lab-scale as well as, through a secondment to Peakdale Molecular, in larger scale of a selected compound. Furthermore, he will label active neurotrophin mimetic derivatives with fluorophores or NIR-dyes for MoA and in vivo studies and will be involved in the assessment of SNAP-PK profiles of the most potent analogue(s). In addition, Daniele will obtain X-ray structures of his compounds with the neurotrophic receptors through a secondment at UNISI.

Host
B1: National Hellenic Research Foundation, Greece

Supervisor
Dr. Theodora Calogeropoulou, National Hellenic Research Foundation, Institute of Chemical Biology

Scientific Background
Daniele is a Pharmacist, graduated at La Sapienza University of Rome (Italy).
His experimental MSc Thesis is composed of two sections.
 The first, in Medicinal Chemistry, was carried out in his home university and involves the synthesis of potentially druggable new antitumoral compounds.
The latter is in Organic Chemistry. Thanks to an Erasmus+ for study scholarship, Daniele was at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (The Netherlands) where he worked on a novel multicomponent reaction towards the synthesis of novel compounds; the results are published in RSC Adv., 2017, 7, 49995-49998.
In September 2018, Daniele joined the EuroNeurotrophin Network at the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens (Greece) as ESR1 and enrolled as PhD student at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.