ESR 2: Alessia Latorrata

ESR Fiche

Synthesis of dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) derivatives substituted by three membered-17-spiro substituents.

EuroNeurotrophin Research
Alessia will be involved in the synthesis, purification and characterization of chiral 17-spiro DHEA derivatives bearing three-membered rings, which will be further elaborated to introduce pharmacophore groups, using asymmetric organocatalysis, biomimetic approaches and other synthetic methodologies. She will probe the stereoelectronic requirements for optimum neuroprotective activity, obtaining Structure-Activity-Relationships for 17-spiro-DHEA derivatives agonists of the neurotrophin receptors. Her project also focuses to analyse SNAP PK data on lead compound(s) and to label steroidal neurotrophin mimetics with fluorophores or NIR-dyes.
Alessia will dock her synthetic compounds on the neurotrophin receptors at HITS, will study
the fluorescently labelled compounds with live imaging techniques at TUD and will be familiarised with neuroproteomics at VUA.

Host
B1: National Hellenic Research Foundation, Greece

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

Scientific Background
Alessia obtained her Master’s degree in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Parma, Italy, where she started her thesis project in pharmaceutical and organic chemistry. The main part of her thesis work has been carried out at Northumbria University in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. Her project focused on the synthesis of new metal chelators against neurodegenerative diseases. Furthermore, she also attended a postgraduate II level Master course (one year-course) in “Drug design and synthesis” at the University of Pavia, Italy.  This course gave her the opportunity to carry out a traineeship, at the University of Hamburg, Germany.
Her project focused on the synthesis of Proline-based Hydroxamic acids as inhibitors of Zn2+ - dependent enzymes, where she has mainly made use of organocatalysis and coupling reactions. In September 2018, Alessia joined the EuroNeurotrophin network as ESR2 at the National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece, under the supervision of Dr. Calogeropoulou and she has been enrolled as a Ph.D student at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.