ESR 6: Mirjana Antonijević

In silico screening and Hit to lead development of small molecules neurotrophin receptors ligands.

EuroNeurotrophin Research
Mirjana will be working on in silico screening of UNICAEN chemical library in order to identify hit molecules as ligands for neurotrophin receptors. In silico data will be evaluated along with a high-throughput screening of the before mentioned chemical library. Selected hit molecules will be subjected to the study of hit to lead optimization, with an aim to better understand the molecular patterns involved in target-ligand interactions. Additionally, these studies will be expanded by the physicochemical optimization of the selected hit compounds. The final lead compounds will be fluorescently labeled for in vivo bioimaging studies.

Host
B4: Université de Caen Normandie, UFR des Sciences Pharmaceutiques, Centre d'Etudes et de Recherche sur le  médicament de Normandie, France

Supervisor
Prof. Christophe Rochais, Université de Caen Normandie, France

Scientific Background
Mirjana obtained her Master degree at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University in Belgrade, Serbia in 2017. During undergraduate studies, she was involved in student scientific projects at the Department of Pharmaceutical chemistry.  She wrote and presented two student scientific projects on the 57. and 58. Serbian Students’ conference of Biomedical Sciences with international participation (2016. and 2017.)
Her master thesis “3D-QSAR study, design of serotonin 5-HT2A receptor antagonist and in vitro testing of the blood-brain barrier permeation of selected antipsychotics” was supervised by Professor Katarina Nikolic, Ph.D.
From October 2017 until September 2018 she was employed as a teaching assistant at the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, where she demonstrated practical sessions in Pharmaceutical chemistry courses. Mirjana contributed successfully to the project “Synthesis, quantitative relationships between structure and activity, physical-chemical characterization and analysis of pharmacologically active compounds "(OI172033) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia.