Lorena Zara

Lorena Zara – graduated at the University of Cagliari, Italy. During her studies she learned how to use the X-ray diffraction for identifying the molecular structure within a protein crystal. During her work in Organic Synthesis at the University of Cagliari, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Elias Maccioni, she was trained in the use of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for identification, hit validation, optimization and potential structure-based drug design and learned how to synthesize novel triazine derivatives, as inhibitors of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase increasing her skills in drug discovery. From September 2015 to March 2016, she participated in the research activity on control and harvest of the bacterial expression of a protein and learned how to use the high performance liquid chromatography for the isolation and purification of the 17β-HSD14 protein with research group of Prof. Dr. Gerhard Klebe, at the Pharmaceutical Chemistry department of Philipps Universität Marburg, Germany. From September 2013 to September 2014 she spent a year, within the LLP/Erasmus program, at the University of Granada, Spain. There, she had the opportunity to expand her practical experience by working in different laboratories.

Project: ESR11: Fragment-based approaches to identify novel PPI inhibitors
Academic supervisors: Dr. Jacqueline van Muijlwijk and prof. dr. Iwan de Esch (VU University Amsterdam)