Dr. Lorina Gjonaj

Research:

I have an inter-disciplinary background as such I like to work at the interface between biomolecular chemistry and cell biology. My research is focused on the design of specific activity based probes for deuqbiquitinating enzymes and SUMO proteases with the ultimate goal of specific in vivo labelling of active endogenous proteases and real-time measurement of the catalytic activity.  In order to do so I use a combination of different approaches including structural and computational analysis generating libraries of synthetic ubiquitin and SUMO variants. With this tools at our disposal we can further investigate the biological roles of the targets.

One of the main interest in our group is  also drug screening towards selective inhibitors for a target deubiquitinase. I am working in developing various cell-based assay to find novel options for cancer therapy. Furthermore, the synthetic reagents that I developed can be applied in HTS screening towards specific inhibitors.

Curriculum Vitae:

I completed my degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences, cum laude, in Italy, after which I accepted a PhD position in a different area, organic chemistry and chemical biology, in the Netherlands. I rapidly acquired the inter-disciplinary knowledge required for my PhD projects, which were focused on DNA modification and applications. My research allowed me to develop skills in biomolecular chemistry, chemical biology, (bio)-catalysis, synthetic chemistry, spectroscopy and electrophysiology. After receiving my PhD in bio-organic chemistry at the University of Groningen, I decided to take the next challenge and learning more about protein engineering, and their applications as a post-doc at the TU Delft. Currently, I am a post-doc at the LUMC under the supervision of prof. H. Ovaa, where I am expanding my knowledge more towards biology and chemical immunology.