Matthew Maletic
Research:
During my Bachelor and Master’s I specialized in organic chemistry with a focus on medicinal chemistry. Introduced to the concepts of fragment-based drug discovery, I now aim to deepen my skills during my PhD here at the Cell and Chemical Biology department (CCB).
During my PhD project, I will develop new tools to study E3 ligases. In search for novel (covalent) inhibitors against E3 ligases, I will perform high-throughput screening using previously reported Ub-based probes. These endeavors will be followed by a medicinal chemistry approach towards the design and synthesis of novel ligands for E3 ligases.
Curriculum Vitae:
I hold a BSc Pharmaceutical Sciences (Hons., 2021) at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, where I majored in Medicinal Chemistry. Subsequently, I studied Drug Discovery Sciences at the VU to obtain my Master’s degree in 2023. During my Master’s I completed two internships: one at the Division of Medicinal Chemistry at VU and one at Abbott Healthcare. At the VU I worked on the design and synthesis of hybrid 2D/3D fragments to expand and diversify the internal library for future screening. During my internship at Abbott, I improved the existing batch process of an API by optimizing reaction conditions and exploring alternative synthetic approaches. In September 2023, I started as a PhD student at the CCB group under the supervision of Monique Mulder. For my project, I will be exploiting the E3 ligase system using our synthetic Ub-based reporters.
