Dr Melissa D'Ascenzio

I am Italian and grew up in a very small town about one hour north of Rome, where people still produce their own wine and harvest their own olives. I have always been fascinated by organic chemistry and its applications to both biological and medical sciences. I studied Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Sapienza University of Rome, where I also completed a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences under the supervision of Prof. Adriana Bolasco. My doctoral research focussed on neurodegenerative diseases, in particular Parkinson’s disease, and the struggle that medical science is facing due to the implications of an ageing population.

During my PhD I had the incredible opportunity to study at the University of Oxford and work for Prof. Martin Smith at the Chemistry Research Laboratory. During my time there I learnt a lot about organocatalysis and the use of cinchona alkaloids for the selective synthesis of enantioenriched heterocycles.

After my PhD, I re-joined my former supervisors’ lab as a postdoctoral scientist, although my interests at the time shifted from neurodegenerative diseases to cancer therapy. Therefore, I collaborated with the prestigious lab of Prof. Claudiu T. Supuran to develop novel selective inhibitors against the isoform of carbonic anhydrase involved in the altered survival process of cancer cells.

As my interests in cancer-related drug discovery grew, I moved back to Oxford to join the laboratory of Prof. Paul Brennan at the Structural Genomic Consortium (SGC), where I worked for two years as a researcher in the field of epigenetics. During my time there I experienced first-hand the importance of open-access science and learnt about the captivating world of proteomics and chemical biology.