Dr Elena De Vita
Lecturer in Synthetic Biology and Biotechnology (T&R)
Email: e.devita@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: Joseph Priestley Building, G.07
Website: https://edv-lab.com/
Twitter: @Elena_De_Vita
Profile
Elena graduated in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technologies in the Department of Pharmacy at University of Pisa in 2014. Her Master’s thesis reported the development of novel carboxylic acid-based inhibitors of Matrix metalloproteases (Prof Armando Rossello). She then joined the Cancer Drug Development group at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ, Heidelberg) as a DKFZ-MOST funded PhD student (German-Israeli collaboration). Her dissertation focused on the development of covalent inhibitors of a secreted serine protease (KLK6) under the supervision of Dr Aubry Miller.
Following a short EMBO-funded visit to Imperial College, Elena joined the Tate group as a CRUK Research associate to work on the development of covalent inhibitors for the small GTPase Rab27A. She continued this work as a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow from 2020 and successively as a Co-investigator funded by Worldwide Cancer Research (2022). In 2021, Elena participated in the winning team at the Merck Innovation Cup and in 2022 she was shortlisted for the L’Oréal-UNESCO UK For Women In Science programme.
Elena joined the Department of Biochemistry at QMUL in September 2023 as a Lecturer in Synthetic Biology and Biotechnology. Her research interests focus on covalent ligand discovery and development and novel pharmacological modalities for use in Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery.