Dr 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.

Teaching

Undergraduate courses

• Essential Skills for Biochemistry (Tutorials) - BCH101
• Biochemistry Communication I (Tutorials) - BIO202 
• Membrane and Cellular Biochemistry (Lab Practical) - BIO263 
• Biochemistry Communication II (Tutorials) - BIO301
• Research Projects - BIO600
• Structured Research Projects - BIO604

Postgraduate courses

• Proteins and Biocatalysts - BIO755P
• Research Project in Industrial Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology - BIO750P

Research

Research Interests:

See Elena De Vita’s research profile pages including details of research interests, publications, and live grants.