ESR12

Gabriele Conti graduated in Chemical Sciences at the University of Milan in 2017, with the focus on organic synthesis of biologically active compounds. He performed the Bachelor’s thesis on the synthesis and isolation of polyamide macrocycles with promising membrane permeability properties, while his Master’s one was focused on the synthesis and characterization of a tetravalent glycomimetic antagonist of DC-SIGN and of new promising inhibitors of Rel proteins. Both researches were done under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Anna Bernardi.

In March 2018 he moved to the Institute of Molecular Pharmacy at the University of Basel as a PhD student within the EU project “PhD4GlycoDrug” for studying the pharmacokinetic properties of lectin ligands. The project is performed under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Daniel Ricklin and Prof. Em. Dr. Beat Ernst from the University of Basel and of Prof. Dr. Roland Pieters from the University of Utrecht.

CHAINS is the most important Dutch chemistry conference in which students from different nationalities can #MixandMatch with the leading scientific community. The 2019 edition of CHAINS took place in Veldhoven, and counted on the participation of worldwide renowned scientists such as Frances Arnold, Nobel laureate in 2018, who gave an astonishing and inspiring lecture on enzyme engineering.

With more than one thousand participants and 481 posters, PhD4GlycoDrug contributed to this fantastic conference with four posters. The posters were judged by a jury for their attractiveness, clarity and quality of research and results, and for the oral presentation during the poster session, in order to select the winners of the 7 poster awards.

We are really proud of our ESRs Dania Martinez and Gabriele Conti, who were both selected as recipients of two Best Poster Awards.

1. Blijke S. Kroezen, Gabriele Conti, Benedetta Girardi, Jonathan Cramer, Xiaohua Jiang, Said Rabbani, Jennifer Müller, Maja Kokot, Enrico Luisoni, Daniel Ricklin, Oliver Schwardt, Beat Ernst, A Potent Mimetic of the Siglec‐8 Ligand 6’‐Sulfo‐Sialyl Lewisx, ChemMedChem 2020, 15, 1706-1719. doi: 10.1002/cmdc.202000417.