Valentina completed her Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry at the University of Parma (Italy) in 2012. During her Bachelor’s research project, she investigated the Cu(II) binding to the de novo designed TRIL23H peptide. In 2014 she obtained her master’s degree in Biomolecular Chemistry in the University of Parma with a research final project focused on the study of the assembly of Metallacrowns with transition metal and aromatic aminohydroxamates. Both research projects were undertaken under the supervision of Dr Matteo Tegoni.
Between 2015 and 2018 she moved in Toulouse (France) to study for a PhD in Bioinorganic Chemistry with Dr Christelle Hureau. Her research focused on the study of Zn(II) and Cu(II/I) in the formation of senile plaques in Alzheimer’s disease. This work involved determining how the metal ions modulate and/or induce the aggregation of the Amyloid-β(Aβ) peptide, and the role played by Zn(II) and/or Cu(II/I) in the production of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) when binding to different isoforms of Aβ, which are present in large amounts in the post-mortem Alzheimer patient’s brain.
She has acquired extensive experience in performing kinetic and thermodynamic studies (i.e. complex formation rate, affinity constant and system speciation). This included complex metal ion competition and self-assembly studies, and the associated modelling and fitting of multimetallo binding data.
Funded through a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, Valentina joined the Peacock research group in September 2019 to design a new class of Lanthanide binding de novo designed coiled coils. (UCLnProt project, Grant Agreement No. 841956).
During her permanence in the Peacock group, Valentina contributed to the design of multiple lanthanides coiled coils (LCCs) with metal sites capable of discriminating between different (but extremely similar) lanthanide ions based on size. That allowed to harness the sophistication and level of control found in biology (e.g. metallochaperones) in order to develop multicomponent systems where the two Ln(III) ions work together.
The homobimetallic LCCs, heterobimetallic LCCs and trimetallic CCs she obtained could find important future applications in both academia and industry, and therefore a future financial gain for the ERA.
At the same time, Valentina helped to establish collaboration with Dr. Natrajan group at the University of Manchester (UK). This collaboration offered a complementary expertise in actinide chemistry. The synergic work through the two group allowing the evaluation of several CCs also for uranly(VI) binding. In these peptides it has been observed, for the first time, the binding of uranyl(VI) within the hydrophobic core of self-assembling coiled coil peptides, with micromolar affinities and notably with selectivity for uranyl(VI) over lanthanide ions.
After completion of her Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship in the Peacock group at the University of Birmingham, in October 2021 she moved in the USA, at the University of Michigan as Postdoctoral Fellow, where she joined Prof. Vincent Pecoraro, a world leader in the de novo design peptide field.
Peacock Research Group 