Elizabeth A. Lopes

PhD student of Pharmacy

Supervision Dr Maria M. M. Santos (University of Lisbon, Portugal) and Dr Mattia Mori (University of Siena, Italy)

Elizabeth A. Lopes is a Ph.D. student of Pharmacy with expertise in Pharmaceutical and Therapeutic Chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Universidade de Lisboa (FFUL), under the supervision of Dr. Maria M. M. Santos (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal) and Professor Maurizio Botta/Dr. Mattia Mori (University of Siena, Italy). Elizabeth is graduated in Bioorganic Chemistry in 2017 from the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of New University of Lisbon and in Chemistry in 2014 from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto. During her Bachelor's, apart from her academic course, she was part of several projects in particular in Analytical Chemistry where she worked on several chromatography techniques, flow techniques and spectroscopy methods. One of her works led to a collaboration with Hana Sklenárová from the Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové, Charles University (Czech Republic) as an Erasmus+ internship in 2014. In 2015, during her Master's degree, Elizabeth got interested in drug discovery. For this reason, since 2016, Elizabeth has been involved as part of the Medicinal Chemistry group of the Faculty of Pharmacy of University of Lisbon where she has been developing new spirooxindoles as reactivators of the p53 protein in tumor cells. Currently, as a Ph.D. student in the Medicinal Organic Chemistry group at the FFUL, Elizabeth has been involved in the in silico design, using molecular docking and molecular dynamic simulations, and synthesis of new scaffolds that act as reactivators of the p53 tumor suppression activity as well as antimalarial activity. Also, she has been using in silico target fishing protocol for the discovery of putative targets of bioactive compounds for several diseases.

To date, Elizabeth has been awarded with two grants; COST Action CM1407 STSM grant and a research grant to work in collaboration with the pharmaceutical company Hovione Farmaciência SA. Furthermore, she published three articles and two book chapters. Besides being involved in the organization of 2 conferences, Elizabeth presented her work in more than 18 conferences, of which 4 were oral communications. From these conferences, she received two awards for best flash communication in 2019 and best poster presentation in 2018. She also won 3 academic prizes given by the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto. Elizabeth also has experience in web design.

Publications:

Espadinha, M.; Lopes, E. A.; Marques, V.; Amaral, J. D.; Santos, D. J. V. A.; Mori, M.; Daniele, S.; Piccarducci, R.; Zappelli, E.; Martini, C.; Rodrigues, C. M. P.; Santos, M. M. M.. "Discovery of MDM2-p53 and MDM4-p53 protein-protein interactions small molecule dual inhibitors". Eur. J. Med. Chem. 2022, 241, 114637. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejmech.2022.114637

Lopes, E. A.; Mestre, R.; Fontinha, D.; Legac, J.; Pei, J. V.; Sanchez-Vaz, M; Mori, M.; Lehane, A. M.; Rosenthal, P.; Prudêncio, M.; Santos, M. M. M.. "Discovery of spirooxadiazoline oxindoles with dual-stage antimalarial activity". Eur. J. Med. Chem. 2022, 236, 114324. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejmech.2022.114324

Loureiro, J. B.; Ribeiro, R.; Nazareth, N.; Ferreira, T.; Lopes, E. A.; Gama, A.; Machuqueiro, M.; Alves, M. G.; Marabi, L.; Oliveira, P. A.; Santos, M. M. M.; Saraiva, L. "Mutant p53 reactivator SLMP53-2 hinders ultraviolet B radiation-induced skin carcinogenesis". Pharmacol. Res. 2022, 175, 106026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phrs.2021.106026

Lopes, E. A.; Santos, M. M. M.; Mori, M.. (2021) "Pharmacological treatment of malaria". In: Vermelho, A. B., Supuran, C. T. (eds) Antiprotozoal Drug Development and Delivery. Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, vol 39. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/7355_2021_125.

Lopes, E. A.; Santos, M. M. M.. (2020) "Synthesis of Spirooxindoles by Multicomponent Reactions". In Phillips, A. M. M. M. (ed) Synthetic Approaches to Nonaromatic Nitrogen Heterocycles. Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119708841.ch9

Barcherini, V.; Almeida, J.; Lopes, E. A.; Wang, M.; Magalhães e Silva, D.; Mori, M.; Wang, S.; Saraiva, L.; Santos, M. M. M.. "Potency and Selectivity Optimization of Tryptophanol-Derived Oxazoloisoindolinones: Novel p53 Activators in Human Colorectal Cancer.". ChemMedChem 2020, 16(1), 250-258. https://doi.org/10.1002/cmdc.202000522.

Lopes, E.A.; Gomes, S.; Saraiva, L.; Santos, M.M.M.. "Small molecules targeting mutant p53: A promising approach for cancer treatment". Current Medicinal Chemistry 2019, 26(41), 7323-7336. http://doi.org/10.2174/0929867325666181116124308.

Espadinha, M.; Barcherini, V.; Lopes, E.A.; Santos, M.M.M.. "An update on MDMX and dual MDM2/X inhibitors". Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry 2018, 18(8), 647-660. http://doi.org/10.2174/1568026618666180604080119.