Maria Pellegrini
Research Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Professor Pellegrini received her "laurea" degree in Chemistry in 1992, and Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1996, from the University of Padova, in Italy, working on conformational studies of bioactive cyclic peptides. She joined the group of Professor Dale F. Mierke as a post-doctoral fellow in 1996, first at Clark University and then at Brown University. In 1999 she moved to an industrial position at BASF and then Abbott Laboratories in Worcester MA. In 2002 she joined Biogen as a senior scientist where she utilized NMR spectroscopy for structural studies, screening efforts, and biophysical characterization of proteins. Prof. Pellegrini joined Dartmouth College in the summer of 2007.
Research Interests
Many processes in a living cell are regulated through the specific interaction between proteins. Targeting the disruption of protein-protein complexes for therapeutic purposes is considered a very attractive, albeit difficult, approach. In our research, we take advantage of information on the protein's overall fold, primary and secondary structure at the interface and flexibility to identify putative binding sites and design and test molecules that interfere with or block protein-protein interaction. We focus on peptides, peptidomimetics, and small molecular weight compounds.
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) provides the unique advantage of allowing to investigate both protein structure and dynamics and has been effectively employed as a screening technique, especially in fragment-based approaches. We complement our NMR studies with a number of biophysical and biochemical techniques for characterization of proteins and binding interactions (EPR, CD, fluorescence, etc.) and with computational tools for structural refinement and model building.