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People

Francesco A. Aprile

Principal Investigator

Francesco is a Senior Lecturer in Biological Chemistry and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. He obtained his PhD from the University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy) and was previously a Senior Research Fellow of the Alzheimer’s Society in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge.

Siân Allerton

PhD Student

I carried out my undergraduate degree in chemistry at Durham University and in my final year I completed an external masters project as part of the Koksch Group at the Freie Universität Berlin. There I focussed on the use of synthetic peptides as effective cell culture platforms. Now, as a member of the Aprile Group, I am looking into the structural and pathological consequences of alpha-synuclein/lipid membrane interactions.

Nicole Christou

PhD Student

Nicole joined the group in January 2021 as part of the MRes/PhD program from the Institute of Chemical Biology. Her project focuses on the role of pathological post-translational modifications on the function and druggability of amyloid-beta oligomers in Alzheimer’s disease at both structural and single-molecule levels. She is co-supervised by Prof Ramon Vilar (Chemistry) and Dr Liming Ying (Medicine).

Giacomo Corucci

Research Associate

I completed my PhD in biophysics at the Institut Laue Langevin, Grenoble, France. My thesis focussed on the expression and purification of phospholipases, and the analysis of their kinetics and interactions with model lipid membranes, using neutron and Xray scattering techniques as well as mass spectrometry. I joined Aprile group the 6th Feb 2023, I am working with Devkee on the expression and purification of different mutants of TDP43, analysing their kinetics and aggregation structures.

Nicole Fitikides

PhD Student

I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry for Drug Discovery at the University of Bath and in October 2021 I joined the Aprile and Vilar groups to complete an MRes in Drug Discovery and Development. My MRes project was focused on the use of cobalt complexes as inhibitors of amyloid-β aggregation, linked to Alzheimer’s disease. I started my PhD in the Aprile group in October 2023. My project is focused on developing a new imaging tool for studying the liquid-liquid phase separation of a-synuclein and its role in Parkinson’s disease. My PhD project is co-supervised by Prof. Ramon Vilar and Prof. Marina Kuimova.

Jasmine Gataora

MSci student

I'm a master's student in the final year of my undergraduate degree. I have just completed a year in industry at GSK focused on method development in Bioanalysis LC-MS. My project is focused on developing nanobodies that inhibit alpha-synuclein LLPS.

Ying Ge

Research Associate

Ying completed her BSc and PhD in biochemistry at the University of St Andrews and joined the Arpile group as a post-doctoral research associate in Jan 2021. She is interested in post-translational modifications (PTMs) in amyloid proteins and antibody discovery.

Loveday Hedgcock

Exchange Student

Loveday is a final year Msci student in the Aprile group. Her project focuses on screening antibodies to bind to amyloid beta postranslational modifications specifically acetylation.

Florence Ho

Exchange Student

Florence joined the group in October 2024 as an undergraduate student on exchange from the University of Toronto. She is working under Rebecca's project on automating the screening of molecular rotors.

Xiaotong (Erin) Lin

PhD Student

Erin joined the group in Oct 2021 where she completed her MRes in Chemical biology and bio-entrepreneurship. She completed her BSc in Chemistry at King's College London. Her current project focuses on probing Amyloid-β peptide in Alzheimer's disease. Her project is co-supervised by Professor Ramon Vilar.

Xiaotong (Erin) Lin

PhD student

Rebecca Thrush

Research Associate

Rebecca joined the group in October 2020 as a PhD student and was appointed as a Post-Doc research associate in April 2024. Her project is aimed at screening molecular rotors as tools for the study of liquid-liquid phase separation during the aberrant protein aggregation linked to neurodegeneration. She is co-supervised by Professor Vilar Compte (Chemistry) and Professor Kuimova (Chemistry).

Devkee Vadukul

Alzheimer's Society Dementia Research Leader Fellow

Devkee is an independent research fellow hosted in the Aprile group, funded by the Alzheimer's Society. Devkee obtained her PhD from the University of Sussex and joined the Aprile group as a research associate in 2020. Devkee’s research is focussed on deciphering the mechanisms of heterogeneous protein aggregation in cases of mixed dementia.

Former Group Members

2024 Fawaz Raja (MRes student)
2024 Victoria Maria Noakes (MRes student)
2024 Siyi Wang (MRes student)
2023-2024 Annesha Tandel (MSci Student)
2023 Liliana Napolitano (Visiting PhD student)
2023 Alvin Lam (IROP)
2023 Nathalie Haft (IROP)
2023 Anouk Huyghebaert (MRes student)
2023 Jingzhou Yang (MRes student)
2023 Tianji Zhang (MRes in Drug Discovery and Development)
2022-2023 Benedict Moss (MSci Student)
2022 Lucia Hughes (UROP)
2022 Jielei Wang (UROP)
2021-2022 Alexandra Yendrzheyevskiy (MRes student)
2021-2022 Claudia Lambert (MRes student)
2019-2022 Dimitra Gialama (Research Associate)
2021-2022 Athina Masoura (MSci Chemistry)
2019-2022 Yiyun Jin (Research Assistant)
2021 Jingzhou Yang (UROP)
2021 Nicole Christou (MRes in Biological and Physical Chemistry)
2020-2021 Joe White (MSci Chemistry)
2019-2020 Michelle Simon (MRes in Drug Discovery and Development)
2017-2019 Shianne Chhangur