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People

Francesco A. Aprile

Principal Investigator

Francesco is a Lecturer in 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.

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.

Anouk Huyghebaert

MRes Student

I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of St Andrews, where I worked under the supervision of Prof. Rebecca Goss for my final year project. There I focussed on developing cross-coupling methodologies enabling the fluorescence tagging of halogenated biomolecules. I am now an MRes student working in the Aprile Group, where my project investigates the aggregation of pathologically relevant TDP-43 fragments, and how novel antibodies and G4C2 RNA repeats affect this aggregation. This project is co-supervised by Dr. Marco Di Antonio.

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.

Liliana Napolitano

Visiting PhD Student

I started my PhD in 2021 at the University of Florence under the supervision of Prof. Cristina Cecchi. My project is focussed on testing single domain antibodies (sdAbs) able to detect and neutralize toxic Aβ1-42 oligomers in biological fluid derived from Alzheimer’s disease patients. I am now a PhD visiting student working in the Aprile Group, where I continue my project developing a dimeric structure sdAb to design a powerful tool for an accurate detection and quantification of Aβ1-42 oligomers.

Rebecca Thrush

PhD Student

I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Cambridge including a masters within the Centre for Misfolding Diseases under the super vision of Dr Janet Kumita. I am now studying for my PhD as part of the Aprile group at Imperial College London, investigating N-terminal post-translational modifications of alpha-synuclein and their role in Parkinson’s disease.

Devkee Vadukul

Research Associate

Devkee joined the group in 2020 and works primarily on protein misfolding and amyloid formation. Her current project focusses on heterogenous protein aggregation in neurodegenerative diseases.

Jingzhou Yang

MRes Student

Jingzhou completed his BSc in Chemistry degree at Imperial College London and is carrying out his MRes project in the Aprile group. He also conducted his summer research project here working on post-translational modifications (PTMs) of Aβ proteins. Now he moves on to developing antibodies targeting these Aβ PTMs.

Tianji Zhang

MRes Student

Tianji is now a MRes Drug discovery and development student. Her project focuses on computational design of SARS-CoV-2 S-protein antibodies.

Former Group Members

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