BioSIM welcomes a new PhD Student Airam Roggero from Brazil. She will develop her PhD studies at BioSIM, with the supervision of Sérgio F. Sousa and the co-supervision of Prof. Marcus Toyama (FAPESP, Brazil). She is a PhD student of the PhD Program in Sustainable Chemistry, and her thesis will focus on the Analysis of the effects of non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) on membrane fluidity.
Despite being widely used, non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have been associated on the long-term to a decrease in efficiency and to several health problems. These effects can be attributed to a decrease in the enzymatic capacity for repair and restoration of the plasmatic membrane. This project aims to analyse at the molecular level the effect on commonly used natural and synthetic NSAIDs on the activity of two important enzymes for membrane repair and functioning: PAFAH and LPCAT. The project will take advantage of the application of computational biochemistry methods, including multi-scale molecular dynamics simulations on these proteins embedded in heterogeneous Biomembrane models, protein-ligand docking and free energy calculations to dissect with atomic level detail the impact of different NSAIDs on PAFAH and LPCAT and to rationally propose new structural changes in their structure. Results will be corroborated by in vitro and in vivo experiments (Oreochromis niloticus and mus musculus).