Dr. Valentina Pirota, born on November 28, 1988, graduated in Chemistry (magna cum laude) at the University of Pavia in 2012. She received her Ph.D. from the same University in 2015, investigating the reactivity and the toxicity of heme and copper complexed to neuronal peptides involved in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Her Ph.D. project was supported by the Italian MIUR, through the PRIN, and involved also the study of neuronal peptide aggregation and chemical modification of metal-peptides complexes induced both on substrates and on the peptide, itself. On November 2015, she received a 12 months post-doctoral fellowship in the frame of an AIRC project at Pavia University, studying selective recognition, and subsequent covalent modification and stabilization, of DNA in the G-quadruplex (G4) structure. On November 2016, she started a second post-doctoral project supported by ERC focused on selective compounds targeting the G-quadruplex structures of the Long Terminal Repeat of HIV-1 to offer a novel strategy to be used in combination with current drugs. She was supervisor(co-tutor) of two master degree thesis: in Biotechnology (2013) and in Bioinorganic Chemistry (2014). She is assistant in the performance of teaching lessons since 2010.

Dr. Valentina Pirota’s current research interest is focused on gene down-regulation, exploiting DNA and mRNA G4 structures, as innovative strategy to treat Neurodegenerative Disease and on metal interaction with neuronal peptides and proteins.