Maria J. Matos

Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology

My current research interests lie at the interface of Chemistry and Pharmacology, with applications to Biomedicine. My research strives to develop novel chemical methods to obtain new drug candidates and systems that enable targeted delivery of potent molecules for therapeutics of neurodegenerative diseases. To achieve that, I have been working for the last years on peptide/protein conjugation for the development of efficient chemoselective methods compatible with biological systems and their capacity for redesigning the structure and function of peptides/proteins of therapeutic interest. Additionally, my research focused, since the start of my career, on Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery, especially the early stages of the process: computational studies, synthesis, characterisation and biological screening of new pharmacologically active compounds based on different heterocyclic scaffolds.

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"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" Albert Einstein