Abstract

Friday 6 March, 13:00 – 14:00

Speakers: Postdoctoral Research Associate Talks: Dr Shanlin Rao, Dr Dalila Boi

Talk Titles:

Dr Shanlin Rao: Cell-specific rewiring of GPCR signalling pathways: A systems pharmacology perspective

Dr Dalila Boi: Binding partners of Aurora kinase A limit its accessibility to PROTAC -mediated degradation

Biographies:

Dr Shanlin Rao: Shanlin received her undergraduate and doctoral training in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford, where she used molecular modelling and simulations to examine hydrophobic gating in ion channels within the groups of Professor Mark Sansom and Professor Stephen Tucker. She then joined Professor Gerhard Hummer’s group at the MPI of Biophysics in Frankfurt, characterising membrane protein complexes in signalling pathways that regulate autophagy and membrane repair. Her current research in the Marti-Solano lab applies computational analyses to integrate structural, functional, and omics data towards a systems-level understanding of context-specific GPCR signalling.

Dr Dalila Boi: Dr Dalila Boi completed her academic training at Sapienza University of Rome in Italy, and has since worked on projects focusing on cancer cell biology, protein–protein interactions, and assay development for drug discovery. During her Bachelor and Master Degrees in the laboratory of Prof Roberto Contestabile and Dr Angela Tramonti she worked on the in vitro purification and characterisation of a protein complex essential for the tetrapyrroles biosynthesis in bacteria. Then she moved into the cancer cell biology field by joining the Dr Giulia Guarguaglini’ and Prof Alessandro Paiardini’s laboratories, where she completed her PhD in Life Sciences in 2022. Since then she is involved in the research of novel pharmacological inhibitors of the Aurora-A protein, a mitotic kinase frequently over-expressed in cancer. In 2024, as part of a collaborative research project between the Italian National Research Council and the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Cambridge, she was a visiting researcher in the laboratories of Prof Laura Itzhaki and Dr Catherine Lindon. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr Catherine Lindon, where her research focuses on deciphering how the Aurora-A partners influence its degradability through PROTA Cs in cells. Beyond the bench, she is interested in scientific writing, and she is actively involved in outreach activities and science communication for a non-academic audience.