Staff Profile

Background

Dr Chiara Maniaci is a BBSRC discovery fellow based within the School of Natural and Environmental sciences. Her research focuses in understanding how protein levels are regulated inside the cell.

Chiara obtained her MSci in Pharmaceutical chemistry and technology at the University of Messina in 2013. Her research project concerned the development of novel iron chelators as potential drugs for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease under the joint supervision of Prof. Robert Hider at Kings College London and Prof. Giovanni Romeo at University of Messina.

 In 2014 Chiara joined Prof. Alessio Ciulli and Prof. Dario Alessi labs at University of Dundee to conduct her PhD project on the development of Homo-PROTAC, bivalent small-molecule dimerizes to induce self-degradation of the VHL E3 ubiquitin ligase. Best degraded, CM11, is now listed commercially available for the scientific community to use to as chemical tool to investigate biology. CM11 is also listed as chemical probe on Chemicalprobe.org.  

Following award of her PhD in Chemical Sciences in 2017, and postdoctoral research in Dundee, Chiara joined the Kawamura and Schofield group in Oxford in January 2018 to acquire knowledge and experience in molecular mechanisms of epigenetic processes. Chiara was awarded a BBSRC Discovery fellowship in February 2020 and moved to Newcastle in shortly after.  

• Klein VG, Townsend CE, Testa A, Zengerle M, Maniaci C, Hughes SJ, Chan KH, Ciulli A, Lokey RS. Understanding and improving the membrane permeability of VH032-based PROTACs. ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters 2020, 11(9), 1732-1738.
• Maniaci C, Ciulli A. Bifunctional chemical probes inducing protein-protein interactions. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 2019, 52, 145-156.
• Girardini M, Maniaci C, Hughes SJ, Testa A, Ciulli A. Cereblon vs VHL: Hijacking E3 Ligases Against Each Other Using PROTACs. Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry 2019, 27(12), 2466-2479.
• Tovell H, Testa A, Maniaci C, Macartney T, Ciulli A, Alessi DR. Rapid and reversible knockdown of endogenously tagged endosomal proteins via an optimized HaloPROTAC degrader. ACS Chemical Biology 2019, 14(5), 882-892.
• Zoppi V, Hughes SJ, Maniaci C, Testa A, Gmaschitz T, Wieshofer C, Koegl M, Riching K, Daniels D, Spallarossa A, Ciulli A. Iterative Design and Optimization of Initially Inactive Proteolysis Targeting Chimeras (PROTACs) Identify VZ185 as a Potent, Fast, and Selective von Hippel–Lindau (VHL) Based Dual Degrader Probe of BRD9 and BRD7. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry 2018, 62(2), 699-726.
• Maniaci C, Hughes SJ, Testa A, Chen W, Lamont DJ, Rocha S, Alessi DR, Romeo R, Ciulli A. Homo-PROTACs: Bivalent small-molecule dimerizers of the VHL E3 ubiquitin ligase to induce self-degradation. Nature Communications 2017, 8, 830.