Researchers
Dr. Morgane Mannes obtained her PhD in Bioengineering sciences (2022) in both the fields of peptide and medicinal chemistry, in the lab of Prof. Steven Ballet at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Brussels, Belgium), and biochemistry at Confo Therapeutics, a drug discovery company (Brussels, Belgium). Her PhD work has focused on the design and development of G protein peptidomimetics to stabilize active state G protein-coupled receptors for application in drug discovery. During her PhD she specialized in the synthesis of modified (cyclic) peptides and in the pharmacological assays required to test them on GPCRs. Her results culminated in a publication in the journal Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed., 2 patent applications and several awards, including the Dr. Bert and Dr. Elizabeth Schram Award for Young Investigators at the 36th European Peptide Symposium (Sitges, Spain) and the Solvay Award 2022 for groundbreaking research in the field of Science and Technology (Solvay S.A., Belgium).
She received a Junior postdoctoral fellowship from the FWO Flanders Research Foundation (Belgium) to continue her research on allosteric modulators targeting GPCRs. As a visiting researcher in the group of Prof. David Fairlie, Dr. Mannes is particularly interested in investigating and improving the cell permeability of these peptide allosteric modulators.
