Femke A. Meijer

Femke Meijer is a PhD candidate in the Chemical Biology group under supervision of prof. Luc Brunsveld. Her project focusses on the identification of novel small molecule ligands for the selective modulation of nuclear receptors, especially for RORγt which plays an important role in several autoimmune diseases. The main interest is to target the recently discovered allosteric binding site of RORγt, which has many advantages in comparison to the common orthosteric site, in terms of selectivity and preventing competition issues. Femke uses a combination of medicinal chemistry, organic synthesis, computational biology and biochemical assays to gain insight into this topic.

Femke Meijer (1993) has studied Biomedical Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). After receiving her Bachelor degree in 2014, she continued with her Master in the Chemical Biology group of prof. Luc Brunsveld. During her Master’s graduation project, she worked on the design and synthesis of peptide-small molecule hybrids for the modulation of certain protein-protein interactions (PPIs) that are involved in Alzheimer’s disease. Additionally, she performed an internship at Imperial College London (in the research group of prof. Ed Tate), on the organic synthesis of photo-crosslinkable α-helix mimetics and testing their selectivity for inhibiting the p53/hDM2 interaction, which is an important target in cancer therapy. Femke received her Master degree cum laude in 2017.