Maria Moccia Personal Page

Maria Moccia
Tel: +39 06 90672 676
E-mail: maria.mocciaATic.cnr.it – maria.mocciaATcnr.it
Address: Via G. Amendola 122/O 70126, Bari, Italy

Present position :
– Staff Researcher

Short CV :

2003: MSc Organic Chemistry, University of Naples.
2007: PhD Organic Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. C. Pedone, Department of Biological Science, University of Naples.

During PhD worked at Edinburgh University under the supervision of Prof Mark Bradley at School of Chemistry, on “Non enzymatic method for single nucleotide polymorphism analysis”.

2008: Post-doctoral Research Fellows at IBB-CNR on project entitled “Peptide-PNA chimera mimetic of Ni superoxide dismutase (SOD) binding site”.
2009-2011: Awarded Marie Curie fellowship (CEMP) : C/O Centre for Synthesis and Chemical Biology-Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) Department of Pharmaceutical & Medicinal Chemistry, Dublin (IE). Project: Development of novel PNA based molecular probes for the detection of c-Myc mRNA.
2011-2012: Senior Post-doctoral Research Associate in Chemistry at Centre for Synthesis and Chemical Biology-Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) Department of Pharmaceutical & Medicinal Chemistry, Dublin (IE), funded by  Technology  Innovation Development Award (TIDA) and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI).
2013-nowdays:  Permanent Researcher at IC-CNR

Research Interests :

Design, synthesis and development of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) based analogues for  miRNAs targeting in therapeutic and diagnostic fields.
Peptide synthesis, oligonucleotide synthesis DNA, PNA, DNA/PNA chimera.
Design, synthesis and characterization of peptides binding oncogenic pre-miRNAs.

Asymmetric Organocatalysis: bifunctional and phase transfer catalysis (PTC ) to develop new synthetic routes for the obtainment of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API).

Selected publications :

1.  Bencivenni G. Moccia M., A Ravelli, MWG Healy, BG Kelly, Adamo MFA,  First Enantioselective Synthesis of Gingesulfonic Acids and Unequivocal Determination of their Absolute Stereochemistry. Org. Biomol. Chem., 2020.

2. Piacenti V.,  Langella E.,  Autiero I.,  Nolan J.C.,  Piskareva O.,  Adamo MFA,  Saviano M.,  Moccia M.* A combined experimental and computational study on peptide nucleic acid (PNA) analogues of tumor suppressive miRNA-34a. Bioorganic chemistry 91, 103165.

3. Moccia M.,* Adamo MFA, Saviano M., Insights on chiral, backbone modified peptide nucleic acids: Properties and biological activity 2016, . 5 (3), e1107176, pp. 1-15.

4. Adamo MFA , Kelly B., Moccia M.,Recent advances in the preparation of active pharmaceutical ingredient (S)-Pregabalin. Chemistry Today 2016, 34, 54-57.

5. Del Fiandra, C., Moccia, M.; Adamo, M.F.A.* Enantioselective cyclopropanation of (Z)-3-substituted-2-(4-pyridyl)-acrylonitriles catalyzed by cinchona ammonium salts. Org. Biomol. Chem., 2016, 14(11), 3105-3111.

6. Del Fiandra, C., Moccia, M.; Cerulli, V.; Adamo, M.F.A.* Catalytic asymmetric conjugate addition  of  isocyanoacetate to (Z)-3-substituted-2-(4-pyridyl)-acrylonitrile, a reactive class of Michael acceptor. Chem. Commun, 2016, 52 , 1697-1700.

7. Disetti, P., Moccia, M., Salazar-Illera D., Suresh S., Adamo M. F.A* Catalytic enantioselective addition of isocyanoacetate to 3-methyl-4nitro-5-styrilisoxazoles under phase transfer catalysis conditions. Org. Biomol. Chem., 2015,13, 10609-10612.

8. Moccia, M.,*Cortigiani, M., Monasterolo, C., Torri, F., Del Fiandra, C., Fuller, G., Kelly, B., Adamo, M.F.A. * Development and scale up of an organocatalytic enantioselective process to manufacture (S)-Pregabalin. Org. Pro. Res. Dev. 2015, 19(9) 1274-1281.

9. Moccia, M.,* Wells, R. J., Adamo, M.F.A.,* An improved procedure to prepare 3-methyl-4-nitroalkenethylisoxazoles and their reaction under catalytic enantioselective Michael addition with nitromethane. Org. Biomol. Chem.2015,  13, 2192-2195.

10. Piras, L., Moccia, M., Cortigiani, M., Adamo, M.F.A.*,. Cyclopropanation of 5-(1-bromo-2-phenyl-vinyl)-3-methyl-4-nitro-isoxazoles under phase transfer catalysis (PTC) conditions. Catalysts, 2015,5(2), 595-605.

11.Del Fiandra C, Piras L, Fini F, Disetti P, Moccia M, Adamo MFA. Phase transfer catalyzed enantioselective cyclopropanation 4-nitro-5-styrylisoxazoles. Chem. Commun. 2012, 48, 3863-5.

12. Salazar Illera D, Suresh S, Moccia M, Bellini G, Saviano M, Adamo MFA. N-Heterocyclic carbene catalysed homoenolate addition to 3-methyl-4-nitro-5-styrylisoxazoles. Tetrahedron Lett., 2012, 53, 1808-11.

13. Moccia M, Fini F, Scagnetti M, Adamo M F.A. Catalytic enantioselective addition of sodium bisulfite to chalcones. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2011, 50, 6893-6895.

14. Bruschi S, Moccia M, Mauro MFA. Studies on the reactivity of 3-methyl-4-nitro-5-styrylisoxazoles with S-Nucleophiles. Tetrahedron Lett., 2011, 52, 3602-3604.

15. Musumeci D, Bucci E, Roviello GN, Sapio R, Valente M, Moccia M, Bianchi ME, Pedone C. DNA-based strategies for blocking HMGB1 cytokine activity: design, synthesis and preliminary in vitro/in vivo assays of DNA and DNA-like duplexes. Mol. Biosyst., 2011, 7, 1742-52.

16. Adamo FMA, Pergoli R, Moccia M. Alkynyl 2-deoxy-D-riboses,  a cornucopia for generation of families of C-nucleosides. Tetrahedron, 2010, 66, 9242-9251.

17. Moccia M, Roviello GM, Bucci EM, Pedone C, Saviano M.  Synthesis of a L-lysine-based alternate alpha,epsilon-peptide: a novel linear polycation with nucleic acid-binding ability. Int.J. Pharm, 2010, 397, 179-83.