Summary
Dr Salvatore Santamaria is a British Heart Foundation Basic Science Research Fellow. He is working in collaboration with Dr. Josefin Ahnström in the Centre for Haematology.
He obtained an MSc in Biotechnology from University of Pisa, Italy, in September 2008. He worked for one year as a Research Assistant in Prof. Armando Rossello’s laboratory, University of Pisa, where he characterised small molecule inhibitors of matrix metalloproteases. In October 2009 he joined Prof. Hideaki Nagase’s laboratory at Imperial College London where he isolated and characterised inhibitory antibodies of ADAMTS-5, a key protease in osteoarthritis. A substantial part of his PhD was spent in his co-supervisor Prof. Gillian Murphy’s laboratory (Cancer Research Institute, Cambridge) and in Dr John McCafferty’s laboratory (Biochemistry Department, University of Cambridge, and now Iontas Ltd). During this time he matured his knowledge of phage display and in vitro selection methods. He was awarded his PhD in 2014. From 2013 till 2015 he worked at the University of Oxford, first as a Research Assistant, then as a Post-Doc. During this period he investigated the effect of anti-ADAMTS-5 antibodies in cell-based and ex-vivo models of osteoarthritis. He joined the Centre for Haematology at Imperial College in February 2015 as a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Dr. Josefin Ahnström's lab. His current research interests focus on the regulation of ADAMTS proteoglycanase activity in vascular diseases. Due to his contribution in the field, in 2019 he has been awarded by the British Society for Matrix Biology the Young Investigator Award. He was invited to give the prestigious "John Scott Lecture" at the Autumn 2019 BSMB meeting (Norwich, 9th September 2019).
Publications
Journals
Kemberi M, Salmasi Y, Santamaria S, 2023, The Role of ADAMTS Proteoglycanases in Thoracic Aortic Disease., Int J Mol Sci, Vol:24
Minns AF, Qi Y, Yamamoto K, et al., 2023, The C-terminal domains of ADAMTS1 contain exosites involved in its proteoglycanase activity, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Vol:299, ISSN:0021-9258
Kwok HF, Yamamoto K, de Groot R, et al., 2023, Editorial: ADAM, ADAMTS and astacin proteases: Challenges and breakthroughs in the -Omics era-Volume II, Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences, Vol:10
Cuffaro D, Ciccone L, Rossello A, et al., 2022, Targeting Aggrecanases for Osteoarthritis Therapy: From Zinc Chelation to Exosite Inhibition, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Vol:65, ISSN:0022-2623, Pages:13505-13532
Yamamoto K, Scavenius C, Meschis MM, et al., 2022, A top-down approach to uncover the hidden ligandome of low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 1 in cartilage, Matrix Biology, Vol:112, ISSN:0174-173X, Pages:190-218