Mai Elnaggar

I am deeply passionate about drug discovery from natural products. My initial research involved exploring small molecules derived from plants, delving into methods for their isolation, structural elucidation, and assessment of their biological activities. Subsequently, I developed a great interest in combining diverse research sets at the interface of chemistry and biology. This allowed me to explore the biosynthesis of natural molecules, and the engineering of the enzymes involved in their production to enhance their biosynthetic capabilities. My research then progressed to studying plant-derived cyclic peptides, focusing on modifying their structures to serve as potent and selective enzyme inhibitors. At present, my research focuses on peptide chemistry, with a deeper exploration of the enzymes involved in their biosynthesis and evaluating their potential to address significant unmet medical needs.