Valentina Ferro is PhD candidate in the team of dr Sofia Moco at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam. She has a background in bioanalytical chemistry through her MSc degree in Analytical Chemistry and her previous work experience. She is interested in NAD⁺ metabolism, central carbon metabolism, and mitochondrial bioenergetics. Her research uses mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance to explore how metabolic pathways work and are regulated in human cells.
During her MSc internship in 2021, she worked at the Clinical Biochemistry Laboratory of Molinette Hospital, in Turin, Italy, where she developed and validated an UHPLC-MS/MS method for the quantification of aldosterone, angiotensin I and II in serum, as biomarkers for the diagnosis of arterial hypertension. Right after that, she started working as a Junior Research Scientist in drug discovery at IRBM S.p.A., where she developed experience in in vitro ADME assays, involving the use of novel sub-cellular and cell-based systems. She also deepened her knowledge in developing analytical methods for the quantification of small molecules and peptides using both high resolution and quantitative UHPLC-MS/MS.
Now, her PhD project is focused on the study of cellular metabolomics. One of the main objectives is to implement metabolomics workflows to monitor and quantify the NAD+ metabolome in different mammalian hepatic models using LC-MS/MS. In particular, she established a MRMHR method for higher mass accuracy and sensitivity in targeted quantification; She also uses stable isotope-resolved metabolomics to study metabolic pathway turnover and study the balance between metabolite synthesis and consumption.
