Laura Masgrau received a B.A. degree (1997) and a PhD. (2002) in Chemistry from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her thesis, under the supervision of A. Gonzalez-Lafont and J.M. Lluch, focussed on the computational study of atmospheric reactions initiated by the hydroxyl radical. After the thesis, her research moved into the area of enzyme reaction.
She did a 3-years postdoc at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of the University of Leicester, where she worked with M. Sutcliffe, the enzymologist N. Scrutton, the crystallographer D. Leys and in tight collaboration with A. Mulholland from the University of Bristol. Based on a combination of experimental data and QM/MM methods, they investigated the reaction catalysed by two amine dehydrogenases (AADH and MADH). In particular, they studied the rate enhancement of these reactions due to hydrogen tunnelling.
In November 2005 she moved to the Institut Pasteur in Paris as an Intra-European Marie Curie Fellow (2 years). She worked with A. Blondel in the laboratory of M. Nilges at the Department of Structural Biology and Chemistry (Unité de Bioinformatique Structurale).
She came back to Catalonia in early 2008 to work at the Institut de Biotecnologia i de Biomedicina (IBB) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona as a Ramon y Cajal researcher, where she continues as a senior researcher (shared with the Department of Chemistry).
Her current research interests are in in the study of enzymes (reactivity, specificity, affinity, structure, engineering, etc.), with the view of possible biomedical and/or biotechnological applications. Her main research line is Computational Chemical Glycobiology, focusing on the study of carbohydrate-active enzymes (mechanism, redesign, inhibition), in particular of those involved in the biosynthesis and biodegradation of glycans. She is also particularly interested on the biological role and possible applications of carbohydrate-receptor interactions.
