Speaker: Professor Ana Maria Cuervo, MD PhD, The Robert and Renee Belfer Chair for the Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases, Professor in Departments of Developmental and Molecular Biology and Medicine of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Co-director of Einstein Institute for Aging Studies

Maintenance of a “healthy” proteome is essential for cellular survival and proper organism function. In fact, loss of the ability to preserve protein homeostasis (homeostasis) has been tightly linked to aging and age-related diseases. Improved understanding of the systems that contribute to cellular protein quality control has shed new light on the reasons for the loss of proteostasis with aging and offers now the possibility of targeting these systems with therapeutic purposes. 

The talk will focus on one of these proteostasis systems, autophagy. Growing evidence supports that autophagy functionality is compromised with age and that intact autophagy is required to sustain longevity. A selective form of autophagy, chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA), decreases with age and malfunctions in different age-related disorders. Recent findings on the molecular regulators of CMA that could become interesting therapeutic targets, the series of diseases that have been linked to CMA malfunctioning(neurodegeneration, metabolic disorders and cancer), and some of the ongoing efforts to chemically modulate CMA activity to enhance the cellular response against proteotoxicity.

Lunch will be provided after the lecture.