LVI Jiménez Díaz Commemorative Lecture

Onsite – Online

Madrid, May 27, 2025. 9:00 -13:30

Hospital Universitario Fundación Jiménez Díaz

Conference Room. Avda. Reyes Católicos, 2. Madrid

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Prof. Ana María Cuervo

“Selective Autophagy in the fight against aging

and age-related diseases”

Professor Ana María Cuervo is a researcher and cell biologist internationally

recognized for her studies on autophagy in aging and age-related disorders,

with emphasis in neurodegeneration and metabolic disorders

Prof. Ana María Cuervo

Professor Ana María Cuervo is a researcher and cell biologist internationally recognized for her studies on autophagy in aging and age-related disorders, with emphasis in neurodegeneration and metabolic disorders.

Ana María Cuervo holds the Robert and Renee Belfer Chair for the Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, where she is Distinguished Professor of Developmental Molecular Biology and Medicine and co-director of the Einstein Institute for Aging Research. Ana Maria studied Medicine at the University of Valencia and in 1994 she defended her doctoral thesis in Cellular and Molecular Biology at the Cytological Research Institute under the direction of Dr. Erwin Knecht. This is where she began her studies in lysosome biology and autophagy as part of her PhD. Upon completing her PhD, she conducted postdoctoral research in the Department of Physiology at Tufts University in Boston in the group of Dr. Fred Dice. In late 2001, she established her own research group at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, where her group continues to study cellular cleaning and recycling mechanisms and the effect that their loss of function with age has on aging and related diseases such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and metabolic diseases.

Ana Maria Cuervo has made some of the most novel and provocative discoveries in the field of autophagy. She contributed to the discovery of chaperone-mediated autophagy, introducing for the first time the idea that lysosomal degradation can be selective and that cytosolic proteins can directly cross the lysosomal membrane. Her studies in this area led to the identification of a specialized lysosomal membrane machinery that, through a process of assembly and disassembly of a single transmembrane protein, mediated the transport of individual proteins into the lysosomal lumen. Her interest in the selectivity of autophagy was the basis for her discovery of lipophagy, a form of autophagy that selectively degrades intracellular lipid stores and which opened a completely new field on the connections between autophagy and lipid metabolism. Furthermore, she demonstrated, for the first time, the selective degradation of ciliary components (ciliophagy) and the role of primary cilia in the control of autophagy.

Her interest in the role of chaperones in autophagy led to the discovery of another novel form of selective autophagy known as endosomal microautophagy, which occurs in late endocytic compartments. Ana María's studies on chaperone-mediated autophagy allowed her to identify, for the first time, a gradual decline in autophagy with age and demonstrate an autophagic defect in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease. Her group has characterized the molecular basis of autophagic failure in different forms of Parkinson's disease, tauopathies and Huntington's disease, revealing disease-specific defects at different stages of the autophagic process.

Her group's goal is to develop therapies that restore or boost autophagy to prevent or delay the course of diseases of aging. Since 2018 her name is on the list of the Highly Cited Researchers List in Science (top 1% cited researchers).

Her group's work has been recognized with more than 20 internationally prestigious awards such as the P. Benson Award in Cell Biology, the Keith Porter Fellow in Cell Biology, the Nathan Shock Memorial Lecture Award, the Marshall Horwitz Prized, the Saul Korey Prized in Translational Medicine or the prestigious Howard Taylor Ricketts Prize. Ana María has delivered internationally renowned lectures such as the Robert R. Konh Memorial Lecture, the NIH Director's, the Roy Walford, the Feodor Lynen, the Margaret Pittman, the SEBBM L'Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science or the Harvey Lecture, among others. Ana María is an international corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of the Valencian Community, a member of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences and a member of the Royal Academy of Pharmacy. In 2018 she was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2019 of the National Academy of Sciences.