Our lab uses cellular and animal models to understand the physiological roles of autophagy and its implications during disease.

Autophagy is an essential intracelullar degradation pathway that recycles cell components generating new building blocks and energy to maintain cellular homeostasis. Autophagy plays an important role in the response to nutrient starvation; the recycling of damaged organelles and is a survival mechanism under stress conditions. In addition, autophagy could as well participate in programmed cell death.

We are interested in the implication of autophagy during development and in the relationship of autophagy with basic processes such as proliferation, differentiation and cell death. Moreover we want to understand how autophagy deregulation may play a role in several pathological situations such as cancer and neurodegenerative conditions.

We have several projects with pharmaceutical companies to screen for new drugs that modulate autophagy with the aim to find new treatments for cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and other pathological conditions.

Wimasis has allowed us to speed up and standardize the process of autophagosome quantification in cells and tissues.