Aging Stings: mitophagy at the crossroads of neuroinflammation

February 6, 2025 | 2.30 - 4 p.m. | HNO Lecture Hall

Patricia Boya and her lab uses cellular and animal models to understand the physiological roles of autophagy and its implications during disease in the nervous system using the retina as a model. They are interested in the role of autophagy during development and the relationship between autophagy and basic processes such as cell proliferation, differentiation, and death. They seek to understand how dysregulation of autophagy may contribute to several pathological situations, including neurodegenerative conditions and its implications in physiological aging.

Patricia Boya studied biology at the University of Texas at Austin (USA), and Universidad de Navarra, Spain where she also got her PhD degree on Cell Biology in 2000. She did her first postdoc as a Marie Curie fellow at the CNRS in Paris and at the University of Cambridge. She returned to Spain in 2005 with a Ramón y Cajal contract at the Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas Margarita Salas from CSIC, became group leader in 2009 and promoted to Associate Professor in 2016. She has been the founding member and president of the Spanish Autophagy Society and member of the board of the Spanish Cell Biology Society. Currently, she is Professor in Cell Biology at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland since August 2022. She is also interested in science communication and is involved in several mentoring activities for young scientists.