Seminars in Clinical Neurosciences

Prof Dr. Tassula Proikas-Cezanne research focusses on the molecular understanding of autophagy in health and disease. Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved lysosomal degradation pathway that secures cellular homeostasis and that also contributes to a variety of age-related human diseases. Earlier her research group identified the human WIPI genes, that function as essential phospholipid effectors during the process of autophagy. Recent findings revealed that human WIPI proteins act as scaffolds interconnecting energy- and nutrient-dependent signal control of autophagy. The current aims of her group are to identify signaling networks that regulate WIPI proteins, and to identify synthetic and natural compounds that can modulate autophagy in pathophysiological circumstances such as cancer.

In 1995 Prof Dr. Tassula Proikas-Cezanne got her PhD from the University of Hamburg (as an external thesis at the MPI for Plant Breeding in Cologne). Afterwards she worked as a postdoctoral scientist at the Marie Curie Research Institute in Oxted, UK and the Temple University in Philadelphia, USA. Since 2004 Prof Dr. Tassula Proikas-Cezanne is group leader at the Interfaculty Institute for Cell Biology at the University of Tuebingen and since 2012 apl. Professor for Molecular Biology and Cell Biology at the Faculty of Science, Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen.