Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Autophagy is a cellular degradation process in which different resident and foreign unwanted intracellular components are digested. Autophagy is activated by different cellular stresses such as starvation, infection, protein aggregation, and organelle damage. Dysregulation of the autophagy pathway has been implicated in several diseases including Crohn's Disease, cancer, neurodegeneration and cardiomyopathy. However, there is still a lot we don't know about how the autophagy pathway is regulated which has hindered our ability to generate new drugs that can target this promising pathway. The goal of this project is to study and understand how different autophagy-related genes coordinate the anti-microbial response, as well as to discover new targeted treatment strategies to rescue autophagy defects in Crohn's Disease patients.