Ana Maria Cuervo, MD, PhD, a leader in the field of protein degradation in relation to biology of aging, will receive the 2025 Howard Taylor Ricketts Prize from the Biological Sciences Division. Her lecture, “Selective autophagy: Ensuring healthy aging one protein at a time,” will be held on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, at 4pm in the Biological Sciences Learning Center, Room 109.
Cuervo is co-director of the Einstein Institute for Aging Research, Robert and Renée Belfer Chair for the Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases, and Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Developmental & Molecular Biology and Medicine (Hepatology) at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She has served in many NIH advisory panels, the NIA Scientific Council, NIH Council of Councils and has been recently elected member of the NIA Board of Scientific Counselors and member of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Deputy Director. She was elected International Academic of the Royal Academy of Medicine of the Valencia Community in 2015, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019.
Cuervo’s group is interested in understanding how altered proteins can be eliminated from the cells and their components recycled. Her group has linked alterations in lysosomal protein degradation (autophagy) with different neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease. They have also shown that restoration of normal lysosomal function prevents accumulation of damaged proteins with age and pioneered studies demonstrating a tight link between autophagy and cellular metabolism.
The Howard Taylor Ricketts Prize is given annually in recognition of extraordinary achievement in any area of biomedical and biological sciences. The lecture series is named after Dr. Howard Taylor Ricketts, who was a pathologist at UChicago from 1902 to 1910. He was the first person to describe the tick-borne pathogen that causes Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, as well as the related organism that causes typhus fever. While researching typhus in Mexico City, he contracted the disease and died at the age of 38. As a memorial to her husband, Myra Tubbs Ricketts established an endowed fund at the University in 1912 to support the Prize.
To learn more about the prize and see a list of past prize winners, please visit the lecture series page.
