Welcome to FINALphagy, Amani! Could you tell us a bit about yourself? What is your background?
I am a pharmacist and hold a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the American University of Beirut where I established an in vivo model for chronic myeloid leukemia drug screening in flies. In 2020 I moved to Oslo, Norway for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral fellowship (SCIENTIA program) where I worked on a project to unravel new regulators of autophagy termination.
What will you work on in FINALphagy?
Based on previous results collected in the lab and results collected during my SCIENTIA fellowship, I will work on validating and investigating, in vivo in flies, candidate genes that might play a role in autophagy termination hence contributing to a better understanding of the final phase of autophagy.
What are your expectations for working on this project?
I expect that working on this project will help us understand better how cells terminate autophagy in a multicellular organism in response to nutrient availability. This in the bigger picture serves to equip us with better targets for modulating autophagy for therapeutic purposes.