Gábor Juhász was awarded the Szent-Györgyi Talents Award

2022. ápr. 17. | News

The National Academy of Scientist Education's Szent-Györgyi Talents Awards were presented at a gala ceremony held at the National Theatre of Szeged on April 6, 2022. This prestigious award was established in 2013 by the Foundation for the Future of Biomedical Research in Szeged (now the National Biomedical Foundation) in 2013 and is given to researchers who have achieved unique scientific results while working in Szeged.

This year, the work of 4 researchers was awarded, including Gábor Juhász, a scientific advisor at the Institute of Genetics of BRC Szeged. His research team studies the self-digestion process of eukaryotic cells, autophagy. During autophagy, typically the cell's own cytoplasmic fragments containing cellular organelles or pathogens are  packaged into an autophagosome and fused with a lysosome. Lysosomal acid hydrolase enzymes break down the cargo into building blocks that are then returned to the cytosol. This process plays an important role in maintaining the proper functioning of cells, and its defects contribute to many human diseases (neurodegeneration, cancer, infections, aging, etc.). Over the past decade, the research team has focused on the molecular mechanisms of autophagosome-lysosome fusion and also studied other functions of these factors in endocytosis, crinophagy, and lysosome biogenesis in Drosophila and human cell culture models. In addition, they are continuing their previous work examining the canonical and non-canonical roles of Drosophila homologs of Atg genes required for autophagosome biogenesis in yeast. The Talents Award of the National Academy of Scientist Education was given to Gábor Juhász for his research on the non-autophagic functions of the Atg genes of Drosophila. This was based on publications demonstrating autophagy-independent roles of Drosophila Atg8a in larval intestinal histolysis, Atg8b in sperm development and Atg9 in actin cytoskeleton regulation.

Congratulations!

Source: The National Academy of Scientist Education