
RUT VALDOR ALONSO
Rut Valdor, PhD
Ramon y Cajal researcher,
Biochemistry, Molecular biology and Immunology Department,
Cell therapy and hematopoietic transplant group, University of Murcia.
Unit of Autophagy, immune response and tolerance in pathological processes,
Biomedical Research Institute of Murcia (IMIB-Pascual Parrilla).
Our previous results determine that we can find an effective treatment to eliminate the Glioblastoma (GB) tumor progression through modulation of chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) in brain defense-pericytes (PCs). As CMA is universal in all types of cells, including tumor cells, is required the better understanding of the biology of the niche that surrounds the tumor to find target specific markers and stablish an effective selective therapy. Our goal is to get efficient therapies and identify prognosis markers modulating CMA in PCs, which is not only important to treat GB cancer, but even for other cancers in microvascularized tissues containing PCs, or other inflammatory pathologies.
Our main objective is based on our previous results, Macroautophagy, as a bulk degradation process in PCs, might be implicated in the energetic metabolism and remodeling required for the interaction with the tumor cells, whereas CMA, as a high selective process in its degradation of proteins, consequently, is important in the reprogramming of the immune phenotype (through proteome changes) induced upon interaction with GB cells. We are developing pre-clinical studies in GB and in other inflammatory animal models, testing different drugs and other therapeutically strategies that modulate specifically CMA in PCs and therefore, might modulate different PCs functions in different pathologies. Our lab caters with the international scientific advice and tools from labs of expertise in “Autophagy and proteostasis” and in “immune-peptides and treatment in inflammatory diseases” such as Prof. A.M. Cuervo in Albert Einstein College of Medicine (New York), and Prof. Sylviane Muller in University of Strasbourg.