Margrét Helga Ögmundsdóttir mun halda yfirlitserindi á líffræðiráðstefnunni um niðurbrotsferlið sjálfsát og tengsl þess við krabbamein. Margrét er rannsóknarsérfræðingur við Læknadeild Háskóla Íslands og snúa rannsóknir hennar að frumulíffræði krabbameina.
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Margrét Helga Ögmundsdóttir is a research specialist at the University of Iceland, with a research focus on tumor cell biology. Margrét has been active within the research community, has served on the board and as a president of the Association for Cancer Research in Iceland, and is currently on the board of the Nordic Autophagy Society. Margrét has received a number of awards for her research including an award from the Ministry of Education to a young and prospective scientist in 2013 and the Motivation Award of the Science and Technology Policy council in 2016.
Margrét will give a plenary talk titled: The role of intracellular waste and recycling in cancer.
Abstract: Autophagy is a degradation pathway in which intracellular material and organelles are degraded and reused. Autophagy has gained increased interest in the past years and the connection of the process to various human diseases has started to unravel. In 2016, the Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi who identified essential autophagy genes in a series of elegant studies using yeast as a model organism. The connection of autophagy and cancer is complex. Whereas cancer cells utilize autophagy to cope with stress conditions such as nutrient or oxygen deprivation within the tumor microenvironment, autophagy is believed to be protective against tumor initiation. Margrét will discuss data on the regulation of the autophagy pathway and the connection of autophagy to cancer.