Ana Despotović

Ana Despotović is a Research Associate at the Department of Neurophysiology, part of the Institute for Biological Research 'Siniša Stanković' under the University of Belgrade. She earned her M.Sc. in Molecular Biology and Physiology (2017) after graduating from the Faculty of Biology (2016) and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the same faculty.

Her research focuses on intracellular signaling mechanisms in cancer cells and biocompatibility testing of bioactive materials for regenerative medicine. Key projects include studies on autophagy in tumor cell death (2018-2020) and energy balance signaling pathways in cancer (2018-2019), both funded by the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development. She contributed to a Sino-Serbian bilateral cooperation project (2023) at Fujian Medical University.

Her publications span genomics, miRNA biomarkers, and nanotoxicology, with recent work on non-coding RNA in colorectal cancer and SMAD4 gene variants in pancreatic cancer. Awards include recognition from the Serbian Society for Cancer Researchers (SDIR) for best publications by young researchers (2025).

Professional affiliations:

• Society for Neuroscience Serbia (DNS)
• Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS)
• Serbian Biological Society (SBD)
• Society for Free Radical Research - Europe (SFRR-E)
• Serbian Society for Mitochondrial and Free-Radical Physiology (SSMFRP)
• Serbian Society for Molecular Biology (MolBioS)
• European Association for Cancer Research (EACR)

Contact:

• Phone: +381 11 2078339
• Email: ana.despotovic@ibiss.bg.ac.rs