معرفی
Maria Lucia Chavez Gutierrez is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine, KU Leuven, and Head of the Laboratory for Proteolytic Mechanisms in Neurodegeneration (VIB-KU Leuven). She is a member of the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain Research, LBI - KU Leuven Brain Institute, and serves on the Doctoral School Committee for Biomedical Sciences and the Departmental Council of Neurosciences.
Her research focuses on proteolytic surveillance of membrane signaling molecules in neurodegeneration, particularly Alzheimer's disease. Key projects include investigating the endolysosomal pathway in APP processing, structural design of gamma-secretase stabilizers, and mechanisms of aspartyl intramembrane proteases. She leads studies on ABCA7-transporter pathogenic roles and high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy applications.
- Recent projects analyze biomolecular interactions in drug development (2025)
- Unraveling resistance mechanisms in Alzheimer's neuronal vulnerability (2024-2028)
- Structure-based design of gamma-secretase-APP stabilizers (2024-2027)
Scientific awards include the 2019 Young Investigator Award from the International Proteolysis Society. She has presented at major conferences including EMBO at Basel Life (2018), the Tetra-Institutional Alzheimer’s Disease Research Seminar Series (2019), and New Horizons in Alzheimer's Disease (2021). Her work involves advising doctoral students and directing research teams focused on neurodegenerative disease mechanisms.
