ERC Consolidator Grant 2021 to Federican Carmine Settembre

Federiciano Carmine Settembre is the winner of theERC Consolidator Grant - panel LS4.

The professor of histology at the Department of Clinical Medicine and Surgery of theUnviersità degli Studi di Napoli Federico II researcher at the Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine (Tigem) in Pozzuoli has been awarded the European Research Council grant reserved for outstanding researchers with the innovative and ambitious AUTO-SELECT project.

The goal is to study the signals that mediate the degradation of cellular components observed following forced fasting, exercise, and administration of certain drugs (e.g., aspirin, metformin, and antioxidants).

The efficient disposal of cellular wastes plays a key role in maintaining organ function and prevents organ aging. In addition, many human diseases, especially those associated with aging processes, are characterized by the progressive accumulation of toxic substances within our cells. For these reasons, characterizing the mechanisms by which cells are able to identify and select components to be degraded, while sparing essential ones, is of fundamental importance for human health.

Professor Carmine Settembre's team aims to uncover such mechanisms by analyzing how different cells in our body respond to different degradative stimuli. Such analyses will be carried out thanks to innovative cell reporters recently developed in Professor Settembre's laboratory that allow simultaneous monitoring of the degradation of multiple cellular components using high-resolution fluorescent microscopy.

The results obtained through such analyses will be integrated with functional genomics and proteomics studies in order to associate certain intracellular signals with each degradative event. The results obtained from such studies have the potential to open future therapeutic prospects to combat numerous human diseases associated with aging.

In the past 8 years, Consolidator Grants won in this panel in Italy have been only 3 out of 80 submissions. This is the fourth in a decade.