Patricija van Oosten-Hawle, PhD

Our lab investigates transcellular chaperone signaling, a cell-nonautonomous, inter-tissue
stress-response pathway orchestrated by molecular chaperones such as Hsp70 and Hsp90, to
preserve proteome integrity across the whole organism. By coordinating communication
between tissues, this enables multicellular organisms to counteract the age-dependent buildup
of aggregation-prone proteins and delay the onset of neurodegenerative diseases, including
Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Our lab aims to
elucidate how these organism-wide proteostasis networks are regulated and to harness them
for delaying a range of age-associated proteinopathies.