Affiliation: University of Edinburgh, Easter Bush, Midlothian EH25 9RG, U.K., The Roslin Institute and R(D)SVS, Functional Genetics

For the past ten years, Kanchan has been working on mechanisms to maintain cellular homeostasis in aging and health. Her research focuses on the cellular recycling pathway ‘autophagy,’ which is implicated in aging, longevity, and neurodegeneration. While working at the University of Oxford, she pioneered a technique for detecting autophagy in primary cells, which revealed a reduction in autophagy levels in aging T lymphocytes. In 2015, she joined the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh. Here, she investigates autophagy as a novel therapeutic target in vascular calcification diseases, for which she was awarded the new investigator award in 2021 by the Bone Research Society. Recently, she has acquired several small independent grants to investigate the role of selective autophagy in farmed Atlantic salmon health.