ERC Starting Grant for Elias Adriaenssens to study selective autophagy
IMP postdoc Elias Adriaenssens has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant worth close to €1.5 million to study how cells decide when to dispose of their organelles – and how they prevent healthy ones from being destroyed.
Elias Adriaenssens, postdoc at the IMP in the lab of Tim Clausen, has been awarded a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to investigate how cells control the selective removal of their organelles. His project, TRANS-AUTOPHAGY, will examine how specialised receptors trigger the degradation of organelles at the right time, while preventing their unwanted destruction. The prestigious grant will provide close to €1.5 million in funding over the next five years.
Cells constantly inspect, repair and recycle their components to stay healthy. One of the pathways responsible for this cellular housekeeping is autophagy, through which unwanted material – including damaged organelles – is captured and broken down. In selective autophagy, specialised proteins called autophagy receptors recognise material destined for degradation and recruit the cellular machinery that packages it for removal. While some of these receptors float freely in the cell and are recruited to their targets when needed, others are permanently embedded in the membranes of organelles. This creates a biological puzzle: these transmembrane autophagy receptors are always in direct contact with the very structures they can mark for destruction – yet healthy organelles are not continuously degraded. How cells keep these receptors inactive, while maintaining their ability to rapidly initiate organelle removal when needed, is unknown.
How do organelles know when it is time to go?
With TRANS-AUTOPHAGY, Adriaenssens will tackle two major unknowns in selective autophagy. First, he wants to understand how transmembrane autophagy receptors remain inactive despite being constantly embedded in their target organelles – and what switches them on when an organelle needs to be removed. Second, he will search for receptors that have so far escaped discovery. Using AlphaFold-based screens alongside proteomics and experimental approaches, Adriaenssens aims to build a more complete picture of the receptors cells use to control the turnover of different organelles.
Ultimately, Adriaenssens seeks to understand how organelles can help orchestrate their own removal without putting healthy ones at risk. By discovering how cells achieve this delicate balance, he could reshape our understanding of selective autophagy and, in the longer term, point to new ways of tackling diseases in which damaged or dysfunctional organelles are not properly cleared.
About the ERC
The European Research Council (ERC), set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. Every year, it selects and funds the very best, creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based in Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting, Consolidator, Advanced and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than 16 billion Euro.
About Elias Adriaenssens
Elias Adriaenssens is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Tim Clausen at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) at the Vienna BioCenter. He joined the Vienna BioCenter as a postdoc at the Max Perutz Labs in 2019. Adriaenssens completed his PhD in molecular biology at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. He also holds a Master’s degree in pharmacology from the University of Oxford (2014), as well as undergraduate and Master’s degrees in biochemistry from the University of Antwerp. He has received several awards and honours, including a Medical Research Council (MRC) Studentship Award (2013); a Wolfson College High Profile Achievement Award (2014); a Rotary Hope-in-Head Grant (2019); a Countdown Research Grant (2026); and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship.