LAUSR

As a child, Ana Maria Cuervo wanted to be a mathematician. “I have to confess that I love numbers,” she says. Because her parents were unsure whether one could make a living as a mathematician, she decided to go to medical school when it came time to choose a career. “I studied in Spain, where we have to decide our career when we are 17 years old,” says Cuervo. “I always liked biology in general, but then I thought biomedicine was a better option because you can apply it to diseases,” she says. When she eventually focused on biomedical research, Cuervo was able to harness her initial passion for mathematics as well. “Fortunately, science eventually brought me to numbers, too,” she says. Cuervo went on to decipher many of the molecular mechanisms by which proteins and organelles are recycled by lysosomes, cells’ recycling factories, in a process known as autophagy. Her work showed that lysosomal degradation can be selective, and she has investigated how disruptions in this process contribute to aging and neurodegenerative and metabolic disorders. In her Inaugural Article, she describes how a reduction in a selective type of autophagy, chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA), can affect atherosclerosis (1). Cuervo is now a professor in developmental and molecular biology and medicine and codirector of the Institute for Aging Studies at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2019.