Team - The Vilchez Lab

David Vilchez

Principal Investigator in CECAD, University of Cologne, Germany. Proteostasis of aging and stem cells

Postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Andrew Dillin’s lab at the Salk Institute (La Jolla, USA) and the Li Ka Shing Center, University of California (Berkeley, USA). Proteostasis of aging and stem cells
PhD from Dr. Joan Guinovart’s lab, Metabolic Engineering and Diabetes Therapy Laboratory, Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), Barcelona, Spain. Lafora disease and glycogen metabolism in neurons

During his postdoctoral training, Dr. Vilchez studied the role of protein homeostasis in human embryonic stem cells and long-lived C. elegans mutants. His findings showed that increased somatic proteasome activity resulted in increased longevity in the worms. Ectopic expression of the 19S proteosome subunit, rpn-6, is sufficient to extend life span and confer proteotoxic stress resistance. Furthermore, his work has also shown that just like genome stability is essential for the survival of stem cells, proteome stability may have equally important role in stem cell identity and function. In his own lab, Dr. Vilchez would like to continue on his work on proteostasis of aging and stem cells.
Dr. Vilchez received the Josep Trueta prize for the best research for his PhD work published in Nature Neuroscience in 2007 “Mechanism suppressing glycogen synthesis and its demise in progressive myoclonus epilepsy”, and the Young Scientist award from the Spanish Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2008.