Akriti Prashar, PhD

Akriti Prashar obtained her PhD in Cell and Systems Biology from the University of Toronto, Canada where her doctoral work focused on host-pathogen interactions using microscopy approaches. Following her PhD, she worked in the lab of Dr. Maximiliano Gutierrez at the Francis Crick Institute, London studying the intracellular survival mechanisms of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Her work there sparked her interest in organelle biology which led her to a postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Dr. Nicola Jones at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada, where she studied the interactions between host mitochondria and the gastric pathogen Helicobacter pylori. Here she discovered a novel pathway of mitochondrial quality control which requires mitochondria-lysosome communication. She is currently continuing investigating the role of this pathway in cellular homeostasis and the potential contribution of this pathway in LRRK2-dependent inflammation in the lab of Dr. Rosa Puertollano with the goal of identifying disease mechanisms.