Dr. Ljubica Vučićević

Ljubica Vučićević graduated 2005, at the Faculty of Biology University of Belgrade in Molecular Biology and Physiology. She defended her doctoral dissertation entitled "The role of adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase inhibition in the induction of apoptosis and autophagy in tumor cell lines" at the Faculty of Biology of the University of Belgrade in 2013. She received the "Goran Ljubijankić" award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of molecular biology in 2013. As a member of a national research project OI173053 she coordinated the project task entitled “Investigation of the role of autophagy in the antitumor effect of experimental drugs in the therapy of human neuroblastoma”. In 2016, she was the winner of the national scholarship program “Start Up for Science”, for the project “Modulation of intracellular energy balance-controlling signaling pathway and autophagy in an in vitro model of cerebral ischemia”. In 2017, she was on a short postdoctoral research training at the Institute for Cell & Molecular Biosciences (Newcastle University, UK). Within the special research program for COVID-19 of the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia (2021. - 2022) as a member of a project ,,Targeting Autophagy to Combat SARS-CoV-2-induced Immune Dysregulation“, she coordinated working package entitled „Modulation of autophagy and immune response by SARS-CoV-2 proteins“. At the contest of the "Veselin Lučić" Endowment for the best scientific achievement for the year 2022, she was awarded as a co-author for an article “MAP kinase-dependent autophagy controls phorbol myristate acetate-induced macrophage differentiation of HL-60 leukemia cells”. She is involved in the research of the macroautophagy process and so far has studied the role and mechanisms of autophagy in starvation, oxidative stress, excitotoxicity, inflammation, differentiation and cancer therapy. She participated in COST actions Transautophagy CA15138, and in Translacore CA21154 as a MC member. She is a member of Serbian Society for Molecular Biology, Serbian Biological Society, Serbian Neuroscience Society, Federation of European Neuroscience Societies, and Women in autophagy.