Maria Jimenez-Sanchez is Reader in Cellular and Molecular Neurodegeneration at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London. She is the lead of the Jimenez-Sanchez Lab.

Maria's research is dedicated to understanding how Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias develop at the molecular and cellular level. She studies how systems that maintain protein balance, such as autophagy and chaperones, can protect against these conditions.

Her main goal is to uncover how these protective mechanisms maintain a healthy communication between neurons and other supporting cells like astrocytes, paving the way for new therapeutic strategies for these currently incurable diseases.

Please see Maria's Research Staff Profile for more detail.

Key Collaborators

• Dr Wendy Noble, King's College London
• Dr Beatriz Gomez Perez-Nievas, King's College London
• Professor Diane Hanger, King's College London

Key Publications

• Pollack SJ, Dakkak D, Guo T, Chennell G, Gomez-Suaga P, Noble W, Jimenez-Sanchez M, Hanger DP. (2024) Truncated tau interferes with the autophagy and endolysosomal pathway and results in lipid accumulation. Cell Mol Life Sci. 
• Yang, F., Beltran-Lobo, P., Sung, K., Goldrick, C., Croft, C.L., Nishimura, A., Hedges, E., Mahiddine, F., Troakes, C., Golde, T.E., Perez-Nievas, B. G., Hanger, D. P., Noble W., Jimenez-Sanchez, M. (2024). Reactive astrocytes secrete the chaperone HSPB1 to mediate neuroprotection. Sci Adv 10, eadk9884. 10.1126/sciadv.adk9884.
• Matafora, V., Gorb, A., Yang, F., Noble, W., Bachi, A., Perez-Nievas, B.G., and Jimenez-Sanchez, M. (2023). Proteomics of the astrocyte secretome reveals changes in their response to soluble oligomeric Aβ. J Neurochem.1111/jnc.15875.
• Sung, K., and Jimenez-Sanchez, M. (2020). Autophagy in Astrocytes and its Implications in Neurodegeneration. J. Mol. Biol. 10.1016/j.jmb.2019.12.041.

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