Ioannis Nezis

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved catabolic process that involves the degradation of cytoplasmic material through the lysosomal pathway. It is a cellular response in nutrient starvation but it is also responsible for the removal of aggregated proteins, damaged organelles and developmental remodeling. Dysfunction in autophagy has been implicated in an increasing number of diseases from bacterial and viral infections to cancer and more recently in neurodegeneration and other ageing-related diseases. Sequestration and degradation of cytoplasmic material by autophagy can be selective through receptor and adaptor proteins. We are using mammalian cells in vitro and the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, as a genetically modifiable model organism to investigate the mechanisms of autophagy and selective autophagy in the context of the physiology of the cell, the system and the living organism. We are particularly interested to study selective autophagy in the context of ageing, neurodegeneration, obesity, infections and tumorigenesis.

Williams, Joshua, Nezis, Ioannis P. and Sagona, Antonia P. (2026) Genetically engineered bacteriophages — their roles in combating intracellular bacterial infections and unraveling phage–eukaryote interactions. Current Opinion in Microbiology, 89 . 102706. doi:10.1016/j.mib.2025.102706 ISSN 1369-5274. Xia, Jianhua, Chen, Haiqin, Wang, Yuying, Hu, Wenbo, Guo, Kaiyu, Linghu, Qingqing, Guo, Pengchao, Wang, Xin, Xia, Qingyou, Nezis, Ioannis P., Zhao, Ping, Dong, Zhaoming and Zhang, Yan (2025) Defective autophagy in a fibroin secretion-deficient silkworm mutant. Autophagy, 21 (11). pp. 2443-2455. doi:10.1080/15548627.2025.2510843 ISSN 1554-8627. Kołodziej, Marta, Tsapras, Panagiotis, Cameron, Alexander and Nezis, Ioannis P. (2024) Transcription factor deformed wings is an Atg8a-Interacting prot