Aysegul Sapmaz
Target 2035 invited speaker Aysegul Sapmaz is a senior scientist at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) since 2020. In 2012, after obtaining her Ph.D. from Middle East Technical University in Turkey, Aysegul received a postdoctoral Marie Curie fellowship to carry out research at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. During her postdoc, Aysegul co-developed a first-generation ubiquitin-based probe for metalloprotease deubiquitinases — a class of enzymes inert to standard activity-based probes. She also became a leading scientist on the deubiquitinase USP32 and its multifaceted roles in membrane trafficking. As a senior scientist at LUMC, Aysegul is actively involved in the development of innovative tools for ubiquitin research and applying them to biological systems. With this interest, her research goal is to target cysteine proteases by way of small molecule inhibitors, which can be turned into chemical probes. Using these unique tools, she aims to understand the involvement of deubiquitinating enzymes (DUBs) in cellular membrane dynamics and signaling in the context of cancer, infectious diseases and neurodegeneration, with the ultimate goal to translate this knowledge and tools to clinical practice.
Abstracts this author is presenting: