We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2025 Hooke Medal is…
Ian Ganley
Ian Ganley is a group leader in the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit (MRC PPU) at the University of Dundee. His interests lie in understanding the molecular regulation autophagy – an intracellular “self-eating” pathway that prevents the accumulation of damaged and potentially toxic cellular components. The lab is particularly focussed on how, why and where mitochondria are targeted by autophagy, a process known as mitophagy, and its implications for Parkinson’s disease.
Research from the Ganley Lab in the last few years has shown that the most common mutation found in Parkinson’s disrupts mitophagy in clinically relevant cells within the brain and that this can be rescued with a small molecule drug. They have also uncovered a mechanism that coordinates the autophagy of mitochondria and peroxisomes. Recent work shows that not all mitophagy pathways target damaged mitochondria and reveals how the energy-sensing kinase AMPK turns off mitophagy pathways that target functioning mitochondria, while enhancing those that target dysfunctional ones.
Key to Ian’s research was development of the the mito-QC mitophagy reporter. This turned out to be a simple yet powerful tool to visualise mitophagy in both cells and tissues. It helped uncover the physiological nature of mitophagy and the signals that regulate it. The mito-QC technology has since been licensed to multiple pharmaceutical companies to aid in their drug discovery programmes, as well as being used in hundreds of research labs world-wide. Mito-QC has also highlighted the striking nature of
mitochondrial networks within distinct cell types, and as consequence, images using mito-QC have appeared in the top 3 of the BSCB image competition, including first place in 2024.
Ian obtained his Biochemistry degree from the University of Oxford and a PhD from The University of Cambridge with Dr Nick Ktistakis at The Babraham Institute. Next, he moved to Stanford to carry out postdoctoral research with Prof Suzanne Pfeffer, working on Rab proteins and intracellular transport. During this time Ian became interested in autophagy and so carried out a further postdoc the lab of Dr Xuejun Jiang at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Ian set up his own lab in the MRC PPU at end of 2010 to carry on with his autophagy research.
Ian will be awarded the Hooke Medal and give a talk about his research during the Biologists @ 100 conference which is being held jointly between BSCB and The company of Biologists on 24-27 March 202 at ACC Liverpool, UK.
You can follow Ian’s lab here.
What is the Hooke medal?
The Hooke Medal is awarded every year by the BSCB and recognises an emerging leader in cell biology. The award is named after Robert Hooke, the eminent 17th century natural philosopher and author of Micrographia (the world’s first comprehensive illustrated book on microscopy) and is given to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to UK Cell Biology – until we extended the period of eligibility in May 2014 this has usually been within the first 10 years of establishing their own lab. The medal is presented annually at the annual BSCB meeting after which the winner delivers their research talk.
The medal shows Robert Hooke’s microscope and the cork cells he first described. It was designed by Dr Brad Amos.
Since 2015, the Hooke Medal has been awarded to a cell biologist who started their own group within the last 14 years (with allowances for legitimate career breaks).