Claudio Flores PhD

Claudio Hetz was originally trained as a Biotechnology Engineer at the University of Chile and performed his Ph. thesis in Biomedical Sciences at Serono Pharmaceutical Research Institute, Switzerland. This work was performed in the laboratory of Dr. Claudio Soto and contributed to defining the role of ER stress in Prion-related disorders. Then he did a postdoctoral training at Harvard University to study stress responses at the level of proteostasis control and its relation to disease. This work was supervised by Drs Stanley Korsmeyer and Laurie Glimcher, the world leader in apoptosis and ER stress research. He joined the University of Chile in 2007 and is currently a Full Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, in addition to holding an adjunct Professor position at the Buck Institute for Research in Aging in California and a visiting professor position at Harvard. He is also currently the Director of the Biomedical Neuroscience Institute (BNI) and associate investigator of the Center for Geroscience, Brain Health and Metabolism (GERO).

His research focused on understanding the molecular basis of protein folding stress, its relationship to pathological conditions affecting the nervous system including ALS, Parkinson´s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease, and the development of prototypic strategies to prevent neuronal damage. One of his major areas of biotechnological development is gene therapy. This group is one of the most productive laboratories in Chile and Latin America and is currently supported by various national and international organizations. He has received important awards including the KIA International Award, FEBS Anniversary Prize, TWAS-ROLAC and UNESCO Young Scientist Prize as an outstanding young scientist in Latin America, the Santander Award, was a finalist in the Eppendorf and Science Award in Neurobiology, and was awarded the Cell Biology Society and Bios-Chile prize as the best young scientist of Chile. Dr. Hetz's H-factor is 55, publishing more than 200 papers with more than 18,000 citations.