Caroline Kumsta
Senior author of a healthy-aging cohort study measuring autophagy flux directly across human cell types, showing it is sex- and cell type-specific and linked to physical function in older adults
Center for Cardiovascular and Muscular Diseases, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute
Kumsta Lab, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (La Jolla, California, USA) ↗
Caroline Kumsta studies how autophagy and proteostasis change with age, and is the senior author of MOR2026, which directly measured autophagic flux (not just gene expression) across matched human cell types from a healthy aging cohort. The study's central finding complicates the simple view that autophagy declines uniformly with age: flux changes differed by cell type and by sex, and in blood immune cells it trended higher, not lower, in older individuals, with higher flux associated with reduced physical function after age 70. A pilot exercise intervention lowered that flux in parallel with improved function, a result the Atlas also reads against the open question of whether a human autophagic-flux assay can serve as a practical readout for mTOR-pathway geroprotector trials.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | H | Autophagy Flux Is Remodeled Sex- and Cell Type-Specifically During Human Aging, and Is Linked to Reduced Physical Function in Older Adults MOR2026 Senior author of a direct, multi-cell-type measurement of human autophagy flux during aging, linking it to physical function and to responsiveness to exercise. |
Co-authors in the Atlas
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Caroline Kumsta.
- Tatiana M. Moreno First author of a healthy-aging cohort study showing that human autophagy flux is remodeled with age in a sex- and cell type-specific way, uncoupled from autophagy-gene transcription, and responsive to a mild exercise intervention
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