Vojo Deretic PhD

Vojo Deretic is Chair of the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. He received his undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral education in Belgrade, Paris, and Chicago. Dr. Deretic's main contributions to science come from studies by his team on the role of autophagy in infection, immunity and inflammation. In 2004, his group made the discovery that autophagy acts as a defense against intracellular microbes including Mycobacterium tuberculosis. A series of studies in Cell, Science, Immunity, Nature Cell Biology, Developmental Cell and Molecular Cell from Dr. Deretic's group showed specifics of intersections between immune responses and autophagy. His group has discovered that autophagy in mammalian cells is not only degradative but also works in unconventional secretion. Recently, Dr. Deretic’s laboratory has shown that a large family of proteins termed TRIMs act as autophagic receptor-regulators in mammalian cells.