Biochemical Journal Young Investigator Award winner

Petek Ballar

Dr Petek Ballar completed her undergraduate programme in with a first class degree at Ege University, Faculty of Pharmacy (EUFP). Thus, she was awarded a 4 year scholarship by the Turkish Council for Higher Education for PhD education in the USA. Dr Ballar received her PhD training in Dr Shengyun Fang’s laboratory in the Medical Biotechnology Center of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI). During her tenure at UMBI, she published eight peer-reviewed articles and 13 abstracts, three of which were selected for oral presentations in international meetings. Additionally, she won a travel award from the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, a Graduate Merit Award from the University of Maryland, and the UMBI Distinguished Service Award. She has made some fundamental discoveries that have brought about novel insights into our understanding of the endoplasmic reticulum-associated degradation (ERAD), a process implicated in many diseases such as cancer, cystic fibrosis, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. She identified a novel p97/VCP-interacting motif (VIM) that is shared between gp78 and SVIP, two proteins that interact with p97/VCP. This finding has led her to identify a novel ERAD pathway and the first endogenous inhibitor of ERAD. Dr Ballar recently accepted a position in the Biochemistry Department of EUFP in Turkey and continues her work on mammalian ERAD.