Impact
Malene Hansen studies autophagy, the lysosomal recycling pathway that maintains cellular homeostasis, and how its regulation changes with age. Her laboratory combines genetic, cytological, biochemical and pharmacological approaches in the nematode C. elegans and in human cell culture, with the aim of understanding age-dependent decline in autophagy and restoring the process in older organisms and in age-related disease. Trained in Denmark (M.Sc. and Ph.D., Copenhagen University), she was a postdoctoral fellow with Cynthia Kenyon at UCSF from 2001, established her lab at Sanford Burnham Prebys in 2007, and joined the Buck Institute in 2021 as Chief Scientific Officer and faculty member. Her recognitions include an Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar in Aging Award, a Glenn Award, the AFAR Irving Wright Award of Distinction (2021) and the University of Michigan Bennett Cohen Award (2024). She is a past chair of the NIH Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Aging study section and has co-organised the Cold Spring Harbor Mechanisms of Aging meeting (2014-2018) and Gordon Research Conferences on autophagy. Her work connects autophagy and proteostasis to lifespan regulation, and she holds senior scientific leadership at an institute dedicated to aging research.
Metrics
- h-index 53 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗
Research output
108 works · 30,440 citations · h-index 48 OpenAlex ↗
Selected publications
- Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition) ↗ 2016 · 6,021 citations
- Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy ↗ 2012 · 4,063 citations
- Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition) 1 ↗ 2021 · 2,742 citations
- Phosphorylation of ULK1 (hATG1) by AMP-Activated Protein Kinase Connects Energy Sensing to Mitophagy ↗ 2010 · 2,639 citations
- Molecular definitions of autophagy and related processes ↗ 2017 · 1,680 citations
Research funding
18 NIH awards · USD 10M total NIH RePORTER ↗
- Regulation of the Autophagy Pathway with Age and in Long-lived Animals National Institute on Aging · 2026 · USD 653K
- Regulation of the Autophagy Pathway with Age and in Long-lived Animals National Institute on Aging · 2025 · USD 627K
- Regulation of the Autophagy Pathway with Age and in Long-lived Animals National Institute on Aging · 2023 · USD 618K
- Regulation of the Autophagy Pathway with Age and in Long-lived Animals National Institute on Aging · 2022 · USD 603K
- Role of Selective Autophagy in Organismal Health National Institute on Aging · 2022 · USD 528K