The Nordic Autophagy Society (NAS) is a non-profit academic society that aims to promote excellent, innovative and groundbreaking research in the field of autophagy in the Nordic-Baltic countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and The Netherlands.
NAS stems from the Nordic Autophagy Network, which was established in 2011 and from 2015 and onwards gradually transitioned into a society, resulting in the formal foundation of NAS in January 2018.
NAS organizes annual conferences with internationally esteemed keynote speakers, provides lab exchange- and conferences grants, and maintains an active website with relevant information and news stories for both members and non-members. The society is affiliated with the MDPI journal Cells since 2020. NAS is open for individual memberships from residents of all countries (not only membership countries).
Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved catabolic process by which cytoplasmic materials are delivered to and degraded in the lysosome. Autophagy is essential for survival, differentiation, development, and homeostasis and serves a protective function by removing intracellular pathogens, damaged proteins and organelles that could be potentially dangerous for the cell. It is therefore important to understand the mechanisms involved in its activation and regulation, but also to identify the proteins required for recognition and targeting of the various autophagic cargo for degradation.