Della David is a senior group leader at the Babraham Institute. After studies in France at the European School of Biotechnology, she moved to Switzerland and obtained her PhD in 2005 from the University of Zürich working on a mouse model for tau protein aggregation. For her postdoctoral work (2006-2011), she joined the lab of Cynthia Kenyon at UCSF in the USA, supported with funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, Larry L. Hillblom Foundation, American Federation for Aging ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ and Program for Breakthrough Biomedical ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ. In Cynthia’s lab, she started working with the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans and she discovered that widespread protein aggregation occurs during normal ageing.
Between 2011 and 2021, Della led an independent research group in Germany at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in Tübingen and then at the Interfaculty Institute of Biochemistry, University of Tübingen. In 2022, Della relocated her lab to the Babraham Institute. Her group continues to focus on age-dependent protein aggregation with the aim of uncovering endogenous mechanisms to prevent aggregation and promote healthy ageing. A key recent study of her group characterised the extracellular proteostasis network in C. elegans. The group’s research at the Babraham Institute is supported by a Wellcome Discovery Award and a Longevity Impetus Grant.