Asma Boukhalfa studies the autophagy machinery - the cell's principal route for degrading and recycling its own components _ and how that machinery is repurposed beyond degradation. Her doctoral work uncovered non-canonical roles for autophagy proteins in primary-cilium signaling and in the control of cell size and volume regulation. Her current program asks how the same machinery sorts protein cargo into extracellular vesicles, and how that decision shapes communication between cardiac cells under stress. She is particularly interested in the intersection of autophagy, mitochondrial quality control, and extracellular-vesicle signaling in cardiac disease — including hypertrophic and dilated cardiomyopathy and the cardiotoxicity of cancer therapy — with the goal of identifying mechanisms and biomarkers that distinguish a protected from an injured heart. Research interests / keywords: Autophagy machinery · non-canonical autophagy · extracellular vesicles · mitochondria · cell volume regulation · hypertrophic and dilated cardiomyopathy · cardio-oncology · cardiotoxicity