American Aging Association Newsletter

OCTOBER 2005

   review this online at www.americanaging.org/news/oct05.html

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2006 Annual Meeting

Discussion

Announcements

- Call for Abstracts

- Program updates

- Speakers

- Sponsorship/Exhibit

 

- IN THE SPOTLIGHT:  Immunity and Infection

Dr. Aubrey de Grey presents SENS - an overview for biogerontologists.

Read more>>>

- Our apologies for the delay of our October issue.

- Welcome to our AGE New Member!

- Grant Announcements

35th AGE ANNUAL MEETING - June 2-5, 2006

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Participants who wish to make an oral or a poster presentation at this meeting must submit an abstract which will be reviewed by the Scientific Committee.  Results of this review will be communicated via email, to each applicant.  Please note that only the abstract of the registered presenters will be included in the program and the Conference Handbook.

 

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM

Review the updates to our preliminary program.  We have also finalized the program for our pre-meeting symposium - CALORIC RESTRICTION - review the lectures and speakers here

 

SPEAKERS

We've added more speaker profiles - read more at www.americanaging.org/speakers06.html

 

EXHIBIT/SPONSORSHIP

The 35th American Aging Association Annual Meeting offers great opportunities to expand your company's visibility among the registrants by becoming an exhibitor and/or conference sponsor.   These will include multiple opportunities to:

- introduce and discuss your products and services with leading basic science researchers and clinicians of the aging field

- reach decision makers within a group-setting

open door to new leads and long-term business relationships

- increase exposure and strengthen brand recognition in the aging research field.

Attendees include many decision makers, such as academic department chairs, heads of laboratories, government officials, attending clinicians, private practitioners, post-docs, MD and PhD students and technicians.  You will be hard pressed to find a more appropriate audience for your latest products and services.  

Consider becoming a sponsor today and take advantage of extensive advertising opportunities via our newsletter and website!

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ANNUAL MEETING SESSION SPOTLIGHT

Following the first presentation of our Annual Meeting Session Spotlight (see our September issue on Sarcopenia: Cause, Effect and Treatment), we are continuing our series with Immunity and Infection (session scheduled for the morning of June 4).  Dr. Laura Haynes, who will be chairing this session, provides us with a background (below).  As always, we encourage your comments and questions.

 


 

Immunity and Infection

 

CHAIR: Laura Haynes, PhD, Trudeau Institute, USA

Age and the Adaptive Immune System - Jörg J. Goronzy, MD, Emory University

The Effect of Age on the Cognate Function of CD4 T- Cells - Laura Haynes, PhD, Trudeau Institute

Influenza Vaccination: T-Cell Responses Translate to Health Outcomes in Older Adults - Janet McElhaney, MD, University of Connecticut Health Center

 


(Background provided by Dr. Laura Haynes, Session Chair)

This session will address how age-related changes influence the function of the immune system. As individuals age, morbidity and mortality resulting from infectious disease increases. This is especially evident for new emerging diseases such as West Nile virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and possibly for new strains of influenza virus such as bird flu. Importantly, the ability of aged individuals to respond to vaccinations against infectious diseases also declines. For example, the yearly influenza vaccine exhibits only 40-60% efficacy in elderly populations, leaving them much more susceptible to infection compared to younger populations. Studies in humans have focused on antibody production in response to vaccination and have shown significant reduction in antibody production in response to vaccinations including influenza, tetanus and hepatitis in the elderly. In addition to reduced antibody production, current vaccines induce less vigorous cell mediated immune responses, including reduced T cell proliferation and IFN-g production in the aged. Clearly, this is problematic since the elderly are often targeted for vaccination.

In this session, presentations will address several aspects of how aging influences immune function. I will present basic studies on which specific cell types are involved in this age-related decline in immune function, especially with regard to response to vaccinations. Dr. Goronzy will present a talk on other age-related changes in immune function as well as proposed mechanisms for why these defects occur.  Additionally, Dr. McElhaney will present her studies examining better approaches for studying vaccine efficacy for elderly populations.


 

CHAIR:

 

Laura Haynes, PhD, Trudeau Institute   - Dr. Haynes is an Associate Member at Trudeau Institute in Saranac Lake, NY. She has been working in the field of aging and immunity since 1994. Her work is focused on how aging influences the function of CD4 T cells and how this impacts the efficacy of vaccines in the elderly. She and her collaborator, Dr. Susan Swain, pioneered the use of T cell receptor transgenic mice in the study of the effects of aging on immune function. The model that they developed allowed for the direct examination of antigen-specific naive CD4 T cells from young and aged animals both in vitro and in vivo. Dr. Haynes found that even in a young environment, CD4 T cells from aged donors exhibit poor cognate function leading to reduced humoral responses. In contrast, CD4 T cells from young donors exhibit potent cognate function in aged hosts. Thus, aging has a dramatic impact on the cognate function of naive CD4 T cells which can influence the response to both new pathogens and new vaccinations in aged individuals.           

 


 

 

Jörg J. Goronzy, MD, Emory University - Dr. Goronzy, MD, PhD, is the Mason I. Lowance, M.D. Professor of Medicine and Director of the Kathleen B. and Mason I. Lowance Center for Human Immunology in the Department of Medicine at Emory University. From 1990 to 2003, Dr. Goronzy was on the faculty of the Mayo Medical and Graduate School, where he was Professor of Medicine and Immunology and Director of the Clinical Immunology and Immunotherapeutics Program in the Department of Medicine. He received his medical degree from the University of Aachen, a doctoral degree in medicine from the University of Bonn in 1979, and a doctoral degree in medical sciences from the University of Heidelberg in 1988.  He did a residency in internal medicine at Hannover Medical School in Germany and a fellowship in clinical immunology and rheumatology at Stanford University.   Dr. Goronzy is a leading researcher in the field of human immunology.  His research has focused on molecular pathways regulating the function of T lymphocytes in protective and pathologic immune responses.  Dr. Goronzy’s work on how humans generate, select and maintain immunocompetent cells over the course of a lifetime has led to insights into mechanisms of immune aging, the effect of aging on autoimmunity, and the ability to generate protective immune responses.  He is author or coauthor of over two hundred publications. Among his awards are the Henry Kunkel Young Investigator Award from the American College of Rheumatology and the Department of Medicine Outstanding Investigator Award from the Mayo Foundation.  He is an elected member of the American Association of Physicians and the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

 


 

Janet McElhaney, MD, University of Connecticut Health Center - Dr. McElhaney, MD is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Connecticut (UConn) School of Medicine and is Board Certified in both Internal Medicine and Geriatric Medicine.  Her research has focused on the development of assays that measure T-cell responses to influenza vaccination and correlate with protection against influenza in older adults.  Ultimately, these assays may be applied to screen new vaccines for improved efficacy and identifying other vaccine preventable diseases in older adults.  This research program has been funded by the National Institute on Aging (R01AG20634) and currently by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R01AI68265).   Read more at: http://immunotherapy.uchc.edu/labs_mcelhaney.htm 

 


 

Wish to contact any of the speakers or comment?  Click here.

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DISCUSSION

Opinions expressed by contributors to this section of our newsletter are solely those of the individual writers and do not reflect the opinions of the American Aging Association.

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey, PhD

Dr. de Grey holds a B.A., an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.  Since 1992, Dr. de Grey has been part of the Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge.  The central goal of his work is to expedite the development of a true cure for human aging.  Dr. de Grey is the Editor of "Rejuvenation Research", the world's only peer-reviewed journal focused on intervention in aging.  His research interests encompass the etiology of all the accumulating and eventually pathogenic molecular and cellular side-effects of metabolism that constitute mammalian aging and the design of interventions to reverse and/or obviate this accumulation.

SENS: an overview for biogerontologists - Possibly unaware of what he may be unleashing, Norm Wolf has asked me to outline in the AGE newsletter the approach to postponing aging that I have been developing for the past five years [1-3]. It goes by the acronym SENS, standing for “Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence”, and I have given it this provocative name without hyperbole: I claim that it genuinely has the potential to convert a species that ages (namely humans) into one that, at least within the limits of statistical detectability, does not. This claim so vastly exceeds that made for any other future anti-aging strategy advocated by mainstream biogerontologists that the reaction of many in our field has been initially to look the other way and, more recently, to dissociate themselves publicly from something so radical [4]. Much of the established biology on which SENS builds is not traditionally considered relevant to gerontology; doubtless largely because of this, the reasons recently stated [4] for skepticism about SENS have revealed considerable misunderstanding both of what SENS proposes and of how close we already are to implementing its components [5]. Thus, now is an appropriate time to describe the SENS approach in a forum such as this. In the interests of brevity I will not go into the details of the SENS components where I have published those details extensively elsewhere (cited below and available as preprints at http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/AdGpubs.htm; instead I shall focus on SENS’s overall structure, motivation and justification, which I perceive are the main points of contention regarding its credibility.

SENS departs from conventional biogerontological strategies for delaying aging in two main ways, both of which run sharply counter to conventional wisdom regarding what approaches to postponing aging might be effective. Firstly, it is a piecemeal approach, consisting of a panel of interventions each focused on one aspect of aging: this might initially seem doomed by the ubiquitous phenomenon of antagonistic pleiotropy, whereby retardation of one aspect of aging (e.g., raising p53 levels to prevent cancer) is prone to accelerate other aspects (e.g., loss of stem cells through overly hair-trigger apoptosis). Second, these interventions are not pre-emptive measures to "clean up" metabolism and prevent it from initiating the cascade of events that eventually lead to age-related pathology: rather, the SENS components are aimed either at repairing the eventually deleterious side-effects of metabolism before they spiral out of control, or else at obviating them, i.e. interrupting the mechanism by which they lead to pathology. This would seem to disregard the even more ubiquitous rule that prevention is better than cure. I will therefore begin by justifying why these two features are not reasons to reject SENS out of hand.

Figure 1. The bipartite nature of aging and three paradigms for intervention.

Figure 1 summarises the differences between three conceptual approaches to delaying age-related pathology. The functional decline of aging, for brevity denoted “pathology” in Figure 1 and hereafter, is ultimately a side-effect of metabolism, linked to it by an immensely complex and interwoven chain of events. However, that chain can be dissected into two steps, linked by a set of phenomena that I will group under the term "damage." The point of this dissection is that there is a key distinction between the (composite) process by which metabolism causes damage and that by which damage causes pathology: the former is an ongoing process throughout life, whereas the latter is an eventual process that occurs at a meaningful rate only after damage has risen to a threshold level of abundance. Phenomena that qualify as damage thus include, for example, mutations; processes that link metabolism to mutations include the creation of oxidative damage by free radicals generated as a side-effect of respiration; and processes that link mutations to pathology include the failure of cell cycle control due to the loss of expression of mutated genes, leading to cancer. In terms of the postponement of age-related pathology, the geriatrician focuses on the stage when pathology has already emerged, attempting to slow its progression, while the gerontologist aspires to “clean up” metabolism and thereby slow the rate at which damage is laid down in the first place. The engineering approach, epitomised by SENS, allows damage to occur but periodically (a) repairs the damage, so preventing it from reaching pathogenic levels, and/or (b) prevents the chain of events downstream of the damage from operating.

One further property is required for a phenomenon to qualify as "damage" in the sense I am using the word: it must not be subject to natural repair. Many molecular and cellular changes that occur throughout life and are eventually bad for us are excluded from the set of intermediaries between metabolism and pathology because the change is in the equilibrium between creation and removal, so is necessarily secondary to other changes that alter the rates of creation and removal. An example is the shift in plasma redox poise to a more oxidised state.

The validity of this separation of aging into ongoing processes and eventual processes can be seen by considering the time course of age-related pathology: namely, that it is essentially absent for the first half of life and then accelerates. Forty-year-olds who have paid attention to their health function virtually as well (both mentally and physically) as 20-year-olds, but they have a considerably shorter remaining life expectancy: this can only be because, while changes have been accumulating at the molecular and cellular level, these have not yet become sufficiently abundant to impair function. In other words, all age-related pathology must arise via accumulating intermediates of some kind – in other words, damage as defined in Figure 1.

Even if it is valid, is this insight useful? My reason for claiming that it is will also provide my answers to the two challenges to the plausibility of SENS mentioned earlier.

Aspects of metabolism

 

Types of damage

 

Age-related pathologies

Respiration 

(via oxidation)

Carbohydrate metabolism

(via glycation)

Cell turnover  (via mutations, telomere shortening, stem cell depletion, etc)

Etc, etc, etc

 

Cell depletion

Extracellular crosslinks

Extracellular aggregates

Death-resistant cells

Mitochondrial mutations

Lysosomal aggregates

Nuclear [epi]mutations

Er.... that’s it!

 

Neurodegeneration

Atherosclerosis

Cancer

Diabetes

Hormonal imbalance

Blindness

Immune decline

Etc, etc, etc

Table 1. Damage is complex, but much less so than metabolism or pathology.

Table 1 encapsulates the main reason why I claim that the engineering approach is so much more feasible than the gerontology and geriatrics approaches to postponing age-related functional decline. The geriatrics approach is futile in any more than the short term because age-related pathology is so complex: the items listed in the right-hand column above are palpably a very incomplete list of what goes wrong in older people. The gerontology approach is also futile for the foreseeable future, for essentially the same reason: however much we may have learned about metabolism in recent decades, we all know full well that we have hardly scratched its surface, and it seems clear that we will need to understand it really very well indeed in order to clean it up substantially without unacceptable side-effects. The left-hand column lists a few of the aspects of metabolism that tend to get a lot of the blame for aging, but it would be biologically naïve to absolve any aspect of metabolism from involvement in aging, since metabolism is an interlocking network of processes. Contemporary efforts to slow the accumulation of damage are therefore mostly restricted to eliciting pathways that the organism already encodes, notably for survivability of famines; this clearly has only limited potential, and for humans it may be very limited indeed [6].

The SENS approach is founded on the assertion declared in the middle column of Table 1 – that unlike metabolism or pathology, damage can adequately thoroughly (note that I elaborate on this qualification below) be classified into just seven categories, each of which is potentially remediable by foreseeable interventions that either repair it (remove the damage) or obviate it (render it unable to contribute to pathology). The objection from antagonistic pleiotropy is met because the proposal is to address all types of damage – thus, the possibility that an unaddressed one will be exacerbated by the treatments for the others does not arise. The objection that prevention is always better than cure is met too: SENS acts early enough in the chain of events to make comprehensiveness feasible, just not so early that our ignorance of metabolism will foil us. Putting it another way, acting on the damage itself allows us to sidestep our ignorance of metabolism: we let metabolism create damage at the natural rate, so we need not understand metabolism nearly so well as we would for comparable efficacy via the gerontology approach. (Consider how little one need know of the chemistry of rusting in order to maintain a car.) In particular, we do not need to determine the pecking order for the contribution of different aspects of metabolism to a given type of damage, nor of different types of damage to a particular pathology: whatever their relative importance, fixing all the types of damage will suffice.

An obvious challenge to the above is that even if all categories of damage could be adequately repaired individually, the relevant therapies might interact in undesirable ways when simultaneously applied to the same individual. But this is in fact a further advantage of SENS: since damage is defined as side-effects of metabolism that accumulate due to the absence of repair, it consists only of molecular or cellular changes that are metabolically inert (until they become too abundant), so whose elimination might have side-effects if performed inappropriately (e.g., dissolving amyloid might be a bad idea if the resulting rise in concentration of soluble amyloidogenic protein is toxic) but would be most unlikely to have side-effects in combination with other SENS therapies if it had none on its own.

Before briefly mentioning the classes of damage and corresponding interventions, I will consider two further general challenges to SENS: first, how can I be confident that the seven classes of damage listed above are really all there are, and second, how can I claim that these classes will be treatable so thoroughly that aging can be postponed indefinitely?

The claim of adequate approximation to completeness (I define and explain “adequate” below) of the seven SENS "deadly things" becomes less startling when we note that damage can only accumulate in structures that are long-lived or are constructed by copying pre-existing ones. Within cells this means damage to DNA (nuclear and mitochondrial) and accumulation of degradation-resistant material within the lysosome (including material that actively interferes with lysosomal function). Outside the cell it means accumulation of degradation-resistant material (e.g. amyloid) and biomechanical changes to structures that are not turned over (such as the lens or the artery wall). To these must be added changes in number of a given cell type – both depletion, due to death not matched by replacement, and accumulation, due to generation not matched by cell death. It is certainly possible to extend this list with additional side-effects of metabolism – aspartate racemisation in long-lived proteins, for example – but I contend that there is currently no strong evidence that any of these (a) contributes to pathology [within a currently normal human lifetime – see below] and (b) is resistant to natural repair other things being equal, i.e. would not revert to youthful levels spontaneously if the seven categories listed in Table 1 were restored to youthful levels.

The repair/obviation strategies outlined below are clearly able to address their respective category of damage only partially. ALT-711 only breaks one type of protein-protein cross-link; anti-Ab vaccines eliminate only one type of amyloid; genetic therapies such as allotopic expression of the mtDNA-encoded proteins require delivery to the relevant cells, which is of finite and variable efficiency depending on delivery method and cell type; and so on. Moreover, at ages greatly exceeding a currently normal human lifespan (though, I claim, not before [7]) it is very likely that nuclear mutations and epimutations not leading to cancer will reach pathogenic levels, requiring cell replacement therapies of much greater sophistication than are within reach today. However, this does not contradict my assertion that we will probably be able to achieve engineered negligible senescence within a few decades. This is for a simple reason: we do not have to repair all the damage in each category in order to prevent pathology, only enough of it to reduce the level below that tolerable by metabolism. Thus, maintenance of youthful physiology (and thus a youthful mortality rate) can be achieved soon and sustained indefinitely if we repair each category adequately.

How thoroughly is "adequately"? Perfect repair will never be necessary, but increasingly thorough repair will be needed as people attain ever-greater ages. For example, if each species of extracellular protein-protein cross-link accumulates at its own rate and contributes proportionately to loss of elasticity in structures such as the lens, and supposing for simplicity that one species contributes 50% of the links, even the most thorough and repeated cleavage of that species but no other will still leave a 160-year-old with lenses as stiff as those of today’s 80-year-olds, so the second (and subsequent) most abundant species must eventually be addressed in turn. But the good news is that once the initial breakthrough has occurred (eliminating the first major subclass within a category of damage), the rate at which these subsequent, incremental advances must be made in order to keep the total level of damage down to reasonably youthful levels is quite modest by the standards of technological progress generally (as illustrated by, for example, the history of powered flight since 1903, computers since 1950 or combating of infectious diseases since the mid-1800s). This is why I have claimed [3] that the cusp we need to reach in order to attain “longevity escape velocity” (where those receiving state-of-the-art medical care at all times are not becoming “biologically older” as measured by function or mortality rate) is the addition of only 30 healthy years to the lifespans of those who are in their mid-50s when the therapies arrive. (Interestingly, achieving escape velocity for shorter-lived species is thus harder – indeed, maybe never possible for species whose natural lifespan is under a decade.)

It remains only to enumerate the proposed repair/obviation strategies that I claim will, with 50% cumulative probability subject to funding, be implementable within 25 years from now sufficiently thoroughly to achieve the 30-year, late-onset, healthy life extension goal just mentioned. I have derived this estimated timeframe, after detailed consultation with the experimentalists who have performed the most relevant work (and who are mostly not biogerontologists), from consideration of:

-  the difficulty of demonstrating the various interventions in mice (which has already occurred in a limited way for some categories, and which I claim is achievable, subject to funding, within 10 years with 90% probability in all seven categories);

-   the technical difficulty of translating them to humans once demonstrated in unison in mice;

-   the social context within which the translation to humans will be attempted, bearing in mind that successful implementation in mice should at least treble the remaining lifespan of naturally long-lived strains (life expectancy raised from 3 years to 5 years) if initiated at age 2 years and this will imply the potential malleability of human aging in an unprecedentedly dramatic way.

The therapies are listed, with references to my publications (in which the relevant experimental work is, of course, fully cited), in Table 2. (I have not published on stem cells or growth factors, but the pace of progress in replenishing all cell types subject to age-related depletion is rapid, as I am confident readers are aware.) All my publications are available in preprint form at my website, on this page: http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/AdGpubs.htm.

Type of damage

Proposed repair (or obviation)

Cell depletion

Stem cells, growth factors, exercise

Extracellular cross-links

AGE-breaking molecules, e.g. ALT-711 [8]

Extracellular aggregates

Immune-mediated phagocytosis [8]

Death-resistant cells

Ablation of unwanted cells [8]

Mitochondrial mutations

Allotopic expression of 13 proteins [9]

Lysosomal aggregates

Microbial hydrolases [10,11]

Oncogenic nuclear mutations/epimutations

"WILT" (Whole-body Interdiction  of Lengthening of Telomeres) [12,13]

Table 2. First-generation strategies for repairing or obviating the SENS “seven deadly things”.

In closing, I feel impelled to stress that the merits of the SENS program do not strongly rely on the accuracy of the timeframe estimates above. A key question that biogerontologists always have a duty to address is which research and biomedical directions to follow in order to extend people’s healthy lives as much as possible, as soon as possible. If an intervention is capable of postponing aging indefinitely once implemented to a given standard, as I have here claimed is the case for SENS, there is a strong case for pursuing it (though certainly not to the exclusion of less ambitious alternatives that can probably be achieved sooner) even if the timeframe for its implementation is thought to be several decades and/or if the chance of achieving it within a few decades is thought to be modest (say 10%). A proposed intervention with that sort of potential can only be justifiably deprioritised if it is so incompletely specified that continuing an exclusive focus on improving our understanding of aging is perceived still to be the most time-efficient way forward even though that "basic science" approach is, by definition, not goal-directed. I claim that, while by no means complete in every detail, SENS is sufficiently detailed to merit its pursuit at this time.

I look forward to colleagues' comments.

References

1.    de Grey ADNJ, Ames BN, Andersen JK, Bartke A, Campisi J, Heward CB, McCarter RJM, Stock G. Time to talk SENS: critiquing the immutability of human aging. Annals NY Acad Sci 2002; 959:452-462.

2.    de Grey ADNJ. An engineer's approach to the development of real anti-aging medicine. Science's SAGE KE 2003; http://sageke.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sageke;2003/1/vp1.

3.    de Grey ADNJ. Escape velocity: why the prospect of extreme human life extension matters now.  PLoS Biol 2004; 2(6):723-726.

4.    Warner HR, Andersen JK, Austad SN, Bergamini E, Bredesen D, Butler RN, Carnes BA, Clark BFC, Cristofalo VJ, Faulkner JA, Guarente L, Harrison DE, Kirkwood TBL, Lithgow GJ, Martin GM, Masoro EJ, Melov S, Miller RA, Olshansky SJ, Partridge L, Pereira-Smith O, Perls TT, Richardson A, Smith JR, von Zglinicki T, Wang E, Wei JY, Williams TF. Science fact and the SENS agenda: What can we reasonably expect from ageing research? EMBO Reports 2005, in press (November issue).

5.    de Grey ADNJ. Like it or not, life-extension research extends beyond biogerontology. EMBO Reports 2005, in press (November issue).

6.    de Grey ADNJ. The unfortunate influence of the weather on the rate of aging: why human caloric restriction or its emulation may only extend life expectancy by 2-3 years. Gerontology 2005; 51(2):73-82.

7.    de Grey ADNJ. Are nuclear mutations or epimutations relevant to other aspects of mammalian aging than cancer? Manuscript in preparation.

8.    de Grey ADNJ. Foreseeable pharmaceutical repair of age-related extracellular damage. Curr Drug Targets 2005, in press.

9.    de Grey ADNJ. Mitochondrial gene therapy: an arena for the biomedical use of inteins. Trends Biotechnol 2000; 18(9):394-399.

10.   de Grey ADNJ. Bioremediation meets biomedicine: therapeutic translation of microbial catabolism to the lysosome. Trends Biotechnol 2002; 20(11):452-455.

11.   de Grey ADNJ, Alvarez PJJ, Brady RO, Cuervo AM, Jerome WG, McCarty PL, Nixon RA, Rittmann BE, Sparrow JR. Medical bioremediation: prospects for the application of microbial catabolic diversity to aging and several major age-related diseases. Ageing Res Rev 2005; 4(3):315-338.

12.   de Grey ADNJ, Campbell FC, Dokal I, Fairbairn LJ, Graham GJ, Jahoda CAB, Porter ACG. Total deletion of in vivo telomere elongation capacity: an ambitious but possibly ultimate cure for all age-related human cancers.  Annals NY Acad Sci 2004; 1019:147-170.

13.   de Grey ADNJ. Whole-body interdiction of lengthening of telomeres: a proposal for cancer prevention. Front Biosci 2005; 10:2420-2429.

Wish to comment?  Click here.  Commentaries will be posted in upcoming issues of our newsletter.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

WELCOME TO OUR NEW AGE MEMBER:

Kazuo Tsubota, MD - An internationally recognized dry eye specialist, Professor Kazuo Tsubota has been working on the pathogenesis and treatment of dry eye. Professor Tsubota is Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology at Keio University School of Medicine, his alma mater. He heads a very large and active dry eye research group as well as the largest refractive group in Japan. Dr. Tsubota has many research projects underway in the field of ophthalmology as well as anti-aging medicine in relation to ophthalmology.  His basic research in the field of anti-aging medicine in ophthalmology focuses on the mechanism of age-related macular degeneration, which is one of the leading causes of blindness in western countries, and the second most common cause in Japan. Read more at  http://www.tsubota.ne.jp

If we had omitted your name from this list of new members, please let us know.

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Click here to support AGE with $35 OR MORE FOR ITS 35 SUCCESSFUL YEARS!

GRANT ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Deadline: November 23, 2005

AFAR - Beeson Career Development Awards (BCDA) - Junior Faculty

The program encourages and furthers the careers of postdoctoral fellows (both MDs and PhDs) in the fundamental mechanisms of aging. Fellows with at least three and not more than five years of prior postdoctoral training are eligible. Up to three two-year fellowships of $100,000 will be awarded in 2006.

http://www.afar.org/grants.html

Contact: Odette van der Willik - +1.212.703.9977 and grants@afar.org

 

Deadline: December 15, 2005

AFAR Research Grants - Junior Faculty

The major goal of this program is to assist in the development of the careers of junior investigators committed to pursuing careers in the field of aging research.

http://www.afar.org/grants.html

Contact: Odette van der Willik - +1.212.703.9977 and grants@afar.org

 

Deadline: December 15, 2005

AFAR - The Julie Martin Mid-Career Awards in Aging Research - Senior Scientist/Faculty

The Ellison Medical Foundation and AFAR developed this program to encourage outstanding mid-career scientists to conduct: - Research proposed by scientists who have not been engaged in aging research, but whose research is relevant and leads to novel approaches to aging. - Research proposed by scientists that is high risk, and thus not attractive to NIH or other tranditional sources, but holds the potential for high payoff in advancing our understanding of basic aging. Research projects concerned with understanding the basic mechanisms of aging are encouraged.

http://www.afar.org/Ellison Mid-Career.htm

Contact: Odette van der Willik - +1.212.703.9977 and grants@afar.org

 

Deadline: December 15, 2005

AFAR - Ellison Medical Foundation/AFAR Senior Postdoctoral Fellows Research Program

The program encourages and furthers the careers of postdoctoral fellows (both MDs and PhDs) in the fundamental mechanisms of aging. Fellows with at least three and not more than five years of prior postdoctoral training are eligible. Up to three two-year fellowships of $100,000 will be awarded in 2006.

http://www.afar.org/Ellison Mid-Career.htm

Contact: Odette van der Willik - +1.212.703.9977 and grants@afar.org

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MEETING ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Email us your meeting announcement

Due to the devastation of hurricane Katrina,

the Gerontological Society of America has now chosen a new location for its November 18-22, 2005 conference:

Marriott's Orlando World Center in Orlando, Florida!

Visit www.agingconference.com for the latest information on the 2005 Annual Scientific Meeting.

 

Register today for a great meeting!

VISIT AMERICAN AGING ASSOCIATION'S BOOTH AT THIS MEETING!  

Stop by to meet our very own Ms. Donna Cini and get the latest information on our journal, Annual Meeting and membership!

 

July 15-20, 2006 - Madrid, Spain

10th International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders, Presented by the Alzheimer's Association

www.alz.org/icad

The Alzheimer's Association presents the 10th International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders, July 15-20, 2006 at the Centro de Convenciones in Madrid, Spain.  This is the world’s leading forum on dementia research.  The conference brings together more than 5,000 leading experts and researchers.  Presentations cover the entire spectrum of dementia research including etiology, pathology, treatment and prevention of the disease.  Information on the conference, abstract submission, registration, sponsorship, and exhibition space is available at www.alz.org/icad.  For more information, contact the Alzheimer's Association Conference Service Team at (312) 335-5790 or icad@alz.org. 

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POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT:

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Faculty Position in Nutrition and Aging (application deadline: Nov 15, 2005).  The Department of Nutrition and Exercise Sciences and the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University invite applications for a tenured or tenure-track, full-time faculty position in the newly created Center for Healthy Aging Research. The successful candidate will be expected to establish or maintain a competitive research program focused on studying the role of diet or micronutrients in influencing cellular and physiological function during aging. Research on the interactive effects of inflammation or immunoscenescence, nutritional factors, and aging are of particular interest.  The successful candidate is also expected to contribute to undergraduate and graduate teaching and academic service appropriate with faculty rank.  Send or email a letter of application with research and teaching interests, curriculum vitae, and names of three references by November 15, 2005, to: Search Committee, c/o Barbara McVicar, Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University, 571 Weniger Hall, Corvallis, Oregon 97331-6512, lpi@oregonstate.edu.  For full position announcement see http://oregonstate.edu/jobs.  OSU is an AA/EOE.

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