Daily Archives: October 15, 2012

Public release date: 15-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Kim Newman sciencenews@einstein.yu.edu 718-430-3101 Albert Einstein College of Medicine

October 15, 2012 (BRONX, NY) Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has received a $3 million grant from the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research to establish the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Human Aging Research. The grant will fund research to translate recent laboratory and animal discoveries into therapies to slow human aging.

Aging contributes to many of the debilitating and costly diseases including cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes that burden the United States and many other countries. This complex but universal condition causes individual cells and the body as a whole to decline in function. Finding the mechanisms that underlie the aging process may lead to treatments that slow aging, prevent or limit common diseases, and allow people to live healthier, longer lives.

"Unless we find protective mechanisms to delay aging, we will not make progress against age-related diseases," said Nir Barzilai, M.D., co-director of the new center as well as director of the Institute for Aging Research, the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair in Aging Research, and professor of medicine and of genetics at Einstein. "With this valuable grant from the Paul F. Glenn Foundation, we hope to make significant advances toward understanding the aging process and improving human health."

"The generosity of Paul F. Glenn and his foundation is a welcome shot in the arm for aging research in the United States, which is chronically underfunded," said Jan Vijg, Ph.D., co-director of the new center, the Lola and Saul Kramer Chair in Molecular Genetics, and professor and chair of genetics and professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at Einstein. "This grant will help Einstein to maintain its position as one of the world's leaders in this rapidly growing field."

"Paul F. Glenn has been a visionary in aging research for more than 30 years," said Ana Maria Cuervo, M.D., Ph.D., co-director of the new center, the Robert and Rene Belfer Chair for the Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases, and professor of developmental and molecular biology, of anatomy and structural biology and of medicine at Einstein. "Some of us got to know him when we were still graduate students and he came to scientific conferences to see the data as it was being developed. Paul's personal approach to science has made a big difference to many of us in the field of aging research and has contributed to the career development of many young investigators."

The funding, in the form of pilot and feasibility study grants, is targeted to several specific research projects: uncovering the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that protect humans against aging and age-related diseases, testing the effectiveness of the first-generation pro-longevity therapies, and developing novel preventive and therapeutic interventions against cellular aging in humans.

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Drs. Barzilai and Cuervo are also co-directors of Einstein's Institute for Aging Research and, together with Dr. Vijg, of the Nathan Shock Center for the Basic Biology of Aging. Both centers are funded by the National Aging Institute, part of the National Institutes for Health.

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Einstein establishes the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Human Aging Research

Humans are living longer than ever, a life-span extension that occurred more rapidly than expected and almost solely from environmental improvements as opposed to genetics, researchers said today (Oct. 15).

Four generations ago, the average Swede had the same probability of dying as a hunter-gatherer, but improvements in our living conditions through medicine, better sanitation and clean drinking water (considered "environmental" changes) accelerated life spans to modern levels in just 100 years, researchers found.

In Japan, 72 has become the new 30, as the likelihood of a 72-year-old modern-day person dying is the same as a 30-year-old hunter-gatherer ancestor who lived 1.3 million years ago. Though the researchers didn't specifically look at the United States, they say the life-span trends are not country-specific and not based in genetics.

Quick jump in life span

The same progress of decreasing average probability of dying at a certain age in hunters-gatherers that took 1.3 million years to achieve was made in 30 years during the 21st century.

"I pictured a more gradual transition from a hunter-gatherer mortality profile to something like we have today, rather than this big jump, most of which occurred in the last four generations, to me that was surprise," lead author Oskar Burger, postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany, told LiveScience.

Biologists have lengthened life spans of worms, fruit flies and mice in labs by selectively breeding for old-age survivorship or tweaking their endocrine system, a network of glands that affects every cell in the body. However, the longevity gained in humans over the past four generations is even greater than can be created in labs, researchers concluded. [Extending Life: 7 Ways to Live Past 100]

Genetics vs. environment

In the new work, Burger and colleagues analyzed previously published mortality data from Sweden, France and Japan, from present-day hunter-gatherers and from wild chimpanzees, the closet living relative to humans.

Humans have lived for an estimated 8,000 generations, but only in the past four have mortalities increased to modern-day levels. Hunter-gatherers today have average life spans on par with wild chimpanzees.

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Human Life Span Took Huge Jump in Past Century

Despite what the fashion magazines tell you, 40 isnt the new 30. Seventy is.

A new study finds that humans are living so much longer today compared with the rest of human history that the probability of dying at 72 is similar to the death odds our ancestors likely faced at 30.

This uptick in longevity is quite recent occurring in the last century and a half which suggests it has little to do with genes, starvation diets or anti-aging miracle drugs. Rather, it is likely due to eliminating environmental dangers faced by Homo sapiens of old, an evolutionary anthropologist and his colleagues argue online October 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Sanitation measures that clean up drinking water, regular access to food, plus antibiotics and vaccines seem to go a long way toward fighting off death.

Its striking, says Ronald Lee, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in demographics and aging. We already think of humans as a really long-lived species, says Lee, who wasnt involved in the study. It raises the question of how far we can go.

Evolutionary anthropologist Oskar Burger and his team wanted to study human longevity in an evolutionary context. So they turned to previously gathered data on chimpanzees, hunter-gatherer societies in parts of Africa and South America and numbers from the Human Mortality Database for Japan, Sweden and France.

The data reveal a steady, gradual drop in the probability of dying relatively young that begins just before 1900 for the French and Swedes. But the mortality numbers for hunter-gatherers remain closer to wild chimpanzees than to these westernized societies. However, when the researchers looked at hunter-gatherer groups who received some western medicine and occasional help with food, the mortality in those groups dropped, widening the gap between them and chimps and bumping them up to numbers comparable with pre-1900 Sweden and France.

Its amazing what clean water and a bit of extra food gets you, says Berger, of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany.

A 30-year-old hunter-gatherer has the same probability of death as a Japanese person today who is 72 years old, the study found. At 15, a hunter-gatherer has a 1.3 percent probability of dying in the next year; Swedes hit those odds at age 69.

Surprisingly, the research also suggests that theres room for improvement, and that the upper limit on healthy human living has yet to be reached. Aging theory suggests that the biological machinery should increasingly break down once a person passes the age of reproducing and caring for young (SN: 10/20/12, p. 16). But for some reason, humans seem to have become exceptionally good at dodging that bullet.

And researchers may even be able to extend human lifespans even longer with insights from ongoing research into the cellular switches and genes that extend the lives of roundworms and rodents in the lab.

Continued here:
Living longer comes easier