Introduction to the Biology of Aging

In all developed countries, the dominant demographic feature of our time is a steady and significant increase in life expectancy.  This increase seems to continue unabated. This objective fact that is seen in most developed countries has a major public health implication: How to achieve healthy aging of the general population?  This will be one of the main public health challenges facing our health care system in the 21st century.  To effectively address this challenge requires that the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, like every leading institution in the country, expand its research effort in the biology of aging.  The long-term goals of this research effort should be to achieve a better understanding of age-related degenerative diseases of all kind, of cancers and as a result to propose novel and adapted therapies for these diseases.  As part of this broad-based effort aiming at strengthening the study of the cellular, molecular and genetic bases of aging, we need to train the next generation of researchers interested in the biology of aging.  The purpose of the graduate course we propose is therefore to expose graduate students to the largely uncharted territory that the biology of aging still is in order to increase the numbers of talented scientists working on the biology of aging. The graduate course we propose will introduce students to invertebrates and vertebrate’s animal models, the cellular and molecular events that occur during aging in various organs, the consequences of the aging process on homeostasis of the entire organism and last but not least, the possible intervention strategies to fight the aging process.