Grantees in the News: Inna Slutsky, PhD, Uses Electrical Pulse to Control AD Plaques

In Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the ratio between two types of amyloid-beta, a protein in the brain, diverges from a normal level. On June 6, 2013, ISRAEL21c reported that Inna Slutsky, PhD, successfully used electrical pulses to the hippocampus restore that ratio to a healthy level from one associated with AD in a mouse model. Dr. Slutsky and her colleagues hypothesize that this may lead to a treatment for AD in humans. Dr. Slutsky is a principle investigator at Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Israel, and was the recipient of a 2008 Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation/AFAR New…

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AFAR Spring Scientific Conferences

AFAR convened three scientific meetings in Santa Barbara, California. At the Paul F. Glenn Symposium on the Biology of Aging, forty recipients of AFAR supported grants in the biology of aging presented their research and participated in scientific and career development sessions. AFAR and the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research also gathered a small group of leaders in biology, public health, and economics for a symposium on the role that aging research can play in the prevention of chronic disease. This was the fourth Glenn/AFAR workshop. Former grantees studying Alzheimer’s disease also gathered for the New Investigator…

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Valter Longo Receives Cristofalo Rising Star Award

Valter Longo, PhD, University of Southern California, received The 2013 Vincent Cristofalo Rising Star Award in Aging Research. The award was presented by Holly Brown-Borg, PhD, Vice-President of AFAR, at the 42nd AGE Meeting. Dr. Longo delivered the lecture “Nutrient Signaling Pathways Regulate Aging and Diseases: From Yeast to Humans.” The Cristofalo Award is given to a scientist early in their career and who has made major discoveries in the fundamental biology of aging and whose work is deemed likely to be highly influential for decades to come.

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MetLife Foundation Awards for Medical Research Presented

On May 15, Yueming Li, PhD, of Sloan-Kettering Institute and Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and Lennart Mucke, MD, of the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and University of California, San Francisco, received the 2013 MetLife Foundation Awards for Medical Research in recognition of their outstanding work on Alzheimer’s disease. Representatives from the press, foundation, medical, and research communities attended the award ceremony, which included a research briefing and a keynote address from health and science journalist, Dr. Max Gomez. Dr. Gomez spoke movingly about the impact on Alzheimer’s disease on families. For 27 years, the MetLife Foundation…

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Grantees in the News: Terrence Town, PhD, Designs a Rat Model of Alzheimer’s Disease

U.S. News and World Report reported on April 10 that Dr. Terrence Town had successfully created a transgenic rat model of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Dr. Town and his team genetically altered the rats to cause them to develop the same “specific pathologies” that human AD patients do. With this rat model, researchers will have a better shot of correctly identifying compounds and treatments that may one day be used to prevent or cure AD in humans. Dr. Town is a professor in the physiology and biophysics department at the Keck School of Medicine at the University…

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