____________________________________________________________________
Events
Save
the Dates - October 1 and 2, 2007
Sustaining the Momentum - AFAR's Annual Awards Dinner
Please
join AFAR on October 1, 2007 as we celebrate the remarkable advances
occurring in the field of aging research and recognize those individuals,
corporations and foundations that have made significant contributions.
Honorees include: Richard A. Miller MD, PhD, Professor of Pathology
and Associate Director of the Geriatrics Center at the University of
Michigan; long-time AFAR Board member Diane A. Nixon; Allen D.
Roses, MD, Senior Vice President, Pharmacogenetics, GlaxoSmithKline;
Launny Steffens, former Vice Chair at Merrill Lynch; and T. Franklin
Williams, MD, former head of the National Institute on Aging.
For more information, contact Nancy O'Leary at nancy@afar.org or
212-703-9977.
Richard Hodes, MD, Director of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) will be the keynote speaker. Other
participants include: Luigi Ferrucci, MD, PhD, NIA/Baltimore Longitudinal
Study on Aging; Stephen Helfand, MD, Brown University; Donald Ingram, PhD,
NIA; George M. Martin, MD, University of Washington; Gerald McClearn, PhD,
Penn State University; Richard Miller, MD, PhD, University of Michigan;
Richard Sprott, PhD, Ellison Medical Foundation; Richard Weindruch, PhD,
University of Wisconsin; and Terrie Fox Wetle, PhD, Brown University.
Sponsors to date include:
anonymous, 2007 Dorothy Dillon Eweson Lecture Series, The Ellison Medical
Foundation, GE Healthcare, GlaxoSmithKline, The Glenn Foundation for
Medical Research, Ortho-McNeil Neurologics, Inc., and sanofi-aventis. For
more information and to register, please visit http://www.afar.org/biomarkersconference.html or contact Stacey Harris at Stacey@afar.org or
212-703-9977.
Both events will be held at
the University Club located at 1 West 54th Street in New York City.
Our Grantees
In the Lab With... Lee Goldstein, MD, PhD, 2004 Beeson
Scholar
"No way! No one else has found this. What makes you think you could?" That,
according to Lee Goldstein, MD, PhD, was the general reaction to his
discovery of unusual amyloid cataracts that may herald the onset of
Alzheimer's disease (AD).
Healthy,
wild-type control mice, on the other hand, showed no signs of similar
cataracts. Goldstein then looked at eyes from people with Alzheimer's
disease, and to his astonishment, found the same unusual cataracts. He
determined that the cataracts were composed of the same protein,
b-amyloid, that forms sticky, tangled plaques in the brains of Alzheimer's
patients. He and his team reported their discoveries in the medical
journal, The Lancet. Read
more.
Many AFAR grantees are gaining attention for their research in high-profile media,
helping AFAR better communicate to the public the importance of supporting
such research. Here are some highlights. You may read the
full listing on our
website.
A March 26, 2007 Newsweek cover story about exercise and the brain featured
two AFAR-supported scientists: Scott Small, MD, of Columbia University and
Kristine Yaffe, MD, of the University of
California, San Francisco, both recipients of the Paul Beeson Career
Development Award in Aging Research, a partnership
program supported by AFAR. Dr. Small discussed the results of his research
showing that humans who exercised regularly during a three-month period
grew new brain cells in the areas of the brain that controlled learning
and memory. Dr. Yaffe commented about the additional cognitive benefits of
exercise.
Anne
Cappola, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Mark Lachs, MD, of The New York
Presbyterian Health System/Weill Cornell appeared on the WABC-TV program
Viewpoints on March 18, 2007 to discuss how men and women age.
Dr. Cappola's research focuses on hormonal alterations that occur with
aging and the clinical impact these changes have in older women,
particularly with regard to rates of aging and frailty. Her innovative
research may lead to a design of a new form of hormone replacement therapy
that will help slow the development of sarcopenia, a condition that
develops with age. Dr. Cappola is a 2001 recipient of the AFAR/Pfizer
Research Grant in Hormones and Aging. Dr. Lachs, Director of Geriatrics at
The New York Presbyterian Health System and Irene F. and I. Roy Psaty
Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Co-chief of the division of
Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell
University, is a preeminent geriatrician and authority on the issue of
elder abuse. He is a recipient of the Beeson award and a current AFAR
board member.
Research conducted by Scott Pletcher, PhD, at
Baylor College of Medicine and the first recipient of the Glenn/AFAR
Breakthroughs in Gerontology (BIG) Award showed that the life-lengthening effects of caloric
restriction were negated by the odor of yeast paste in fruit flies. The
study, reported in the journal Science in February 2007, found
that the flies that could smell rich food in the environment lived shorter
lives than flies that ate the same amount of food but were not exposed to
the odorant. Dr. Pletcher's research was featured in The
Scientist, Scientific American, Nature and
Slate .
NOVA scienceNOW, the acclaimed science series on PBS, featured a 13-minute
broadcast segment on aging and longevity genes. The segment, which aired
January 9, 2007, included interviews with Nir Barzilai, MD, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1994 AFAR Research Grant recipient and 1997 Beeson
Scholar) and David Sinclair, PhD, of Harvard University
(2000 AFAR Research Grant recipient). To watch the segment or view
additional materials, visit the NOVA scienceNOW web site.
Beeson Program Expands The renowned
Paul Beeson Career Development Awards in Aging Research Program has
launched two additional spin-off projects:
With support from The
Atlantic Philanthropies, the Beeson program went
international with one award of up to approximately $450,000 to be awarded
each year for five years to an outstanding junior physician faculty member
on the Island of Ireland. With this expansion, the program continues
to build a cadre of leading physician-scientists who are committed to
academic careers in aging-related research, teaching, and practice.
The John A. Hartford
Foundation also awarded AFAR a grant to fund
interdisciplinary teams of alumni from the Beeson program to spur new
directions in the understanding and treatment of diseases associated with
aging. Known as the Hartford Collaborative Research Awards: Paul B.
Beeson Career Development Scholars Program, this grant will allow Beeson
Scholars, already identified as top investigators in aging research, to
collaborate on research that spans traditional disciplinary boundaries and
prepare for larger federal grants.
Since 2005, with
support from the John A. Hartford Foundation, AFAR has served as the
Network Resource Center for the Foundation's 24 Centers of Excellence
(CoEs), recognized for their considerable capacity to recruit and develop
physician leaders in geriatrics. The role of the Network Resource
Center is to facilitate communications among the CoEs and to identify and
disseminate tested approaches in geriatrics recruitment and career
development. Three major products on these topics are planned
between now and 2008.
For the second
straight year, GE
Healthcare will underwrite a junior investigator award in conjunction
with AFAR's scientific conference, Seeking Biomarkers of Aging and
Diseases of Aging. The AFAR-GE
Healthcare Junior Investigator Award for Excellence in Biomarker
Research will recognize the most innovative biomarker research related
to aging and age-related diseases. To apply, please visit: http://www.afar.org/GEaward.html. For additional
questions, please contact Veronica Smith at geaward@afar.org or call 212-703-9977.
Beeson Annual Meeting - June 21-24, 2007, Tarrytown, NY
AFAR Grantee Conference - October 1-2, 2007, New York City (to be held in
conjunction with AFAR's scientific conference, Seeking Biomarkers of
Aging and Diseases of Aging).
SPOTLIGHT ON: The Fannie E. Rippel Foundation
To address the need for more study about the effects of aging on men and women, AFAR partnered
with the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation to create one of our newest grant
programs: The Fannie E. Rippel
Foundation/AFAR New Investigator Awards on Gender Differences in
Aging. The program supports early-career scientists using a
gender-based approach to aging research.
"We were very interested in
supporting research that could yield critical information specific to
older men and women's health," said Laura Landy, President of the Fannie
E. Rippel Foundation. "Men's and women's biology and physiology are
different and many of the diseases of aging affect them differently in
terms of occurrence and progression. We are pleased to collaborate with
AFAR to support this relatively new and much-needed area of medical
research."
The Fannie E. Rippel/AFAR
awards will provide grants of up to $60,000 each to two junior
investigators in 2007 covering such areas as the role of sex hormones,
immune function, neurobiology, cardiovascular aging and the biology of
menopause.
"This research will have an
enormous impact on the health of older men and women, said Stephanie
Lederman, Executive Director of AFAR. "We thank the Fannie E. Rippel
Foundation for their forward-thinking support of this innovative grant
program."
The Fannie E. Rippel
Foundation, located in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, was established in
1953 with an endowment from Julius S. Rippel, who named the healthcare
philanthropy for his wife. The foundation awards $4 to $5 million in
grants annually.
People
AFAR Leadership to Speak at the Aspen Health Forum
AFAR President
Terrie Fox Wetle, PhD, and Executive Director Stephanie Lederman will be
among the premier speakers at the Aspen Health Forum, on October 3-6,
2007. Organized by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic
magazine, the program will bring together the world's most foremost
scientists, clinicians, policymakers and health leaders to discuss
challenging issues and exciting developments in medical science. For
more information and to reserve a space at the conference, please visit www.aspeninstitute.org/healthforum.
AFAR celebrates the life and mourns the death of
long-time supporter, Hinda Rosenthal, who we recently honored at our 25th
anniversary awards dinner.
As President of the Richard
and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation, Hinda Rosenthal was committed to the ideal
that those who secure unusual benefits from society have the obligation to
give a significant portion back. The Foundation's Awards in Medicine have
made notable contributions to improved clinical treatment in cancer,
cardiovascular disease, internal medicine, and in the delivery of patient
treatment. The Foundation's uninterrupted support of AFAR began in 1995.
We extend our deepest
gratitude to Mrs. Rosenthal for her contributions and work on behalf of
AFAR. Her life and actions contributed greatly to advancing the field of
aging research.
Howard Federoff, MD, PhD,
was named Executive Vice President for Health Sciences and Executive Dean
of Georgetown University's School of Medicine, effective April 1,
2007. In this position, Dr. Howard Federoff will oversee the medical
school's research enterprises. An AFAR board member since 2002, Dr.
Federoff directed AFAR's upstate New York affiliate. He was formerly
Senior Associate Dean for Basic Research and Professor of Oncology and
Genetics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and
founding director of the Center for Aging and Development Biology at the
Aab Institute for Biomedical Sciences. Dr. Federoff's research
interests include gene therapy and neurodegenerative diseases.
- AFAR Annual Awards Dinner
- Biomarkers of
Aging Scientific Conference
- In the Lab With... Lee Goldstein, MD, PhD
- AFAR Grantees in the News
Seeking Biomarkers of Aging and Diseases of Aging
On October 2,
2007, AFAR will host a premier scientific conference, Seeking
Biomarkers of Aging and Diseases of Aging that will assess the
existing biomarkers available and explore the kinds of biomarkers needed
to provide improvements to the human condition by alleviating disease and
extending healthy lifespan. The conference will also provide a forum
for industry and basic scientists to explore opportunities for
collaboration to develop more useful biomarkers and effective
interventions that could ultimately identify in the pre-symptomatic stage,
treat and track age-related diseases and disorders.
To learn more about the
Paul B. Beeson Career Development Awards in Aging Research Program, please
go to our website.
It happened quite by accident early in the research career of
Goldstein, who is now Director of the Molecular Aging & Development
Laboratory and Associate Director of the Center for Ophthalmic Research,
both at the Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston, MA, and Assistant
Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. "I was measuring
hydrogen peroxide in the brains of Alzheimer's mice," he says, "when some
previous research experience in ophthalmology came in very handy. I
noticed that my mice were developing dense bilateral cataracts in their
eyes- at an age when mice simply don't get cataracts. This is very unusual.
So I took a look at a few more of the Alzheimer's mice, and they all had
the same cataract."
Grantees in the News
Centers of Excellence Network Resource Center
GE Healthcare to Sponsor Prize for Junior Investigators
Meeting Dates
This meeting is held for
Scholars, mentors and other leaders in academic medicine and aging
research to review research progress of Scholars, encourage dissemination
of their findings, and enhance development of scholarship and
leadership.
The purpose of this annual
conference is to promote scientific and personal exchanges among recent
AFAR grantees and experts in the fields of geriatrics and gerontology.
AFAR Mourns the Passing of Hinda Rosenthal
Georgetown University Names AFAR Board Member Howard
Federoff, to Lead Post
Other People News
For more information
about the work of AFAR, please visit our organizational web site www.afar.org and our web
site for the general public, Infoaging (www.infoaging.org).