What inspired you to pursue aging research?
Aging is the single biggest risk factor for the majority of the major human diseases. Therefore, if we make progress in understanding aging and how it regulates our propensity for disease, we have a big opportunity to address several important diseases at once.
In addition, aging is also a fascinating biological phenomenon that is pervasive in the animal kingdom but very heterogeneous between organisms, tissues, and cell types in the body.
Both the interesting biological challenge and its vast medical implications have inspired me to study aging.
In your view, what does AFAR mean to the field, and what does it mean, for you, to receive an AFAR grant now?
The AFAR grant serves as a catalyst for numerous new research directions in my lab. It enables us to ask bold and big questions--questions that do not follow the standard model of stepwise scientific progress where one result slowly builds on top of another, but rather questions that allow us to think more broadly and creatively.
I think this is exemplary of AFAR’s general role in serving as a catalyzer for aging research that strives to achieve major breakthroughs in our understanding of this very complex biological phenomenon.
What is exciting about your research’s potential impact?
The aging brain is often viewed as a black box that is quite inaccessible to therapeutic intervention. By focusing on the impact of the periphery on the brain, we hope to use the body’s natural communication routes between organ systems to maintain brain health during aging. If successful, this strategy would open up an entirely new avenue to counteract diseases of the brain.
How would you describe your research to a non-scientist?
Brain aging often leads to cognitive decline, which can have devastating consequences. The loss of memories in old age robs us of some of the most essential aspects of the human experience. Our research aims to counteract age-associated cognitive decline by focusing on the communication channels between the body and the brain, particularly those originating in the gastrointestinal tract.
