What inspired you to pursue aging research?
I am a cardiologist, and I work at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in West Haven, CT. I became interested in aging as a vast majority of patients that I see in the cardiology clinic are above the age of 70 and often show serious health conditions due to impaired health of blood vessels. I hope to make important discoveries on the fundamental biology of how blood vessels age in order to reverse this process to help patients that I see in the clinic.
In your view, what does AFAR mean to the field, and what does it mean, for you, to receive an AFAR grant now?
Studying how blood vessels age reflects a new direction for our research lab which typically studies solid organ transplantation. AFAR has supported fundamental discoveries in aging, and my laboratory and I will leverage our expertise in immunology and blood vessel biology to address a new problem area of how blood vessels age. We are very excited to make this investigational transition which would not have been possible without funding support from AFAR. I believe this award will reflect a career transition for me, and I hope that discoveries made under the funding proposal will further the mission of AFAR to improve health for aged individuals.
What is exciting about your research’s potential impact?
Protein aggregates form during aging and are responsible for causing dementia, heart failure, and renal failure. Recent FDA approval of drugs modifying the formation of protein aggregates have led to a new paradigm that protein aggregates are both pathologic but also amenable to therapeutic manipulation. I am excited about our research because our work identifies a new immune protein that may contribute to protein aggregate formation with aging and thus might be a drug-able target to prevent age-associated diseases.
How would you describe your research to a non-scientist?
We developed new molecular tools and genetically engineered mouse models to test whether an immune protein called C9 forms aggregates that contribute to age-related physical deterioration of blood vessels.
