Scripps Research Fellow and Principal Investigator, Scripps Research
Glenn Foundation for Medical Research and AFAR Grants for Junior Faculty - 2022
What inspired you to pursue aging research?
Throughout my PhD, and now in my own lab, my research interest has been in elucidating how different organs communicate with each other. Pioneering work from several labs has shown that during aging, this communication is dysregulated, which will influence the aging process. However, because there have been no ways to broadly define the components of these interorgan communication networks, this pioneering work has inspired me to develop a method to determine the secreted proteins between organs. I will now apply this method to defining and characterizing interorgan communication networks during aging.
In your view, what does AFAR mean to the field, and what does it mean for you to receive an AFAR grant now?
AFAR has always been a huge supporter of highly-innovative, high-risk high-reward research, especially for junior faculty. AFAR has been instrumental in helping junior faculty start their labs by funding their research. The generous funding from AFAR and the Glenn Foundation will enable my lab to establish a unique research direction at a critical career junctiure as an early PI, allow my lab to collect the data needed for a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant application and a publication, and open exciting new forefronts in the aging field.
What is exciting about your research’s potential impact?
It has historically been challenging to identify secreted proteins that impact aging. Our work will demonstrate the potential of a first-of-its kind technology to quantify interorgan communication proteins in aging, establishing this approach as a generalizable strategy to map the circuitry responsible for coordinating functions of organs in a variety of healthy or diseased conditions. The identified secreted proteins may represent the basis of potential new therapeutic strategies to extend lifespan and combat diseases resulting from aging processes.
How would you describe your research to a non-scientist?
Organs in an animal are highly specialized, and they coordinate their functions to maintain homeostasis. For instance, during exercise, muscle activity is coordinated with release of nutrients from adipose tissue and liver. This coordination is achieved via communication networks of proteins secreted from a specific organ into the blood where they can then traffic to and act on distal tissues. Studies have shown that aging significantly impacts these interorgan communication networks, and interorgan communication impacts aging. However, it has been difficult to identify the secreted proteins that function to facilitate this coordination and understand how aging-dependent imbalances in these proteins impact distal organs. To address this, we have developed a platform to investigate secreted protein movement between organs. In our platform, all proteins that are secreted from a specific organ are labeled, allowing the key proteins that are involved in interorgan communication to be identified in another organ. Using this method, we aim to determine secreted proteins that compose the interorgan communication network during aging, and define their functions. We believe our strategy will be highly attractive for deciphering interorgan communication networks between multiple organs.
