What inspired you to pursue aging research?
Several factors compelled me to pursue aging research. One is that my parents are getting old physically. There is little I can do to help them feel better and function better. Another is that I have a friend who was forced to divorce by her parents-in-law because she was career-orientated and missed the window of fertility. And aging itself is a well-studied but unresolved problem. We have learned so much about the biology of aging. We have perturbations that can extend lifespan. Yet, no medicine targeting aging is available to improve quality of life in elderly people. No methods are available to give women more years of fertility. Most importantly, I don’t think we understand much about the aging process in those long-lived animals because they are historically difficult to study in a laboratory setting. There is a gap of knowledge. To learn how they do it can be quite exciting and informative for us as these are mechanisms that are proven to work in evolution.
In your view, what does AFAR mean to the field, and what does it mean, for you, to receive an AFAR grant now?
AFAR not only provides professional guidance to aging research, but also nurtures the community. AFAR junior faculty award recognizes exciting research in their infant stages and gives the investigators a boost in both their research and career.
For me, who proposes a new idea on aging research and gets recognized by AFAR, means a lot, both financially and spiritually. It means our work is very important, as it has been reviewed by aging experts in the field. That makes me and my team all very excited. It is no longer just an idea, and we should work harder to figure it out.
What is exciting about your research’s potential impact?
It is very exciting to learn that in nature, age-related physiological decline can be reversed. If we can learn how they do it, we can translate it. Our work is exciting because we are not reversing one or two things. It is a whole plethora of age-associated changes that get reversed to youthful states at multiple levels.
How would you describe your research to a non-scientist?
We found that aging can be reversed in an extremely long-lived animal. Evolution has come up with a solution. We are trying to understand how it works, with the hope that we can one day translate it to human medicine to reverse age-associated diseases.
