What inspired you to pursue aging research?
As we age, our body is progressively less capable of dealing with stresses such as infection and physical damage, which leads to morbidity and disease. This decrease in systemic function is linked to a process called senescence, which drives cells into a dysfunctional state that promotes inflammation. Senescent cells accumulate in tissues as we age. Although we do not fully understand why senescent cells accumulate, there is increasing evidence that aging also impairs the function of the immune system, including its ability to remove damaged cells from tissues. Monocytes, one of the immune cell types, remove damaged cells and mediate immune responses. Emerging evidence shows that monocyte function is impaired with age, suggesting that these cells may undergo senescence with aging. Building on our previous work on manipulating gene regulatory networks of senescence, here we propose a multidisciplinary approach to characterize and modulate monocyte senescence.
In your view, what does AFAR mean to the field, and what does it mean, for you, to receive an AFAR grant now?
AFAR plays a critical role in furthering the scope of aging research by fostering the development of new ideas and hypotheses at the forefront of aging research. This activity is critical considering the steadily increasing aging population and its associated economic, societal, and personal costs. Exploring and maturing new research that has the potential to extend a healthy lifespan and/or revert the deleterious effects of aging is of paramount importance. For me, receiving an AFAR grant is a great opportunity to open a new avenue of research in the epigenetics of immune cell senescence that has translational potential.
What is exciting about your research’s potential impact?
During my postdoctoral training, I leveraged high-throughput sequencing and computational approaches and developed a technique to isolate live senescent cells from tissues to define and manipulate the gene regulatory networks of senescent cells. This approach has great potential to manipulate/reduce the deleterious aspect of senescent cells. In particular, my AFAR project focuses on characterizing and modulating the gene regulatory networks of senescent monocytes and has the potential to develop therapeutic approaches to increase the resolution of inflammation and improve immune responses to infection and vaccination.
How would you describe your research to a non-scientist?
I use the epigenetic information of cells to manipulate their function.
