What inspired you to pursue aging research?
Age-related health issues are likely to become one of the greatest healthcare challenges in the coming decades, necessitating research and innovation in this field. Aging research requires long-term commitment and especially careful experimental design. I deeply appreciate AFAR’s vision in supporting and nurturing scientists and physicians to pursue aging research over the long term. I am grateful for this support and excited to join a community of researchers dedicated to understanding the biology of aging.
Aging is a part of life- almost all organisms age. How and why we age, and whether aging is a stochastic or deterministic process, is one of the most fundamental questions in biology. I am interested in understanding the biology of aging, with a focus on identifying cell types that show the earliest associated changes. This could help reveal whether aging is driven by overall systemic changes or triggered by dysfunction in specific subsets of cells.
In your view, what does AFAR mean to the field, and what does it mean, for you, to receive an AFAR grant now?
Age-related health issues are likely to become one of the greatest healthcare challenges in the coming decades, necessitating research and innovation in this field. Aging research requires long-term commitment and especially careful experimental design. I deeply appreciate AFAR’s vision in supporting and nurturing scientists and physicians to pursue aging research over the long term. I am grateful for this support and excited to join a community of researchers dedicated to understanding the biology of aging.
What is exciting about your research’s potential impact?
The goal of my research is to understand the role of microglia in brain aging. The outcome of this work could fundamentally inform the development of therapeutic strategies by providing critical mechanistic insights. If microglial aging is driven by brain environment signals, this would guide therapeutic strategies to focus on either eliminating these aging cues or blocking microglial sensing of them. Conversely, if intrinsic and/or irreversible changes in microglia drive brain aging, then microglial replacement would emerge as a potential intervention.
How would you describe your research to a non-scientist?
Aging is the highest risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases and cognitive decline. Brain aging is associated with a myriad of changes in all brain cells- amongst them, microglia, the immune cells of the brain, exhibit the earliest and most prominent changes. The goal of my project is to understand whether microglia changes are a cause or a consequence of brain aging, and whether microglia aging is plastic or irreversible.
