On August 19, 2023, Nature Communications published a paper co-authored by AFAR Scientific Director Nir Barzilai, MD, and President James L. Kirkland, MD, PhD, titled "Challenges in developing Geroscience Trials." Highlighting the TAME (Targeting Aging with MEtformin) Trial, which AFAR has been working to fund, the paper is also co-authored by 2023 Irving S. Wright Award recipient Rafael de Cabo, PhD, and 1993 AFAR grantee Felipe Sierra, PhD. The paper also presents recommendations by the Geroscience Clinical Trial International Task Force, which met on March 24 and 25, 2022 in Toulouse, France.
"Geroscience is becoming a major hope for preventing age-related diseases and loss of function by targeting biological mechanisms of aging," the abstract summarizes. "This unprecedented paradigm shift requires optimizing the design of future clinical studies related to aging in humans. Researchers will face a number of challenges, including ideal populations to study, which lifestyle and Gerotherapeutic interventions to test initially, selecting key primary and secondary outcomes of such clinical trials, and which age-related biomarkers are most valuable for both selecting interventions and predicting or monitoring clinical responses ('Gerodiagnostics')."
Read the full article in Nature Communications here.
Learn more about the TAME Trial here.
Dr. Barzilai is AFAR's Scientific Director, a 2010 Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction recipient, a 1997 Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Center Development Award in Aging scholar, and a 1994 Glenn Foundation for Medical Research and AFAR Grants for Junior Faculty recipient, as well as the Director at the Institute for Aging Research and a distinguished Professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Dr. Kirkland is AFAR's President, a 2020 Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction recipient, a 2012 Glenn Foundation for Medical Research Breakthroughs in Gerontology (BIG) Award recipient, and a Professor of Physiology and Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic.
Dr. de Cabo is Senior Investigator of the Experimental Gerontology Section and Chief of the Translational Gerontology Branch at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as a recipient of AFAR’s 2023 Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction and the 2014 Vincent Cristofalo Rising Star Award in Aging Research.
Dr. Sierra is Chief Scientific Officer of the Hevolution Foundation, as well as the former Director of the Division of Aging Biology at the National Institute on Aging and a 1993 AFAR Research Grant recipient.
