Top Breakthroughs in Aging Research

James L. Kirkland, MD, PhD

2012 Glenn/AFAR Breakthroughs in Gerontology (BIG) Award recipient and President-Elect James L. Kirkland, MD, PhD, and his team the Mayo Clinic have been leading research on the first senolytic drugs since 2015. In 2018, he was senior author on a study that found that a combination of the leukemia drug dasatinib and the natural plant pigment, quercetin extended not just how long mice live, but also the time they live in good health. The first-ever small pilot trial in humans was completed in early 2019, paving the way for larger trials in the near future.

Dr. Kirkland and several other AFAR experts have also identified another natural senolytic, Fisetin, which is also found in many fruits and vegetables. In animal studies, Dr. Kirkland and AFAR experts have found it was possible to reduce the burden of senescent cells, and extend lifespan and improve health, even when treatment was initiated late in life.

Ozioma Okonkwo, PhD

Research by 2013 Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award in Aging Scholar Ozioma Okonkwo, PhD, has shown that exercise can help protect people against Alzheimer’s disease, even if they are at high genetic risk. His research has found that a moderate-intensity active lifestyle actually boosts cognitive function. Dr. Okonkwo is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Satchidananda Panda, PhD

2014 Julie Martin Mid-Career Award in Aging Research recipient Satchidananda Panda, PhD, is a leader in research on the health benefits of aligning our eating patterns with the natural circadian rhythms programmed into our DNA. That means limiting food intake to eight to 12 hours a day, and fasting the rest of the time.

His research with mice shows that adhering to time-restricted eating reduced fat mass, reduced inflammation, reversed type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease, and increased endurance—even when mice ate an unhealthy diet high in fat and sugar.

Dr. Panda is a Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he leads the Panda Lab.

He is the author of the book, The Circadian Code.

Andrew Dillin, PhD

2010 AFAR Vincent Cristofalo Rising Star Award in Aging Research recipient Andrew Dillin, PhD, has advanced research on protein misfolding. His lab is particularly interested in understanding why an organism begins to lose control over the quality and integrity of its proteins as it ages, and how the recognition of protein misfolding stress is communicated to distal tissues and organs.

Dr. Dillin’s research has also explored correcting heat shock, a major cause of protein unraveling, by increasing the number of chaperone genes in the cell with the protein, HSF-1(heat shock factor-1).

He is is a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Distinguished Chair in Stem Cell Research at the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at Berkeley.

Nir Barzilai, MD

AFAR Scientific Director and multiple grantee Nir Barzilai, MD, is leading the TAME Trial (Targeting Aging with Metformin) Trial, which will test whether metformin—a drug currently prescribed as the first line of defense against type 2 (adult onset) diabetes and already taken by millions of people—can delay the onset of age-related diseases.

Through AFAR’s management, TAME is now in its planning stages and will open the door to more trials based on other promising drugs.

Dr. Barzilai is the Director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Human Aging Research and of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging.

Daniel Promislow, PhD

1996 AFAR Research Grants for Junior Faculty recipient Daniel Promislow, PhD, also is leading the Dog Aging Project exploring rapamycin’s extension of healthspan.

The project may thereby help identify risk factors that influence human life span. Since dogs age significantly more rapidly than humans, data on aging can be generated much more rapidly using a dog model than in human studies.

At the University of Washington, Dr. Promislow is a Professor in the Department of Pathology and Department of Biology. He is also the Director of the Canine Longevity Consortium.

David J. Marcinek, PhD

Along with Dr. Rabinovitch, 2015 BIG Award winner David J. Marcineck, PhD, is pioneering research on mitochondrial redox biology as well as mitochondria and environmental health and toxin exposure.

Dr. Marcinek is a Associate Professor at UW Medicine.

Steven N. Austad, PhD

AFAR Senior Scientific Director Steven N. Austad, PhD, is contributing to some of the most high-profile research on how the biology of aging may differ between men and women through the study.

Dr. Austad is a distinguished professor and Chair of the Department of Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In addition to be the Director of the Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging at UAB, Dr. Austad is the co-Principal Investigator of the NSC Coordinating Center for the NIA.

David Sinclair, PhD, AO

2000 AFAR Research Grant for Junior Faculty, 2018 Irving S. Wright Award recipient and AFAR board member David Sinclair, PhD, AO, has led significant research that asks if epigenetic changes are a driver of aging, can you reset the epigenome?

Dr. Sinclair is a Professor in the Department of Genetics and co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School.

He is the author of the book, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age -- and Why We Don't.

Morgan Levine, PhD

2021 Vincent Cristofalo Rising Star Award in Aging Research recipient Morgan Levine, PhD is applying computational research to improve our understanding of biomarkers of aging.

Dr. Levine is an Assistant Professor, Yale Center for Research on Aging (Y-Age) in the Department of Pathology at Yale School of Medicine. She is the founder of the Laboratory for Aging in Living Systems (Levine Lab).