The Glenn Research Consortium Continues to Grow

For some years now the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research has been establishing a network of labs to work on aging and longevity, seeding them with grants of a few million dollars apiece. The research they carry out is fairly mainstream, such as investigation of calorie restriction mimetics as a way to slightly slow aging, and thus I don't expect to see meaningful results in terms of added years of life in the current form of these laboratory groups. Their primary output will be knowledge and data relating to the fine details of the intersection of metabolism and aging, leading to a better understanding of the causes of natural variations in longevity.

However this is a good example of the growing focus on aging as a treatable condition in the research community, and the Glenn Consortium is exactly the sort of research network we'd like to see pick up work on the rejuvenation biotechnology of SENS in the future. With more results, support, and tools generated by existing SENS research, it will become ever more attractive for scientists working on the go-nowhere path of slowing aging through metabolic manipulation to switch to reversing aging through repair of cellular and molecular damage. That is the only way forward likely to produce meaningful extension of healthy life within our lifetimes. For that switch to happen, it isn't just necessary for SENS to make progress, but there also must be more of a mainstream community whose members are interested in intervention in the aging process in the first place.

A $3 million grant from The Glenn Foundation for Medical Research will allow the University of Michigan to establish a national center of excellence in biogerontology research. The Glenn Center for Aging Research at U-M will focus on exploiting and expanding the growing evidence that drugs can slow the effects of aging and postpone diseases in animal models. Researchers aim to unlock mechanisms of aging that can help develop medications that may help people live longer, healthier lives. The award recognizes U-M as among a select group of elite members of The Glenn Consortium for Research in Aging in the country.

The Glenn Foundation for Medical Research sponsors outstanding laboratories and scientists conducting research to understand the biology that governs normal human aging and its related physiological decline, with the objective of developing interventions that will extend the human health span. The grant recognizes the quality and productivity of the U-M Geriatrics Center's biogerontology program by the Foundation, which does not solicit proposals but funds highly-promising research in gerontology.

The Glenn Center at U-M will have two components: The Model Systems Unit will analyze pharmaceutical agents using worms, flies and cultured cell lines, [while] the Slow-Aging Mouse facility [will] use these animals to discover the pathways by which the drugs slow the effects of aging and postpone disease.

Link: http://www.uofmhealth.org/news/archive/201409/3-m-grant-funds-paul-f-glenn-center-aging-research

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