Venture Café – Tim Peterson, PhD and Shin-ichiro Imai, MD, PhD, Present: Can aging be reversed? Latest in anti-aging research and therapeutics

January 16, 2020
4:00 pm - 4:45 pm
Venture Café St. Louis, 4240 Duncan Ave, St. Louis, MO 63110

Precision Medicine Thursdays at Venture Café
Attendance is FREE.  Registration available at the event.

Speakers

Tim R. Peterson, PhDAssistant Professor of Medicine and Genetics, Washington University in St. Louis

Healthspan therapeutics that increase the ratio of “young” to “old” genes:  As our global population lives longer, there is increasing interest in healthspan – the period of life that one is free from aging-associated conditions, such as Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis. Healthspan is recognized as important because of its impact on quality of life and health care costs. We’ve developed a healthspan metric we call the “Y/O Ratio” based on genes we’ve categorized as either “young” or “old”. We applied our metric to identify potential anti-aging drugs with a Y/O Ratio greater than 1. In the coming months we will test these drugs in mouse models of Alzheimer’s, which is a prevalent aging condition with limited treatment options.

Shin-ichiro Imai, MD, PhD, Professor of Developmental Biology,  Washington University in St. Louis

Achieving Productive Aging: Understanding the systemic regulation of aging and longevity in mammals and developing an anti-aging intervention:  I will introduce the cutting-edge front of aging/longevity research in our lab, focusing on the inter-tissue communications among the hypothalamus, skeletal muscle, and adipose tissue.  I will also talk about our efforts of translating our preclinical results to humans and developing an anti-aging intervention using an NAD intermediate called nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN).


On the third Thursday of every month, ICTS Precision Medicine hosts a session featuring WashU faculty working in translational genomics/precision medicine areas. Talks are typically oriented toward biotechnology, diagnostics, informatics, start-ups and precision interventions based on medical genomics innovations.