Open-Access Impact Journal on Aging
Online ISSN: 1945-4589INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS
AGING journal publishes high-impact research papers of general interest and biological significance in all fields of aging research including but not limited to cellular senescence, organismal aging, age-related diseases, DNA damage response and repair, genetic control of aging from yeast to mammals, regulation of longevity, evolution of aging, anti-aging strategies and drug development and especially the role of signal transduction pathways in aging and potential approaches to modulate these signaling pathways to extend lifespan.
The basic criterion for considering papers is their impact on aging research.
In addition to primary research articles in three formats (Priority Reports, Research Articles, Theory Articles), AGING publishes Reviews, Mini-reviews, Perspectives, Commentaries and Letters to the Editor.
All submissions are initially evaluated in depth by the editors. Papers that do not conform to the general criteria for publication will be returned to the authors without detailed review, typically within 2-4 days. Otherwise, manuscripts will be sent to 2-3 reviewers who have agreed in advance to assess the paper rapidly. The editors will make every effort to reach decisions on these papers within 3 weeks of the submission date. If revisions are a condition of publication, we generally allow 3 months for revisions and consider only one revised version of the paper.
Submit an article by e-mail as an attachment to: aaa
Authorship
The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all appropriate contributors are listed as authors and that all authors have agreed to the manuscript’s content and its submission to AGING. In a case where we become aware of an authorship dispute, authorship must be approved in writing by all of the parties.
Conflict of Interest
The authors should indicate conflicts of interests and sources of financial support. Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the authors institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions. The potential for conflict of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony) as well as personal relationships and academic competition must be declared. The authors declare conflicts of interests and sources of financial support as acknowledgment.
Informed consent
Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information should not be published unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. A patient who is identifiable must be shown the manuscript to be published. Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying details are altered, editors should be informed. When informed consent has been obtained it should be indicated in the published article as: Informed consent has been obtained.
Human and animal rights. Ethical statment
All research involving human participants must have been approved by the authors' institutional review board or equivalent committee(s) and that board must be named by the authors in the manuscript. For research involving human participants, informed consent must have been obtained (or the reason for lack of consent explained, e.g. the data were analyzed anonymously) and all clinical investigation must have been conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors should submit a statement from their ethics committee or institutional review board indicating the approval of the research. All animal work must have been conducted according to relevant national and international guidelines. In accordance with the recommendations of the Weatherall report, "The use of non-human primates in research." we specifically require authors to include details of animal welfare and steps taken to ameliorate suffering in all work involving non-human primates. At the beginning of the Methods section of your manuscript (with the subheading Ethics Statement) enter: Investigation has been conducted in accordance with the ethical standards and according to the Declaration of Helsinki and according to national and international guidelines and has been approved by the authors' institutional review board.
Distribution of Materials and Data
One of the terms of publishing in AGING is that authors be willing to distribute any materials and protocols used in the published experiments to qualified researchers for their own use. If there are restrictions to the availability of any materials, data, or information, these must be disclosed in the cover letter and the Experimental Procedures section of the manuscript at the time of submission.
Nucleic acid and protein sequences, macromolecular structures determined by X-ray crystallography (along with structure factors), and microarray data must be deposited in the appropriate public database and must be accessible without restriction from the date of publication. An entry name or accession number must be included as the last paragraph of the Experimental Procedures section in the final version of the manuscript. Microarray data should be MIAME compliant (for guidelines see http://www.mged.org/Workgroups/MIAME/miame.html).
Copyright and License Policies
Upon submission of an article, authors must agree to abide by an open-access license. The license permits any user to download, print out, extract, and archive articles.
Upon publication, AGING is intended to deposit all articles in PubMed Central. This complies with the policies of funding agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health in the United States, the Wellcome Trust and the Research Councils in the United Kingdom, and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in Germany, which request or require deposition of the published articles that they fund into publicly available databases.
In most cases, appropriate attribution can be provided by simply citing the original article. For any reuse or redistribution of a work, the author must also make clear the license terms under which the work was published.
This broad license was developed to facilitate open access to, and free use of, original works of all types. Applying this standard license to your own work will ensure your right to make your work freely and openly available.
Interaction with Members of the Press for Papers in Press
Authors are free to talk with the press starting on the day of acceptance. We also allow authors to discuss their work in press with other scientific journals for purposes of coverage in review material. If your press office wishes to issue a press release, they may do that.
Presubmission Inquiries
If you would like editorial input on whether your paper might be a strong candidate for consideration at AGING, you can send a presubmission inquiry. This should include an abstract plus a brief description of the results and an explanation of the interest and significance to the broad readership of AGING and be emailed to editors@impactaging.com. We try to respond to these within 1-2 days.
We follow the WHO definition of a clinical trial. "A clinical trial is any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes. Interventions include but are not restricted to drugs, cells and other biological products, surgical procedures, radiologic procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, process-of-care changes, preventive care, etc"
AGING supports the position of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) on trial registration. All trials initiated after 1 July 2005 must be registered prospectively in a publicly accessible registry (i.e., before patient recruitment has begun), or they will not be considered for publication. For trials initiated before 1 July 2005, all trials must be registered before submission to our journals. See the ICMJE faq on trial registration on trial registration for further details. The WHO's list of approved registries is listed here http://www.who.int/ictrp/network/list_registers/en/index.html.
Authors of randomized controlled trials must adhere to the CONSORT reporting guidelines appropriate to their trial design. Please check the CONSORT statement Web site for information on the appropriate guidelines for specific trial types. Before the paper can enter peer review authors must: 1) name in the paper trial registry, trial registration number, and IRB and 2) provide a copy of the trial protocol and a completed CONSORT checklist as supporting files. The CONSORT flow diagram must be included as Figure 1. Any deviation from the trial protocol must be explained in the paper. Authors must explicitly discuss informed consent in their paper, and AGING reserves the right to ask for a copy of the patient consent form. Information on statistical methods or participants beyond what is indicated in the CONSORT statement should be reported in the Methods section.
Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses of Randomized Controlled Trials
Reports of meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) should use the QUOROM statement as a guide (Moher D, Cook DJ, Eastwood S, Olkin I, Rennie D, et al. [1999] Improving the quality of reports of meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials: The QUOROM statement. Lancet 354: 1896; 1900) and include a copy of the QUOROM checklist (27KB PDF).
Diagnostic Studies
Reports of studies of diagnostic accuracy should conform to the STARD requirements.
Epidemiological Studies
For reports of epidemiological studies, you should consult the STROBE initiative.
Microarray Experiments
Reports of microarray experiments should conform to the MIAME guidelines and the data from the experiments must be deposited in a publicly accessible database.
Human and Animal Research
All research involving humans and animals must have been approved by the authors' institutional review board or equivalent committee and that board named by the authors. In the case of human participants, informed consent must have been obtained and all clinical investigation must have been conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors should submit a statement from the ethics committee or institutional review board indicating their approval of the research. We also encourage authors to submit a sample of a patient consent form and may require submission of completed forms on particular occasions.
For studies involving humans categorized by race/ethnicity, age, disease/disabilities, religion, sex/gender, sexual orientation, or other socially constructed groupings, authors should, as much as possible:
- make explicit their methods of categorizing human populations;
- define categories in as much detail as the study protocol allows;
- justify their choices of definitions and categories, including for example whether any rules of human categorization were required by their funding agency;
- explain whether (and if so, how) they controlled for confounding variables such as socioeconomic status, nutrition, environmental exposures, etc.
In addition, outmoded terms and potentially stigmatizing labels should be changed to more current, acceptable terminology. Examples: "Caucasian" should be changed to "white" or "of [Western] European descent" (as appropriate); "cancer victims" should be changed to "patients with cancer".
Priority Reports
Brief Advances present conceptual advances of unusual significance. Priority Reports should be as concise as possible and written in a style that is accessible to a broad readership. The total word count must be under 4,000 words, and there should be no more than 6 figures and/or tables. Additional items may be published online as Supplemental Data at the discretion of the editors.
Research Articles
Traditional experimental research. The total word count must be under 8,000 words, and there should be no more than 10 figures and/or tables. Additional items may be published online as Supplemental Data at the discretion of the editors
Theory Articles
The Theory format is intended for articles that main conclusions are based on computational, theoretical, or analytical approaches and/or re-interpretation of existing published data. Theory article will explain previously unexplained phenomena, provide mechanism for observations, integrate separate facts in one model, to substitute general rules for thousands of independent facts. The conclusions must be novel compared with otherwise published paradigms. The authors may include additional experiments to support points that lack already published supporting data. Theory articles must also suggest experimentally testable predictions. They follow the same format and length guidelines as Research articles.
Editorials
Will be generally invited but authors may suggest an editorial content.
Commentaries
A brief topical reviews of recent scientific advances. Commentaries may contain clarifications, new interpretations or disagreements with current paradigm. May include both published and unpublished own data to clarify the point.
Mini-reviews
Will be generally invited but authors may suggest a topic focused on the authors’ recent publications of high impact in aging research.
Review Articles
Will be generally invited but authors may suggest a Review on a broad topic of general interest.
Cover Letter
Each submission should be accompanied by a cover letter, which should contain a brief explanation of the work impact. A cover letter may contain suggestions for appropriate reviewers.
Research articles generally contain the following sections in this order: Title, Authors, Affiliations, Contact Information, Running title, Key words (6-7), Abstarct, Introduction, Results, Discussion, Methods, Acknowledgements, References, Figure and Table Legends, Figures and Tables, Supplemental Data. The text (Title through Legends) should be provided as one document, which may also contain the Tables. Figures should be provided separately. Supplemental Data should be provided separately.
The total word count of the text, including all sections and supplemental data, should not exceed 8000 words for research articles. An article may contain up to 10 figures and/or tables. Gene symbols should be italicized; protein products of the loci are not italicized. Nonstandard abbreviations should be defined when first used in the text. Use of abbreviations should be kept at a minimum. Manuscript file types that we can accept for submission include Word and RTF.
The text should be double spaced and pages should be numbered. Although summaries need to be entered as text files separate from the body of the manuscript during the online submission process, they should also be included within the manuscript file as usual.
Manuscripts that do not conform to the format guidelines may be returned to the authors for reformatting.
Preparation of Specific Sections
Title
The title should convey the conceptual significance of the paper to a broad readership.
Authors/Affiliations
Author names should be spelled out rather than set in initials. Authors should be footnoted to corresponding affiliations. Affiliations should contain the following core information: department(s)/subunit(s); institution; city, state/region, postal code; country.
Contact
The contact line should include the email address and phone/fax numbers of the corresponding author. The published corresponding author is responsible for ensuring adherence to all editorial and submission policies and for any communications that may result post-publication.
Additional Footnotes
Footnotes are only allowed on page 1 of the text (and in tables). They may include a present address or statement of equal contribution to the manuscript.
Abstract
The Abstract consists of a single paragraph of fewer than 200 words. It should clearly convey the conceptual advance and significance of the work to a broad readership. References should not be cited in the Summary.
Introduction
The Introduction should be succinct, with no subheadings, and should present the background information necessary to provide a biological context for the results.
Results
This section should be divided with subheadings.
Discussion
The Discussion should explain the significance of the results and place them into a broader context. This section may in some cases be combined with the Results section.
Methods
The Methods section needs to include sufficient detail so that readers can understand how the experiments were done, and so that all procedures can be repeated, in conjunction with cited references. This section should also include a description of any statistical methods employed in the study.
Acknowledgments
This section may acknowledge contributions from non-authors, list funding sources, and should include a statement of any conflict of interests.
References
The list of references should be numbered consecutively according to the first time mentioned within the article. Cite only the number assigned to the reference: For example, according to Campisi [1]. References should include only articles that are published or in press. Unpublished data, submitted manuscripts, abstracts, and personal communications should be cited within the text only. Personal communication should be documented by a letter of permission. Submitted articles should be cited as unpublished data, data not shown, or personal communication. Note: "et al." should only be used after 13 authors. Please use the following style for references:
Article in a periodical:
1. Campisi J, d'Adda di Fagagna F. Cellular senescence: when bad things happen to good cells. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol. 2007; 8: 729-740.
Figure Legends
Legends should be included in the submitted manuscript as a separate section. Each figure legend should have a brief title that describes the entire figure without citing specific panels, followed by a description of each panel. For any figures presenting pooled data, the measures should be defined in the figure legends (for example, data are represented as mean +/- SEM).
Tables
When creating a table, please use the Microsoft Word table function and do not place an Excel table in a Word document. Word tables should not be tab or space delineated and should not use color. Tables should include a title, and footnotes and/or legend should be concise. Include tables in the submitted manuscript as a separate section. Tables not created using the Microsoft Word table function will need to be revised by the author.
Supplemental Data
Supplemental data are restricted to items that are directly pertinent to the conclusions of the paper. Editors reserve the right to limit the scope and length of Supplemental Data. Supplemental Data should be provided with the original submission. Please follow the digital figure guidelines below for preparing figures. In general, supplemental files (movies, databases, tables, etc.) must each be less than 10 MB. All figures and tables should have titles and legends. In general, every attempt should be made to submit the Supplemental Data in a composite Word file.
Supplemental Movies
Supplemental movies may be submitted as .mov, .avi, .mpeg, or .gif files.
Figure Organization, Formats, and Style
Each figure must be assembled into one file that prints onto one 8 1/2 x 11 page. Please do not include separate panels on multiple pages. Micrographs should be provided with a scale bar, if appropriate, instead of magnification.
Acceptable Image Formats for Online Submission:
- TIFF (.tif)
- JPEG (.jpg) use maximum quality
- PowerPoint (.ppt)
- Encapsulated Postscript Files (.eps)
- Postscript Files (.ps)
Encapsulated Postscript Files (.eps)
As with all vector files (Adobe Illustrator, etc.), when saving as .eps, please be sure to embed all fonts or convert to outlines or paths.
Postscript Files (.ps)
There are many different drawing programs, not all of them supported by the software we use. From almost all of these programs, you should be able to produce a postscript file. When printing, select to print to a (postscript) file, rather than printing by default to a printer. The image must be in portrait orientation. Please be sure to embed all fonts when you save as postscript.
Resolution Requirements
Images composed of lines and text, which does not contain tonal or shaded areas should have resoluton 900-1200 dpi.
For black and white photographs, and images that contain halftone + text or line art elements, the resolution of your file should be 500-900 dpi.
A continuous tone photograph, which contains no text, should have resolution 300-900 dpi. Please note that figures should meet these resolution numbers at their approximate print sizes.
Color Images
We encourage authors to use colors that can be distinguished by color-blind readers. Please submit your figures in RGB or grayscale -- do not convert your files to CMYK. This will optimize their appearance online. If possible, embed the ICC profile.
Line Weights
Any lines in the graphic should be no smaller than 2 points width, when viewed at actual size.
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- Impact Journals Director
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Sergey DmitrievBoston, MA, USA
Sergey Dmitriev, a mathematician and programmer, President, CEO and Founder of a successful software company, JetBrains, based in St. Petersburg (Russia), Prague (Czech Republic) and Boston (USA). Journal's website is based on sophisticated programs developed by his company. His goal is creating a community around the journal, involving scientists and the public, and fostering aging research. Commentaries, interviews with the authors and members of the editorial board, discussions will be a part of the journal activity.
- Editors-in-Chief
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Mikhail V. Blagosklonny Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY, USA
Mikhail V. Blagosklonny, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY, USA
Dr. Blagosklonny is author or co-author of over 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He is Associate Editor of Cancer Res, Cell Death Differ, Cancer Biol Ther, Autophagy, Int J Cancer, Am J Pathology, PLOS ONE and Editor-in-Chief of Cell Cycle. His research interests range from molecular and cellular biology to clinical investigations and include signal transduction, cell cycle, cellular senescence, anticancer therapeutics with emphasis on translation of basic science into new anticancer strategies Recently, he extended the study of signal transduction pathways from cancer to aging, revealing potential targets for slowing down aging and age-related diseases.
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Judith Campisi Buck Institute for Age Research, Novato, CA, USA
Judith Campisi, Ph.D., Professor, Buck Institute for Age Research, Novato, CA, USA
Dr. Campisi received a Ph.D. from the State University of New York Stony Brook and postdoctoral training at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. She was Assistant and Associate Professor in Biochemistry at the Boston University Medical School, and joined the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as Senior Scientist in 1991. In 2002, she moved part of her laboratory to the then newly-founded Buck Institute for Age Research. Campisi's work bridges the fields of cancer and aging, and includes contributions to understanding the evolution and mechanisms of tumor suppressor genes, the cellular damage responses of senescence and apoptosis, DNA repair mechanisms, telomere biology, and the role of genome maintenance in postponing aging and cancer. She has published >150 research papers, review articles and book chapters on her work, and has received several awards for her research. Her awards include a Cancer Scholar award from the American Cancer Society, Established Investigator award from the American Heart Association, two MERIT awards from the National Institute on Aging, a Senior Scholar Award from the Ellison Medical Foundation, the Irving Wright Award from the American Federation for Aging Research and Glenn Foundation Award from the Gerontological Society of America. Campisi serves or has served on numerous national and international scientific review panels, public and private scientific advisory panels, and the editorial boards of several scientific journals.
Web links:
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David A.Sinclair Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
David A.Sinclair, Professor of Pathology and Co-Director of the Glenn Laboratories for Aging Research at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Dr. Sinclair obtained a BSc (1st class honors) and a Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. From 1995-1999, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Lenny Guarente at M.I.T. Dr. Sinclair has received awards including The Australian Commonwealth Prize, a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Award, a Leukemia Society Fellowship, a Ludwig Scholarship, a Harvard-Armenise Fellowship, an American Association for Aging Research Fellowship, and a Fellowship and Senior Scholarship from the Ellison Medical Foundation.
- Founding editorial board
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Frederick Alt Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Frederick W. Alt, Ph.D., member of the National Academy of Sciences, Professor, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Alt is also Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Inst., Charles A. Janeway Professor of Pediatrics, HMS, Scientific Director, CBRI Institute for Biomedical Research.Fred Alt received a PhD from the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of He is the recipient of the 2003 Excellence in Mentoring Award from the American Association of Immunologists and the 2004 Clowes Memorial Award from the American Association of Cancer Research. Editorial Boards: Mol. and Cell. Biology; Advances in Immunology; International Immunology; J. Exp. Med.; Current Opinion in Immunology; Immunity (founding Co-editor; 1993-present); Molecular Medicine (Contributing editor; 1997-present); Faculty of 1000 (co-head, Immunology). Honors and Awards: Fox Award, Stanford Univ. (1973); Hirschl Award (1983); Searle Scholar; (1983) Mallinckrodt Scholar; (1984); NIH Merit Award (1991); National Academy of Sciences (1994); American Academy of Microbiology (1994); American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1994); Associate (Foreign) Member, European Molecular Biology Organization (1999); Excellence in Mentoring Award,Association of Immunologists (2003); American Association of Cancer Research B.H.A. Clowes Award (2004); Rabi Shai Shacknai Memorial Prize in Immunology & Cancer Research (2005); Leukemia & Lymphoma Society de Villiers International Achievement Award (2005), Pasarow Foundation Prize in Cancer Research (2005); Irvington Institute Scientific Leadership in Immunology Award (2005); Establishment of Frederick W. Alt Award for New Discoveries in Immunology by the Irvington Institute (2006); National Cancer Institute Alfred Knudson Award in Cancer Genetics(2007).
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Maria Blasco Spanish National Cancer Center, Madrid, Spain
Maria Blasco, PhD, Professor, Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), Madrid, Spain
Maria A. Blasco obtained her PhD in 1993 for her research on DNA polymerases at the Centro de Biología Molecular (Madrid) under the supervision of M. Salas. That same year, Blasco joined the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, (USA), under the leadership of C. W. Greider. During this time, Blasco cloned one of the mammalian telomerase genes and generated the first telomerase knockout mouse. In 1997 she returned to Spain to start her own research group at the Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (Madrid), where she continued her work on the development of mouse models for the study of telomerase in cancer and ageing. She moved to the CNIO in 2003 as Director of the Molecular Oncology Program and Leader of the Telomeres and Telomerase Group. Blasco has received the Swiss Bridge Award for Research in Cancer, the Josef Steiner Cancer Research Award, the EMBO Gold Medal, the Rey Jaime I Basic Research Award and the Körber European Science Award. She is an elected EMBO Member since 2000 and a member of the Academia Europaea since 2006. She was appointed to the EMBO Council in 2008.
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Judith Campisi Buck Institute for Age Research, Novato, CA, USA
Judith Campisi, Ph.D., Professor, Buck Institute for Age Research, Novato, CA, USA
Dr. Campisi received a Ph.D. from the State University of New York Stony Brook and postdoctoral training at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. She was Assistant and Associate Professor in Biochemistry at the Boston University Medical School, and joined the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as Senior Scientist in 1991. In 2002, she moved part of her laboratory to the then newly-founded Buck Institute for Age Research. Campisi's work bridges the fields of cancer and aging, and includes contributions to understanding the evolution and mechanisms of tumor suppressor genes, the cellular damage responses of senescence and apoptosis, DNA repair mechanisms, telomere biology, and the role of genome maintenance in postponing aging and cancer. She has published >150 research papers, review articles and book chapters on her work, and has received several awards for her research. Her awards include a Cancer Scholar award from the American Cancer Society, Established Investigator award from the American Heart Association, two MERIT awards from the National Institute on Aging, a Senior Scholar Award from the Ellison Medical Foundation, the Irving Wright Award from the American Federation for Aging Research and Glenn Foundation Award from the Gerontological Society of America. Campisi serves or has served on numerous national and international scientific review panels, public and private scientific advisory panels, and the editorial boards of several scientific journals.
Web links:
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Lawrence A. Donehower Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
Lawrence A. Donehower, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Molecular Virology & Microbiology and Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
Ph.D., The George Washington University. Postdoctoral, University of California, San Francisco
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Toren Finkel National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
Toren Finkel, M.D.,Ph.D., Principal Investigator, Chief of the Cardiovascular Branch, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
Toren Finkel received his undergraduate degree in Physics and his MD and PhD degree from Harvard Medical School in 1986. Following a residency in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital he completed a fellowship in Cardiology at Johns Hopkins Medical School. In 1992, he accepted a position within the Intramural Research Program of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. In 2001 he became the Chief of the Cardiology Branch and in 2007 he became Chief of the newly formed Translational Medicine Branch within the NHLBI. His current research interests include the role of reactive oxygen species in aging and stem/progenitor cell dysfunction in age-related diseases.
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Leonard Guarente MIT, Cambridge, MA,USA
Leonard Pershing Guarente, Ph.D., MIT Novartis Professor of Biology, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
Leonard Guarente formerly studied gene regulation in eukaryotes (1980-1995). In these early studies, his lab first purified the TATA-binding protein TBP and cloned the gene, discovered UASs, identified the first heteromeric transcription factor (HAP2/3/4/5), and provided the first evidence for coactivators. He then turned his studies to the mechanism of aging and its regulation using yeast and subsequently higher organisms. His lab began studying aging in 1991 and showed SIR2 is a critical longevity gene in yeast and C. elegans His lab discovered the novel biochemical activity of the SIR2 gene product ??? NAD-dependent protein deacetylase. This activity suggested that SIR2 might link diet to aging, addressing the longstanding question of how calorie restriction (CR) slows aging. His lab established a system to study CR in yeast and showed that CR extended the life span in yeast mother cells by activating SIR2. More recently, his lab has made several findings regarding the mammalian ortholog of SIR2, SIRT1. Importantly, it controls several physiological processes impacted by CR. First, Sirt1 renders cells stress resistant by inhibiting pro-apoptotic transcription factors p53 and forkhead. Second, Sirt1 also regulates many metabolic functions influenced by diet, for example the mobilization of fat from white adipocytes upon food limitation, and the increase in muscle maintenance during CR. These findings show that the life and health extension by CR are not passive events, but result from the activation of Sirt1, which then impacts on cellular and organismal processes to deliver the benefits. More recently, his and other labs have linked SIRT1 to protection against cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, neurodegenerative disease and osteoporosis in mouse models. Dr. Guarente received his B. S. from MIT and his Ph. D. at Harvard, under the supervision of Jon Beckwith. He trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard with Mark Ptashne and has been on the faculty of MIT since 1981, where he is the Novartis Professor of Biology. His book Ageless Quest (Cold Spring Harbor Press, 2003) describes the pathway of discovery of SIR2 as a key regulator of life span in response to diet.
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Stephen L. Helfand Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
Stephen L. Helfand, MD, Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry in the Division of Biology and Medicine, Brown University
Dr. Helfand received his BS at Stanford University where he discovered the neuronal growth factor later renamed Ciliary Neuro Trophic Factor. Dr. Helfand obtained his MD degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, completed his Medical Internship at Montefiore Medical Center and his Neurology Residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He is Board Certified in Neurology. After Postdoctoral training at Stanford and at Yale he took a position at the University of Connecticut Health Center where from 1990 to 2005. In 2005 he moved to Brown University as Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry in the Division of Biology and Medicine. Dr. Helfand's laboratory focuses on understanding the molecular genetic mechanisms underlying aging and longevity using the model system, Drosophila melanogaster. Dr. Helfand is an Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar, recipient of a Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging, RO1 awards and a MERIT award from the National Institute on Aging. His recent work on the molecular genetics of aging has appeared in journals including Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cell Metabolism, Current Biology and Aging (Impact Aging.
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Cynthia Kenyon University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
Cynthia Kenyon, Ph.D., member of the National Academy of Sciencs, American Cancer Society Professor and Director of the Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging
Cynthia Kenyon received her PhD from MIT in 1981, where, in Graham Walker's laboratory, she was the first to look for genes on the basis of their expression profiles, discovering that DNA damaging agents activate a battery of DNA repair genes in E. coli. She then did postdoctoral studies with Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, studying the development of C. elegans. Since 1986 she has been at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was the Herbert Boyer Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics and is now an American Cancer Society Professor. In 1993, Kenyon and colleagues' discovery that a single-gene mutation could double the lifespan of C. elegans sparked an intensive study of the molecular biology of aging. These findings have now led to the discovery that an evolutionarily conserved hormone signaling system controls aging in other organisms as well, including mammals. Dr. Kenyon has received many honors and awards for her findings. She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine and she is a past president of the Genetics Society of America. She is now the director of the Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging at UCSF.
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Arnold Levine The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA
Arnold J. Levine, Ph.D. member of the National Academy, Professor, The Simons Center for Systems Biology in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA.
Levine was on the faculty of the Biochemistry Department of Princeton University from1968 to 1979, when he became chair and professor in the Department of Microbiology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, School of Medicine. Returning to Princeton University in 1984, he was named Harry C. Wiess Professor in the Life Sciences in the Department of Molecular Biology, a position he held until 1998. He chaired the Department between 1984 and 1996. He was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Rockefeller University in New York City from 1998 to 2002, as well as Heilbrunn Professor of Cancer Biology and laboratory head until joining the Institute in 2002. The recipient of many honors including: the Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Biomedical Research from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (2000); the Keio Medical Science Prize of the Keio University Medical Science Fund, Japan (2000); the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2001); and the Award for Basic Research from the Surgical Society of Oncologists (2003). Levine is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the Academy's Institute of Medicine; he is also the author or coauthor of over 300 scientific papers, as well as a book, Viruses (1993). He has served as board member or adviser to numerous scientific organizations and educational institutions, among them the N.J. Biotechnology Institute, the American Cyanamid Corporation, the SUNY Health Sciences Center in Brooklyn, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Weizmann Institute, the Huntsman Cancer Center of the University of Utah, and the Institute for Cancer Research in Lausanne, Switzerland.
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Thomas Rando Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
Thomas A. Rando, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine; Chief Neurology Service VA Palo Alto Health Care System; Deputy Director, Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL)
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Manuel Serrano Spanish National Cancer Research Center, Madrid, Spain
Manuel Serrano, PhD, Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), Madrid, Spain
Manuel Serrano obtained his PhD in 1991 at the University of Madrid for research on DNA replication under the supervision of Margarita Salas. From 1992 to 1996, Manuel worked as postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of David Beach, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (NY, USA). During this time, Manuel made his most important discovery with the cloning and characterization of p16, which defined a new class of cell cycle regulators and was soon recognized as a key tumor suppressor. In 1997, Manuel returned to Spain as an independent investigator, initially at the National Center of Biotechnology, and since 2003 at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center directed by Mariano Barbacid. The main contributions of Manuel during these years have been related to the concept of oncogene-induced senescence as a tumor suppression mechanism, the role of p19Arf as an oncogenic sensor, the generation of novel mouse models with increased cancer resistance, and the identification of senescent tumor cells within premalignant tumors. More recently, Manuel's laboratory has discovered a cis-regulatory element at the p16 and p19Arf locus, has dissected the role of DNA damage and oncogenic signaling in p53-mediated cancer protection, and has reported the anti-aging activity of the Arf/p53 module.
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David A.Sinclair Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
David A.Sinclair, Professor of Pathology and Co-Director of the Glenn Laboratories for Aging Research at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Dr. Sinclair obtained a BSc (1st class honors) and a Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. From 1995-1999, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Lenny Guarente at M.I.T. Dr. Sinclair has received awards including The Australian Commonwealth Prize, a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Award, a Leukemia Society Fellowship, a Ludwig Scholarship, a Harvard-Armenise Fellowship, an American Association for Aging Research Fellowship, and a Fellowship and Senior Scholarship from the Ellison Medical Foundation.
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