Over one million Americans die of heart disease and cancer annually, but mortality rates have significantly decreased in recent decades thanks to life-saving treatments. However, common painful side effects from chronic treatments like beta blockers and chemotherapy create a catch-22 for living longer. The new Nathan Shock Center for aging research aims to obviate trade-offs between medical side effects and life extension by researching the biology of healthy aging.
“We don’t have the fountain of youth— nobody ever found it,” said Dudley Lamming, co-director of the Wisconsin Nathan Shock Center (WiNSC) and professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “but can we find ways [to] get to the end of our lives, still fit and functional?”
The Nathan Shock centers, eight multidisciplinary national centers funded by the NIA to foster collaboration and innovation in aging research, are funded to reduce the incidence of age-associated maladies. WiNSC, led by director Rozalyn Anderson and co-director Lamming — professors of medicine at UW-Madison — as well as biomolecular chemistry professor John Denu, will zero in on the role of metabolism in ailments exacerbated by aging like obesity and diabetes…