Researchers from Yale University, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have been awarded a $12.4 million, five-year grant from the National Institute on Aging of the NIH to deploy their unique research models and expertise in a coordinated fashion to develop a novel course of gerontological research.
Vishwa Deep Dixit, DVM, PhD, the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Pathology and Professor of Immunobiology and Comparative Medicine and Director of the Yale Center for Research on Aging (Y-Age), is Leader of the Program Project Grant (PPG). Yale Principal Investigators of the PPG include Tamas Horvath, DVM, PhD, the Jean and David W. Wallace Professor of Comparative Medicine and Professor of Neuroscience and of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences, and Chair of Comparative Medicine, and Joseph Schlessinger, the William H. Prusoff Professor of Pharmacology and Co-Director of the Yale Cancer Biology Institute.
The team has already demonstrated that Fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21), a hormonal protein encoded by the FGF21 gene, acts through an obligate co-receptor βKlotho (KLB) to control hallmarks of the aging process such as inflammation, immune-senescence, and impaired energy metabolism. This project is based on new findings that adipose and thymus specific overexpression of FGF21 controls organismal aging, and that FGF21, via AGRP-neuron mediated integration of hypothalamic and autonomic circuits, regulates aging.
