Joining Chris today is Dr. Vadim Gladyshev, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of Redox Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. The Gladyshev lab studies redox biology and trace elements as they relate to cancer, reproduction, and aging. Today, Dr. Gladyshev shares with us how his research group investigates the aging process and how aging is quantified in academic research.

Dr. Gladyshev begins by discussing how he got involved in the longevity sector. He goes on to explain that aging has not been clearly defined, and how many researchers define aging differently. He contends that aging should be studied as opposed to age-related diseases because age-related diseases are influenced by other factors aside from aging. The interview concludes with the importance of conferences that address the science of longevity and how these events connect bright minds to tackle unsolved problems in the field.

Episode Highlights:

• How Dr. Gladyshev got involved in aging
• The relationship between selenium and longevity
• How longevity is studied in the Gladyshev lab
• What is rejuvenation?
• The importance of measuring the aging process using clocks
• Using experimental and computational methods to alter clocks
• How the biotech industry quantifies aging
• Targeting aging and not age-related diseases
• The importance of conferences targeting longevity

Quotes:

“In general we try to address fundamental questions in the biology of aging — really trying to understand, ‘What is aging? How can we fundamentally adjust lifespan or target aging?’ … And we try to identify new areas of potential growth for the field.”

“We work on cross-species analysis to understand how the lifespan is shaped over evolutionary timescales and how we can utilize what we learn from evolution in targeting aging and lifespan.”

“Many changes can be measured as an organism moves from young to old. So this might be useful for measuring the progress of normal aging. But when you're intervening in aging, you don't want to reverse all of those changes, because some of those changes are evidence of the body's protective responses in action.”

“Just to play devil's advocate for a second: why would you want to target aging if you still got sick and died at the same rate?”

“Mortality is an integrative feature of not just the aging process, but interaction with the environment.”

Links:

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