PSW 2426 A Coming Revolution in Aging | Eric Verdin

Lecture Starts at 13:15
PSW #2426
A Coming Revolution in Aging: Will we live to be 150?
Eric Verdin
President & CEO, The Buck Institute for Research on Aging
October 9, 2020

The speaker will discuss recent advances in the science of aging and their application to humans. It will show that we are living at a historical inflection point with rapidly aging populations in the Western world and a rapidly growing understanding of what aging means and how we can mitigate its consequences. The lecture will discuss the difference between lifespan and healthspan, and how understanding mechanisms of aging has yielded new approaches to diagnosing and treating the chronic diseases of aging. Finally, the lecture will explore the root causes of aging, the role of genetics and lifestyle factors in aging, and approaches to increasing healthy longevity.

Eric Verdin is the President and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. He is also an Adjunct Professor at UC-San Francisco and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern California. Previously, Eric was Associate Director of the Gladstone Institutes, and held faculty positions at the University of Brussels, the NIH, and the Picower Institute for Medical Research.

Eric’s research focuses on the role of epigenetic regulators in the aging process. His laboratory was the first to clone a family of enzymes called HDACs, which regulate histone acetylation. Eric studies how metabolism, diet, and small molecules regulate the activity of HDACs and that of sirtuins, and how this affects the aging process and its associated diseases, including Alzheimer’s.

Eric is an author of more than 210 scientific papers, and he is an inventor in more than 15 patents. Among numerous honors and awards, he is the recipient of the Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging and a Senior Scholarship from the Ellison Medical Foundation. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and Belgium’s Royal Academy of Medicine.

Eric earned his MD from the University of Liege and completed additional clinical and research training at Harvard Medical School.