aging

IRP Interns Shine at Summer Poster Day

NIH summer intern Ishu Sivakumar at Summer Poster Day

Upon entering the sunny foyer of the NIH’s Natcher Conference Center last Thursday, I was immediately struck by a burst of loud, excited chatter. As it always is on NIH’s annual Summer Poster Day, the building was filled with hundreds of high school and college students and the scientists, families, and friends who had turned out to see what these young men and women had spent the summer doing.

Muscle Enzyme Explains Weight Gain in Middle Age

Reblogged from The NIH Director’s Blog.

using a weight scale

The struggle to maintain a healthy weight is a lifelong challenge for many of us. In fact, the average American packs on an extra 30 pounds from early adulthood to age 50. What’s responsible for this tendency toward middle-age spread? For most of us, too many calories and too little exercise definitely play a role. But now comes word that another reason may lie in a strong—and previously unknown—biochemical mechanism related to the normal aging process.

Six Paths Forward in Biomedical Research

NIH Clinical Center

Last month I moderated our annual retreat with the NIH Scientific Directors, those individuals tasked with leading their Institute or Center (IC)-based intramural research program. We were joined by many of the IC Clinical Directors. And this year we decided to do something a little different: listen to a series of talks about exciting, new IRP research.

Four NIH IRP Researchers Elected to National Academy of Medicine

NIH National Academy of Medicine 2016

This year, members of the National Academy of Medicine elected four NIH Intramural researchers to their ranks, one of the highest honors in science. Learn a bit about each of their research and follow the links to their IRP profiles for more information.

Untangling Alzheimer’s Disease — DNA Damage in Alzheimer’s

Drs. Hyundong Song and Yujun Hou, standing together here in their lab, are postdoctoral fellows working to find ways that doctors may one day effectively treat Alzheimer’s disease.

Given that Alzheimer’s is such a complex disease with many causes and pathways, it is not surprising that the search for effective treatments has proven difficult. So I spoke with Drs. Yujun Hou and Hyundong Song, postdoctoral fellows in the IRP’s Laboratory of Molecular Gerontology at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to learn more about their approaches to meeting the challenge.

Exercise Releases Brain-Healthy Protein

Reblogged from the NIH Director's Blog.

Five images of different exercise activities

We all know that exercise is important for a strong and healthy body. Less appreciated is that exercise seems also to be important for a strong and healthy mind, boosting memory and learning, while possibly delaying age-related cognitive decline. How is this so? Researchers have assembled a growing body of evidence that suggests skeletal muscle cells secrete proteins and other factors into the blood during exercise that have a regenerative effect on the brain.

Epigenetics in Cancer Individualizes Environmental and Hereditary Risks

You may already know that diet, obesity, exposure to the sun, radiation, and hormones are just a few of the many risk factors associated with cancer diagnoses. But, do you know about other risk factors, especially those playing out through epigenetics, the molecular relationship between the environment and our DNA? Read more...

We Appreciate Postdocs

Postdocs help power aging research. They receive NIA funding for training. They work with and for NIA grantees. In-house at NIA, they are a critical component of research conducted in NIA labs, which we call “intramural” research. Across the research community, postdoctoral research fellows contribute the long hours necessary to organize and implement research activities. I know this because I am one of them, and colleagues, I see how hard you work!

A headshot of Dr. Erez Eitan. He wears a grey sweater. A headshot of Dr. Sarah Mitchell, in front of a photographic backdrop. She is smiling, and wearing an orange and white shirt with a necklace. And a headshot of Dr. Peter Sykora. He wears a yellow and blue striped polo shirt.