Remember that insurance company billboard which declared ‘The First Person to Live to 150 is Alive Today’? Well, a new research center on the South Coast is working to make this a reality.
The major new research center at UC Santa Barbara, the Center for Aging and Longevity Studies, is devoted to finding ways for us to live longer, more vibrant lives.
"We will soon be in a position to start to manipulate our life spans, " explained Joel Rothman, the Director of the Center and a distinguished professor of molecular and cell biology.
Establishing the research center is working towards ways to reduce age-dependent health decline, said Rothman.
He told KCLU that the creation of the research center, which is devoted to the science of aging and longevity, was spurred by advances in the biology of aging and the discovery that its progression can be slowed, resulting in dramatic delay in age-dependent health decline.
“A major driver of biological research in CALS is understanding how to stretch human healthspan, the period of life in which we abound with vitality,” said Rothman. “It is likely that a large number of age-related diseases could simultaneously be reduced by a single intervention: simply slowing the biological aging clock.”
The Center for Aging and Longevity Studies at UC Santa Barbara will celebrate its official opening on April 6.
