Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

During aging, the human skin undergoes a complex set of changes that result in a reduced capacity for self repair. The aging skin develops abnormalities in the skin barrier as the first line of defense against infection, the environment and the loss of heat and hydration. This is due to internal changes as well as environmental stresses such as UV and biochemical agents. However the biological processes driving the aging process in various tissues, including skin, are not well understood. To this end, we intend to take advantage of one of our transgenic mouse models, which possesses a skin phenotype mimicking that of aging human skin, in order to understand the biological mechanisms during the normal aging process. This will provide the potential for the identification of new diagnostic tools and therapeutic approaches that can be used to prevent or cure aging-related skin conditions. From a clinical perspective, a well-defined mechanism of cellular aging could be instrumental in i) facilitating the forecasting of disease progression, ii) providing tools with which to evaluate the efficacy of anti-aging drugs, iii) predicting and evaluating the role of environments stresses as they are increasing in our environment and iv) developing therapeutics that will be used in elderly individuals to eliminate or manage aging-related skin conditions.