Grant: Project Grant

Identifying new therapies to treat common age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's, diabetes, and cancer is one of the biggest challenges the current century. In Canada, over $68 billion is spent annually to treat chronic diseases, many of which are age related. Moreover, this cost is expected to surge over the next 30 years as the population of those over the age of 65 doubles. Therefore, for both economic as well as medical reasons, new treatments for age-related disease are imminently needed. Remarkably, molecular biology research has recently identified a key set of pathways that influence aging and many common age-related diseases. For example, this proposal relates to a pathway that has been shown to increase lifespan and protect against multiple age-related illnesses including various cancers, neurodegeneration, and heart disease in mice. In this project we will be characterizing how this pathway works at the molecular level and also investigating strategies for how to "activate" it pharmacologically for therapeutic purposes. We anticipate that this project will contribute to both the economy and patient health by advancing the development of single drugs capable of treating multiple age-related diseases simultaneously.