For the past 24 years, the UCLA Claude Pepper Older Americans Independence Center (OAIC) has been consistent in its goal to promote research aimed at maintaining and restoring the independence of older persons. Going forward the UCLA OAIC will focus on ?Inflammation, Aging, and Independence?. The pathways that control age-related inflammation across multiple systems and how inflammation increases adverse outcomes are poorly understood. Moreover, few interventions are available to treat or prevent increased inflammation or its consequences. To accomplish its goal of promoting research aimed at maintaining and restoring the independence of older persons, the UCLA OAIC will utilize five cores: Leadership and Administrative, Research Education Component, Pilot and Exploratory Studies, and two resource cores (Data Acquisition and Analysis and Inflammatory Biology). Research cores provide support at 4 levels: Consultation (e.g., providing up to several hours of advice, reading a paper or a proposal), Assistance to junior faculty who receive pilot, CDA, or RPS funding, Partnership on new proposals, and Ongoing or long-term support (e.g., part of the project team). In addition, the UCLA OAIC Pilot and Exploratory Studies Core and Research Education Component stimulate new research via a pipeline of junior investigators and pilot awards and recruit successful investigators into OAIC-related research. The Leadership and Administrative Core ensures that these specific activities are accomplished and the goals of the UCLA OAIC are optimally achieved. The UCLA OAIC will conduct observational and interventional research on factors that contribute to increased inflammation in aging and its consequences. The OAIC will: 1) determine how inflammatory markers change with normal aging and with specific diseases and how these changes in inflammation affect diseases and outcomes related to independence; 2) link inflammatory markers to genetic and epigenetic profiles; and 3) develop and test interventions to reduce inflammatory burden and determine the effects of these interventions on health and functional outcomes. The OAIC will spawn independent research grants that support this theme, create a generation of new researchers who can begin to assume leadership in this area, and export its leading edge approaches to other Pepper Centers and researchers in inflammation and aging.
The pathways that control age-related inflammation across multiple systems, the interactions of risk factors, and how these increase adverse outcomes are poorly understood. Moreover, few interventions, are available to treat or prevent increased inflammation and its consequences. By addressing a core pathogenic process, such treatments, if developed, might prevent or treat multiple diseases associated with aging.
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