This proposal seeks partial support for a series of new Annual Meetings organized by the Biological Sciences Section of The Gerontological Society of America (GSA). These meetings will be interdisciplinary and novel in their structure and goals. This application describes a transformation of the Biological Sciences GSA meetings and is designed to create new opportunities for the translation of the biology of aging into meaningful approaches to improve human health. The setting of this meeting provides a unique opportunity for the biology of aging community to """"""""break out"""""""" into the wider biomedical world. We propose a topic based interdisciplinary meeting for 2010 on """"""""Mechanistic Interplay in Aging and Disease"""""""" and for 2011 on """"""""Nutrition and Healthy Aging"""""""";the topic for 2012 is yet to be decided.
The basic biology of aging has made enormous progress over the last decade in understanding the genetics and some aspects of the physiology of normal aging. Aging is the major risk factor for a range of important human chronic diseases and there is great hope that discoveries in biology will lead to therapies or preventative interventions. There are currently a range of meetings focused on the biology of aging but they tend to be isolated from geriatricians, clinical gerontologists and social scientists working on aging thus slowing the translation of discoveries made in basic biology. We propose a series of topic-based, interdisciplinary meetings on the biology of aging to be held at the Annual Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA). This proposal is aimed at providing the biology of aging field with a podium from which to advocate for significant investment in both basic and translational aging science and to encourage thinking beyond the status quo. We propose that the annual meeting of the GSA be that podium.
