General Education Requirements
Course Description
How do we detect and understand the aging happening within us? Exploring the mechanisms underlying the process of aging has been at the forefront of biomedical research across the globe. Age-associated pathophysiologies have become a global socioeconomic burden warranting solutions to improve the quality of life of elderly people. Comprehending the biological aspects of aging holds significance for both the potential long-term enhancement of longevity and the immediate amelioration of age-associated diseases. Senescence plays a prominent role in age-associated pathophysiologies including pulmonary fibrosis, cancers, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, osteoarthritis, kidney diseases, dementia, and hearing loss. Understanding tissue specific age-related changes at the molecular, cellular, genetic level will enable developing new senolytic therapies. This course will cover the widely accepted senescence biomarkers across different tissues in the body during normal aging and disease. It would also cover what happens at the mechanistic level inside the body of centenarians corresponding to their lifestyle choices. The technological advancements that have evolved over the years to identify senescence cells and strategies to eliminate senescence cells from the body will be discussed. Students will have the opportunity to tour an imaging facility where these techniques are being developed from the stage of conception to testing in preclinical models ultimately leading to clinical translation. Key elements of this course would be student-led presentations on topics of their interest across the aging spectrum. By the end of the class, I would hope every student leaves with a better understanding of how their body ages and lifestyle changes for healthy aging in addition to the scientific interventions to detect and alleviate age-associated diseases.
Meet the Instructor: Vidyani Suryadevara
“I am an Instructor in the Department of Radiology at Stanford University School of Medicine and a Global Health Faculty Fellow at the Centre for Innovation in Global Health. I received my PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and have accumulated a breadth of experiences across different scientific disciplines including pulmonary diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, and musculoskeletal disorders, wherein my research projects involved identifying new therapeutic targets and developing imaging modalities for early diagnosis of the disease, thus eventually improving the quality of life in patients. The underlying mechanism behind all these diseases is aging, my research currently focuses on the clinical translation of a novel noninvasive multimodality imaging approach to detect senescence in arthritis models. I led teams of renowned senescence scientists across the US to develop expert recommendations for biomarkers for senescence.”
