Inflammaging, Organism Aging, and Age-Related Chronic Diseases

With the steady growing of the elderly population, aging represents the great challenge for our society and medical care system. Aging is a prominent risk factor for many chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease, chronic kidney disease, neurological disorders, and cancer.

Many of the mechanisms of organism aging process is common with the pathogenesis of the above mentioned diseases, such as chronic inflammation (inflammaging), cell senescence, cell death, mitochondrial dysfunction, and organ or tissue degeneration, leading to organ functional failure. Elucidating mechanisms of aging process and investigating how aging process affects the disease process - and vice versa, will have great impact on extension of healthy lifespan and incidence of the chronic diseases of every organ.

Our motto: targeting diseases by targeting aging! Our current research focuses on investigating the roles of chronic inflammation, (cellular senescence and secretion of inflammatory cytokines or SASP) and / or hypoxia on aging process and chronic disease development. Several candidate genes that are identified by proteomics and metabolomics and will be validated in model systems including cell/tissue culture, genetic modified mouse models, and human biopsies.

Main lines of research

• Research Interest
  1. Mechanisms of aging-associated cardiac vulnerability to ischemia/reperfusion injury.
  2. Circadian regulation of aging heart dysfunction.
  3. Mechnaisms of inflammaging in tumour cell growth.
  4. Inflammaging and mitochondrial dysfunction in brain aging and vascular dementia.