NIA awards up to $2 million to AFAR renew Nathan Shock Centers Coordinating Center

NEW YORK — The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), has received a renewal award for up to $2 million over five years from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to continue its role as the Nathan Shock Centers for Excellence in the Biology of Aging Coordinating Center (NSCs). The NIA is one of the 27 Institutes and Centers of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and its Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging provide leadership and technical support in the pursuit of basic research into the biology of aging.

AFAR will build on the existing Coordinating Center infrastructure to further increase and improve the visibility of the NSCs nationally and internationally; to facilitate collaboration and coordination among the NSCs, to enhance NSC training activities, and to help share resources and facilitate interactions between the NSCs and the broader aging community.

“AFAR serves as the Coordinating Center for two other NIA-funded consortia, the Clinician-Scientist Transdisciplinary Aging Research (Clin-STAR) and the Research Centers Collaborative Network (RCCN),” notes AFAR Executive Director Stephanie Lederman. “We believe we are ideally positioned to continue to provide strong support for the NSC mission.”

The NSC Coordinating Center leadership includes: AFAR Scientific Director Steven N. Austad, PhD; AFAR Executive Director Stephanie Lederman; AFAR Deputy Executive Director and Director of Grant Programs Odette van der Willik; David Allison, PhD, Dean, Distinguished professor, and Provost Professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington; and Andrew Brown, PhD, Assistant Professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington.

“The Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence coordinating center plays a crucial role in communication and scientific exchange between the centers and the scientific community at large, with the goal of advancing basic research in the biology of aging,” notes Dr. Ron Kohanski, acting director of NIA’s Division of Aging Biology.

In addition to the AFAR’s renewal award to manage the coordinating center renewal, NIA has renewed support for the six existing Nathan Shock Centers and will fund two new Nathan Shock Centers: the USC-Buck Nathan Shock Center (a consortium between The University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and the Buck Institute for Aging Research) and the San Diego Nathan Shock Center (a consortium between the Salk Institute, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, and the University of California, San Diego).

Learn more about the expansion of the Nathan Shock Centers program in a blog by Candace Kerr, PhD, Health Scientist Administrator, Division of Aging Biology (DAB) of the NIA, here.

The new USC-Buck and SD centers join an impressive roster of existing Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging nationwide:

• The Jackson Laboratory
• University of Texas Health Sciences Center San Antonio
• University of Washington
• Albert Einstein College of Medicine
• University of Oklahoma Health Science Center
• University of Alabama at Birmingham

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Learn more about the Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging at http://www.nathanshockcenters.org.

The research project reported here is supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 2U24AG056053-04.

About AFAR

The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) is a national non-profit organization that supports and advances pioneering biomedical research that is revolutionizing how we live healthier and longer. For nearly four decades, AFAR has served as the field’s talent incubator, providing more than $181 million to more than 4,200 investigators at premier research institutions nationwide. A trusted leader and strategist, AFAR also works with public and private funders to steer high quality grant programs and interdisciplinary research networks. AFAR-funded researchers are finding that modifying basic cellular processes can delay–or even prevent–many chronic diseases, often at the same time. They are discovering that it is never too late–or too early–to improve health. This groundbreaking science is paving the way for innovative new therapies that promise to improve and extend our quality of life–at any age. Learn more at http://www.afar.org or follow AFARorg on Twitter and Facebook.

AFAR also manages two additional NIA initiatives: the Clinician-Scientists Transdisciplinary Aging Research Coordinating Center (http://www.clin-star.org) and the Research Centers Collaborative Network Coordinating Center (http://www.rccn-aging.org).