Gladyshev to Present Mahoney Lecture on Aging
Dr. Vadim Gladyshev, a renowned biologist in aging research, will deliver the next NIH Florence Mahoney Lecture on Aging, titled, “Targeting Aging, Longevity and Rejuvenation.” The event will take place in Lipsett Amphitheater in Bldg. 10 on the NIH Bethesda campus and via videocast on April 2 at 2 p.m. ET.
Gladyshev will discuss recent advances in the field, offering insights that could transform the way biomedicine addresses aging and its associated health challenges.
Recognized as a “Redox Pioneer,” Gladyshev currently is professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, director of the Center for Redox Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a faculty member of the Broad Institute. He is the principal investigator of the Gladyshev lab, where he focuses on understanding the mechanisms behind aging, rejuvenation and lifespan control using a combination of experimental and computational approaches. His work spans various dimensions of biology, including selenium biochemistry, where he discovered the full set of human selenoprotein genes responsible for the role of selenium in biology and medicine.
Gladyshev is most notably recognized for his contributions to the study of longevity and the aging process. His team has made significant strides in uncovering the molecular bases for natural variation in lifespan across species. By studying long-lived organisms, such as naked mole-rats and microbats, and analyzing large datasets across mammals or yeast isolates, his team has identified “longevity signatures.” These signatures are molecular patterns, derived from transcriptomic, metabolomic or proteomic analyses, that helped uncover basic principles of lifespan control. He also has been a leader in developing quantitative biomarkers of aging, including first mouse, single-cell, causal and organ-specific aging clocks.
Prior to his current positions, Gladyshev was the Charles Bessey Professor of Biochemistry and director of the Redox Biology Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he began his teaching career and established his lab in 1998. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Moscow State University, followed by postdoctoral training at NIH under Dr. Thressa Stadtman and Dr. Dolph L. Hatfield.
Gladyshev is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has received many awards including the NIH Pioneer, Transformative and Eureka awards to study aging.
The NIH Mahoney lectures are sponsored by NIA and named in honor of Florence Stephenson Mahoney (1899–2002), who devoted much of her life to successfully advocating for the creation of NIA and increased support for NIH.