Welcome to the Paul F. Glenn Center for Aging Research at the University of Michigan.
The UM Glenn Center began operations in September, 2014, with the generous support of the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, founded by Paul F. Glenn to "to extend the healthy productive years of life through research on the mechanisms of biological aging." The UM Glenn Center joins a consortium of 10 other distinguished research universities whose faculty members are making progress in understanding the biology of aging, and explore ways to translate our growing knowledge about the aging process to benefit people as they grow older.
The UM Glenn Center is headed by Dr. Richard A. Miller, a professor of Pathology and an expert on the use of mouse models to learn about control of lifespan, age-sensitive health outcomes, and how drugs, diets and genes regulate aging. Other key UM faculty include Dr. Scott Pletcher, an expert on aging in fruit flies, Dr. Allen Hsu, who studies control of aging in C. elegans worms, Dr. David Lombard, whose work focuses on the cell biology of aging, and Dr. Zaneta Nikolovska-Coleska, an expert in chemical genetics including high-throughput screening towards novel drug discovery.
The Center has two components: a Model Systems Unit, directed by Dr. Pletcher, that screens chemical compounds to find agents that extend healthy lifespan in worms and flies or that increase resistance of cultured cells to stress, and a Core Facility for Slow-Aging Mice, headed by Dr. Miller, which produces mice that have been treated with drugs already known to increase lifespan, and then collaborates with expert biologists to learn more about how these drugs work to slow disease and extend lifespan.