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UTHSC at San Antonio's Barshop Center for Longevity and Aging Studies
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Aging Analyzed
With medical advances and a higher standard of living, more Americans are living longer. In 1900, the average Texan lived to be 46. More than 100 years later, the average Texas woman lives to be 79 and the average Texas man 74.
“I'm fascinated by aging, because it's still a frontier,” said Arlan G. Richardson, director of the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. “But it's frustrating, because we still know so little. We are still kind of in the infancy of aging.”
Considered one of the nation's top centers for aging and age-related disease research, the Barshop Institute and its 175 scientific investigators primarily focus on the basic biological aspects of aging. In 2004, the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio ranked first nationally in the number of grants and second in research dollars awarded by the National Institute for Aging to U.S. medical centers.
The institute, which was named for San Antonio philanthropists Sam and Ann Barshop, recently marked the dedication of its new 48,000 square foot building in the Texas Research Park campus near San Antonio .
With a strong background in aging research for the past 25 years, UTHSC San Antonio's graduate school of biomedical sciences and its schools of medicine, dentistry, nursing and allied health, are joined by The University of Texas at San Antonio, the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, the South Texas Veterans' Health Care System and The University of Texas at Austin under the umbrella of the Barshop Institute.
The institute's research is composed of four major programs: cellular, invertebrate, rodent and human genetics aging.
“We're one of the few institutions that has used animal models for the normal course of aging and developed interventions to delay aging,” said Brian Herman, Barshop vice president for research. In fact, one of the greatest discoveries about increasing longevity in rodents – by limiting caloric intake – was made here, Herman said.
Recent research at Barshop also centers on manipulating specific genes to see how an animal's lifespan is affected. “There is nothing unique about aging,” Arlan Richardson said. “We should be able to study it and manipulate it. But aging is complex – more so than even cancer. It happens in all organs, not in a specific place. It's complex, but not untreatable.”
Researchers like James R. Smith, professor of pathology and director of the San Antonio Center on the Comparative Biology of Aging, focus on different animals' varying lifespans.
“We have the basic idea that metabolism limits life span,” he said. “There's a strong relationship between an animal's body size and longevity. Mice, for example, have a higher metabolism than elephants – which live longer. But other species, like some bats, are smaller, but they live 40 years. Why is that?”
Barshop researchers emphasize that, for the most part, they are interested in enhancing the quality of life for an aging population – and not in greatly increasing the human lifespan. “We're more intent on providing quality than quantity,” Richardson said. “But the two – quality and quantity – will probably happen together.”
By successfully studying age-related problems and diseases such as osteoporosis, cancer, heart failure and dementia, “We want to increase health span – not life span,” said Olivia Smith, Barshop's director of the NIA training program for research scientists in the biology of aging. “We want to change it so people aren't sick or demented as they get older.”
“I'd like to see the perceptions of aging change,” said Christi Walter, interim chair of cellular and structural biology. “We're not going to make aging go away. We just want to make it not as catastrophic. You would still make the transition into your twilight years – but it would be a more graceful transition.”
With the growth of an aging population and an increase in emphasis on aging research, “The Barshop Institute has become a magnet for getting good people,” said James Roberts, professor of pharmacology. “It's an exciting place to be right now.”
“Just think about it,” Richardson said. “If we could increase humans' numbers of productive years, then people would spend fewer years drawing on Social Security and living in nursing homes.
“Instead of having to raise taxes or deny health care because it's so expensive, we would be able to do something about the problem.”
— Ruth Pennebaker
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