Scientific Working Groups
The ONPRC has recently established Working Groups in the areas of Biology of Aging, Metabolic Disease, and Stem Cell & Developmental Biology to analyze and plan interdisciplinary research and to inform areas of future recruitment.
Biology of Aging
The focus of the Biology of Aging Working Group headed by Henryk Urbanski (Neuroscience) and Ilhem Messaoudi (Pathobiology & Immunology) is to elucidate the causes of normal and pathological human aging.
In their natural habitat, rhesus macaques, rarely survive into old age. However, with the care and attention that they receive at the Center they can live well into their third decade of life. Consequently, these nonhuman primates represent an outstanding model for basic and translational aging research. An important objective of this working group is to establish biomarkers of normal and pathological aging that have clinical potential. Currently, ongoing studies are helping physicians to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of various hormones for cognitive and emotional health in postmenopausal women. Other studies are helping to determine if diet modification can retard age-related decline in immune function, circadian physiology, learning and memory. Such multi-disciplinary approaches make effective use of a valuable animal resource and have the potential to disclose important inter-related mechanisms that underlie human aging.
Metabolic Disease
The focus of the Metabolic Disease Working Group headed by Charles Roberts (Neuroscience/Reproductive Sciences) and Kevin Grove (Neuroscience) is to develop and use nonhuman primate models of diet-induced obesity to study the broad health issues associated with metabolic diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and immune disorders.
Obesity is a worldwide health epidemic, being a major contributor to the increased occurrence of coronary heart disease, hypertension, immune disorders and type-2 diabetes. Sixty to ninety percent of type-2 diabetes is thought to result from obesity, and obesity is a component of the metabolic syndrome, which also includes cardiovascular risk factors and symptoms of pre-diabetes such as impaired glucose tolerance. A successful understanding of the causes, consequences, and possible solutions to the metabolic disease crisis will require that the full spectrum of basic, translational, and clinical research and epidemiology be brought to bear on the problem. The nonhuman primate is one of the few models that develops the full spectrum of the metabolic syndrome and has several aspects that make it a critical and powerful model for the human disease.
Stem Cell & Developmental Biology
The focus of the Stem Cell & Developmental Biology Working Group headed by Shoukhrat Mitalipov (Reproductive Sciences) and Eliot Spindel (Neuroscience) is to foster collaborative studies focused on epigenetic, genetic and cellular mechanisms controlling cell growth, differentiation, and morphogenesis throughout mammalian development.
While the vast majority of studies in gamete formation, fertilization, early embryonic development, stem cells, signaling, and gene regulation are conducted in rodent models, translational research in nonhuman primates is both prudent and warranted due to their remarkable anatomical, physiological and metabolic similarity to humans, and the fact that many human diseases can only be accurately modeled in the nonhuman primate model. Primate models are particularly critical for studies in areas such as embryonic and fetal development and germ and stem cells that are otherwise inaccessible to experimentation in humans.
