November 30, 2006                                               

SIU Med School Receives National Grant to Study Aging

A faculty researcher at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield has been awarded a five-year federal grant from the National Institute on Aging for the study of genetic and nutritional control of aging.  Total budget for the grant is $1,592,850.

The study will evaluate the responses of normal mice and long-lived mutant mice with the same regimen of calorie restriction.  The study is attempting to reduce the release of insulin and improve sensitivity to the actions of insulin in the mice, thus helping them live longer.  Because there is increasing evidence that caloric restriction is also beneficial to humans, this research could lead to the development of new therapies to protect against the effects of aging.

Dr. Andrzej Bartke, professor and SIUC distinguished scholar of internal medicine and physiology, is the principal investigator for the project.  The study involves continued collaboration with the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Ohio University in Athens.

This is the twelfth grant Bartke has received at SIU for his research which includes aging.  His total research funding totals $11 million.  His previous external research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Ellison Medical Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Bartke joined the SIU faculty in 1984.  He earned his doctorate in zoology genetics from the University of Kansas in Lawrence (1965) and magister degree (equivalent of M.S.) from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland (1962).  Bartke received the inaugural Methuselah Prize for his contributions to life extension research resulting in the longest lived mouse (2003) as well as the Phi Kappa Phi Outstanding Scientist Award (1997), the Carl G. Hartman Award of the Society for the Study of Reproduction (1995), the American Society of Andrology’s Distinguished Service Award (1995), and the Sigma Xi Kaplan Research Award (1991).

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