Does Pennington have the key to the fountain of youth?

Will the centuries-old search for the fountain of youth end in Baton Rouge? The answer could be as close as a familiar building on Perkins Road. In 2002, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Washington University in St. Louis and Tufts University in Boston shared a $30 million National Institute on Aging grant to establish a study called the Comprehensive Assessment of Long-term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy, or CALERIE. Pennington’s portion—$12.4 million—was the largest grant received in Louisiana from the National Institutes of Health. Predicated on studies that show a 25% calorie reduction decreases biological signs of aging and increases longevity in everything from yeast to spiders and mice to monkeys, the ongoing CALERIE study examines whether the same result can be replicated in humans. Co-investigator Leanne M. Redman, a native Australian, came to the Capital City to join Swiss researcher Eric Ravussin in the quest. “Nobody knows why we age,” Redman says. “[But] there are two ways in which we age: The first is called primary aging, and that is the irreparable damage that happens to our DNA, [which is] just a function of getting older. For example, wrinkles and gray hair [are] the biological effects of aging that we really don’t know how to stop.” To learn more about this groundbreaking research, read the 225 magazine article here.