Unraveling the mechanisms of human aging and its associated diseases is a challenging and complex interdisciplinary research project. Many signaling pathways alter during a person’s lifetime and may become the trigger for disease. In its investigation of various aspects of cell aging, CECAD has defined three Research Areas that are exploring the key mechanisms of aging.
Cell autonomous control of homeostatic mechanisms and cellular stress responses in aging and age-associated diseases
Aging is characterized by the decline of physiological integrity, which culminates in functional defects and increased risk for age-associated diseases. Cell autonomous deficits include disturbances in cellular proteostasis, organellar homeostasis, and genome integrity, which in turn can elicit multiple adaptive signaling pathways and cellular stress responses. read more...
Stress response mechanisms of tissue-related and interorgan communication in aging and age-associated diseases
During the aging process, different stress response pathways, such as the unfolded protein response (UPR), the mitochondrial stress response (MSR), and the DDR – as studied in RA-1 – are tightly coordinated. Through this coordination they ensure physiological integrity especially when metabolic changes challenge the overall system. read more...
Environment/organism interactions in aging and age-associated diseases
The organism constantly has to integrate information about the internal state with external environmental cues to adapt behavioral and autonomic responses to ensure the correct, optimal physiological homeostasis. Therefore, the integrated coordination of internal state signals of read more...