$13M NIH Grant Funds Research to Rejuvenate Immune System in Older Adults

University of Arizona Health Sciences researchers have received a $13.1 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to continue studies aimed at rejuvenating the immune system of older people to improve health throughout the lifespan. The goal of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research is to contribute to the fundamental knowledge of T cell aging and create interventions to improve immune defense. The program consists of three research studies and four supporting cores that span multiple sites across the country.

The first project, “Response of Aged Thymus to Injury and Rejuvenation Signals,” led by Jarrod Dudakov, PhD, associate professor at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and affiliate associate professor at the University of Washington, hopes to increase an understanding of how the thymus responds to injury and repairs itself. The project will focus on enhancing thymic regeneration in older individuals, which could result in clinical approaches to enhance the immune system.

The second project, “Role of the Microenvironment in Regulating Early Stages of Thymic Involution and Central Tolerance,” led by Lauren Ehrlich, PhD, professor of molecular biosciences and oncology at the University of Texas at Austin, will examine how the cellular composition of the thymus changes with age, which could impact the quantity and quality of developing T cells.

The third project, “Peripheral T Cell Maintenance Defects with Aging,” focuses on how aging affects the lymph nodes. It is part of Janko Nikolich’s, MD, PhD, principal investigator, professor and head of the department of immunobiology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson, continuing studies of how the decline in naive T cells impacts the immune system. Naive T cells are produced in the thymus but need additional support from the lymph nodes to function effectively.

“This program is a great example of integrated and coordinated team science. We exchange our ideas and findings and troubleshoot each other’s experiments,” said Dr. Nikolich, who leads two University of Arizona Health Sciences strategic initiatives: Personalized Defense and the Aegis Consortium. “Everyone is working on their separate projects, but each project benefits from what we all discover.”