Prospects and perspectives in primate aging research

Abstract

As improvements in standard of living and advances in medicine have resulted in greater life expectancy, the relative proportion of elderly has continued to increase in human populations across the globe. The primary goal of aging research is to gain a better understanding of the series of events that lead to increased frailty and disease vulnerability with age. The direct study of human aging is an active area of research; however, the opportunity to conduct mechanistic studies and gain insights into the underlying biology is limited. In this special forum issue of Antioxidant & Redox Signaling, we present a selection of articles and reviews that illustrate some of the recent advances in primate aging research. The overarching goal of this work is to underscore the potential for mechanistic discovery that is presented by nonhuman primate models, and to promote studies that validate novel approaches and techniques in nonhuman primates before their adaptation for human health care.

FIG. 1.

A simplified schematic outlining an approach to mammalian aging studies. Due to the complexity of the aging process, biology of aging research is necessarily multifaceted. For simplicity, we assign the effects of aging to three fundamental hierarchical groups with the understanding that each of these is highly interdependent. Ultimately, increased understanding of the biology of aging will enable the identification of potential therapeutic and preventative targets for the improvement of human health and longevity.