Two of the world’s leading anti-ageing experts will use the 2014 UNSW Medicine Dean's Lecture to present technology and breakthroughs that will enable us to live longer, healthier lives.
Two of the world’s leading anti-ageing researchers will use the 2014 UNSW Medicine Dean's Lecture to present new technology and breakthroughs that will enable us to live longer, healthier lives.
UNSW Australia’s Professor David Sinclair, who is based at Harvard University, will discuss new genetic technology developed in the last six months that is reversing the ageing process in animals.
Using this new technology, Professor Sinclair and his team have prematurely aged a mouse from six months to two years, and reversed the ageing process to recreate youth, by turning on and off specific genes that control ageing.
Professor Sinclair will discuss this and other new technologies that will enable the personal monitoring of health, women's fertility, the alteration of the human genome in offspring, the creation of drugs that slow ageing, and development of new computers that can assemble a human genome in world record time.
Professor Stephen Simpson, Academic Director of the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney, will discuss the complex links between nutrition and healthy ageing.
Despite the prevailing dogma that reduction in calorie intake over a lifetime will delay ageing and age-related diseases, recent experiments on flies, mice and humans have shown that the balance of macronutrients is more important in determining lifespan than the number of calories eaten.
Professor Simpson will present the results of these experiments and show how a new understanding of diet balance allows different health outcomes to be optimised throughout life.
The Dean’s Lecture will be hosted by ABC Radio National’s Robyn Williams.
What: UNSW Medicine 2014 Dean’s Lecture: The Science of Ageing
When: 6pm for 6.30, Monday 3 November 2014
Where: Sir John Clancy Auditorium, UNSW
Please note this lecture is now full. It will be live streamed on the web via: http://med.unsw.edu.au/dls
Media contact: Linda McSweeny/Lissa Christopher, UNSW Media Office, 02 9385 8920