OKLAHOMA CITY – The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation has received two grants, totaling $1.2 million, from the National Institutes of Health to study age-related decline in mobility and health.
OMRF scientist Benjamin Miller received the grants to study ways to prevent muscle loss in older adults and other aging-related diseases.
One of Miller’s projects challenges the idea that muscle cells cannot replicate their own DNA, so they rely on other types of cells for help, OMRF said in a release.
Although exercise can slow muscle loss, there are no effective drug treatments to reduce that loss as people age. Muscle loss can lead to irreversible loss of mobility and, ultimately, the loss of independence.
For his second project, Miller will collaborate with colleague Bill Freeman to study why damaged and dysfunctional proteins accumulate in the brain and muscles as people age and look at ways to slow it down. The lack of quality control in cells leads to conditions like Alzheimer’s, heart disease, diabetes and muscle loss.
The body cannot repair proteins, but it breaks down old ones and creates new ones. Until now, scientists could only study this issue as an average of all proteins and cells in a tissue. But using new approaches, Miller and Freeman hope to examine cells and proteins one by one to understand which ones cause the aging process.
Armed with that information, researchers hope to find more specific targets for a variety of age-related diseases.