MAE-WEST SCORE Research Support Core - Bioinformatics Core

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Project Abstract – MAE-WEST SCORE Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core Over the course of life, chronic stressors contribute to multi-organ aging and dysfunction and, ultimately, the development of clinical disease. Sex remains a critical determinant of the nature and pace of aging and ultimately longevity. Among mammalian species, it is even more clear that females fundamentally age differently from males. With advancing chronologic age in humans, differences in biological aging between women and men become even more pronounced, culminating in the female predominance for a number of important morbid disease conditions, including notably Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD), heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), progressive chronic kidney disease (CKD), and in turn systemic frailty. Mechanisms underlying the female predominance for these major morbidities remains unknown and are not explained by variations in sex hormones or survival bias. Our preliminary work supports a central hypothesis that sexual dimorphism in inflammatory eicosanoid mediators contribute to sex differences in microvascular dysfunction and, in turn, to sex differences in age-related multi-organ disease, including for ADRD, HFpEF and CKD. Elucidating a common pathophysiologic basis for the female predominance of ADRD, HFpEF, and CKD holds the key to effective interventions for reducing the excess burden of age-related disease in women. Motivated our findings and the critical need to understand the determinants and drivers of sex differences in major age-related disease outcomes, we propose to establish the Microvascular Aging and Eicosanoids – Women’s Evaluation of Systemic aging Tenacity (MAE-WEST) (“You are never too old to become younger!”) Specialized Center of Research Excellence (SCORE) on Sex Differences, in response to NIH RFA-OD-19-013. Our goal is to form a robust and sustainable structure of academic activities centered on systematically interrogating sex differences in the relationship among eicosanoids, microvascular dysfunction, and age-related end-organ disease, with an initial focus on the microvascular aging effects on brain, heart, and kidney function. This goal will be achieved by an outstanding collaborative team of clinician-scientists (with expertise in geriatrics, cardiology, and nephrology), epidemiologists, basic and translational scientists, analytical chemists, biostatisticians, and bioinformaticians. Leveraging our collective experience, resources, and infrastructure, we will advance the scientific enterprise through 3 foundational projects aligned and complementary yet independent. We will establish a dedicated Resource Support Core – a Biostatistical and Bioinformatics Core (BBC) that will be intentionally created as standalone organization within the larger MAE-WEST SCORE. This organizational feature will not only maximize resource sharing across the project aims but will also ensure the ability to separately and independently augment the methodological training of early career investigators and, importantly, timely provision of in-kind services for trainee pilot projects. The dedicated effort of the BBC will allow efficient generation of preliminary data for acquiring additional and ancillary grant funding for both early career and core activities.