A Pipeline for Research, Education and Mentoring in Reproductive Aging

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

A Pipeline for Research, Education and Mentoring in Reproductive Aging Decline in female fertility is one of the earliest age-related deteriorations seen in humans, often decades before signs of somatic aging appear. From a fertility perspective, women are considered geriatric by late 30s and only ~5% experience successful natural pregnancies in their 40s. Besides fertility, menopause triggers a spectrum of negative health outcomes including increased susceptibility to cognitive decline and cardiovascular disease. Increased human life expectancy coupled to global trends of delayed child-bearing means that reproductive fitness is not only important for womens’ health, life- and career- choices, but has inescapable societal, economic and public-health implications. An expanding body of evidence reveals that reproductive senescence and somatic aging are mechanistically intimately linked. In the last two decades, support from the NIA, and others, has led to innumerable discoveries in organismal aging from basic mechanisms to potential anti-aging therapeutics. However, reproductive aging remains under-studied and its public-health significance poorly acknowledged. To develop an intellectual workforce well equipped to meet the current and future challenges of an aging population, it is critical to urgently prioritize the intersection of aging and reproduction as a focus of research, education and biomedical programs. Dr. Ghazi proposes to address this need through this K07 Academic Leadership Career award, by establishing a Pipeline for Reproductive-Aging Research, Education & Mentorship (PRAM) that spans the undergraduate-to-faculty spectrum at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt). The central goal of this application is to create a program that will help establish Pitt as a world leader in reproductive aging. The K07 leadership award will help attain this goal by facilitating the development of a ‘pipeline’ at the university for (a) Early Recruitment (Aim 1): attract students from early academic stages towards reproductive-aging research, (b) Exceptional Education (Aim 2): organize a strong educational curriculum focused on reproductive health and aging, and (c) Sustained Mentorship (Aim 3): provide personalized, long-term mentorship and community support for researchers in this area at every career stage. Dr. Ghazi is uniquely positioned to lead this initiative because of her long-standing research expertise in aging, reproduction and their intersection, her academic leadership experience and commitment to education and mentoring. Pitt is an ideal institution for this initiative because of the presence of highly-regarded centers specifically dedicated to research on aging and reproductive health, an exemplary research and funding record, and a large, diverse pool of undergraduate, graduate and medical students. Pitt-PRAM will help establish reproductive aging as a core institutional objective at Pitt and serve as a roadmap to build an exceptionally trained Reproductive Geroscience workforce of the future.