Mission

Aging Nexus website is designed to stimulate research and training on aging throughout USC. Age is a key influence on human functioning throughout life and is the main risk factor in many diseases. The human life span continues to increase at unprecedented rates due to dimly understood processes.

USC leads all other institutions in its interdisciplinary academic focus on aging processes. Our programs in aging research and training have grown far beyond their beginnings in the Andrus Gerontology Center in 1972. The Aging-Nexus website will flex and grow as USC faculty, staff, and students increasingly recognize how mechanisms at work in aging shapes all living systems. These mechanisms cross all domains, from familial genetics to prenatal environmental influences on aging; from the oxidation of proteins to the senescence of brain cells; from the loss of growth control in cancers to the regulation of glucose; from the motor skills of athletes to the recovery from bone fractures; from caregiving by grandparents to economic strategies for retirement. This challenging agenda of practical, clinical and basic research uses correspondingly broad approaches, from studies of cultured microbes to human communities.