The Science of Rejuvenation

Each summer, Penn Arts and Sciences students pursue internships that often pave the way to their future career. To provide a unique perspective, we invited Dee Luo, a senior majoring in the Biological Basis of Behavior Program and minoring in Healthcare Management, to share her experience.

The summer before senior year is a summer of action as students immerse themselves in their internships, knowing that there is only one year of school standing between them and the very real world. As a rising senior itching to carve my own path in the world, I’m spending my summer pushing the limits of personalized medicine at a research non-profit that is pushing the limits of age-related research, the SENS Research Foundation based in Mountain View, California.

“SENS” stands for Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence. Breaking the phrase down, “senescence” refers to the progressive slide into sickness and frailty with aging, and “negligible” refers to the lack of such senescence. The idea is that it is possible to use rejuvenation biotechnologies to reverse the molecular and cellular damage accumulation that results from aging in humans and allow humans to also maintain their physical capacities as they age. SENS Research Foundation (SRF) aims to engineer solutions to age-related disease so that, as humans, we can grow old without becoming sick or frail.

What I found to be so unique about the science that SRF funds is the ideology that connects the different projects. SRF conducts research aimed at reversing the seven types of damage that accrues on a molecular and cellular level as the body ages.  In addition, SENS Research Foundation sponsors education programs to engage more students in the field of Rejuvenation Biotechnology and performs outreach to scientists, economists, regulators and the general public in order to create a Rejuvenation Biotechnology industry.  Instead of looking at the causes of age-related disease separately, SRF brings disparate fields together and creates connections that forward its mission of curing age-related disease.
 
My internship at SRF contributes to SENS’ vision by focusing on the field of pharmacogenomics: I look at existing curative therapies and investigate why they haven’t reached market yet. Specifically, I’m trying to uncover the discrepancy between the promise of personalized medicine as an answer to rising healthcare expenditures and the harsh reality that there are only a handful of truly personalized therapies on the market. The field of regulatory science fascinates me, the research is novel, and there’s always more to learn. These are aspects of research I, as an undergrad, am lucky to experience through the SRF Summer Scholars Program.

The educational program at SRF, directed by Dr. Gregory Chin, has given me a taste of what it’s like to create new knowledge in a field of healthcare, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants an immersive experience in conducting research towards a greater vision.

In the five short weeks I’ve been at my fellowship, I feel as if I’ve truly started making an impact in an area of study worth carving my way into. My experience at SRF has so far been filled with challenging work, supportive mentors, constant energy, exciting results, and the best co-interns I could have asked for. My research is stationed at Stanford University—the heart of Silicon Valley innovation—and is supervised by accomplished mentors. To top it off, at the culmination of the 10-week internship, I will present results at the 2015 Rejuvenation Biotechnology Conference in San Francisco to leading researchers in the fields of regenerative medicine, regulations, and finance.

This summer (or the half that has passed) has opened my eyes to fields I didn’t know existed and given me a feeling of empowerment that I want to hold onto.

For more information about Luo’s research, click here.

For more information about the program, click here.
 
For more information about SENS Research Foundation, click here.