The Longevity Consortium

The Value of a Consortium

Investigators in longevity have behaved a bit like separate species. There has been intense scientific intercourse among those working with invertebrates, or with centenarians, or those working on chronic diseases in the elderly, but virtually no contact between these groups. The Consortium will bring together these diverse groups of investigators to develop useful tools, such as a catalogue of polymorphisms in candidate genes that have been associated with longevity in other species, including those that may arise from the DNA microarray analyses of primate tissues that are part of this proposal. It will produce a searchable Website of publications, abstracts, and key resources for the field and an electronic forum for exchange of unpublished ideas and findings. The phenotypes of longevity and frailty developed by this Consortium will help establish common approaches in this area. The Consortium will engage several large longitudinal cohorts of older adults in longevity research, introducing them to experts in longevity with the expectation that these cohorts will provide adequate sample sizes to study candidate genes, thereby avoiding under-powered negative studies and enabling the rapid confirmation of candidates discovered in laboratories and special populations. If naturally occurring alleles that influence longevity are uncommon or if they have modest effects, then studies to identify and confirm longevity genes must involve the power of these large populations.

The Longevity Consortium will continue to be a multi-institutional collaboration. Not only does the current proposal involves investigators from eight independent institutions, investigators and experts from other institutions will participate on the Steering or Scientific Review Committees. Scientific Opportunity Funds facilitate quick confirmation of findings and testing of new ideas and technologies.