Alum To Fund Aging Study

An alumnus of Harvard Law School has donated $5 million to Harvard Medical School (HMS) to establish laboratories for the study of the biological mechanisms of aging.

The laboratories will serve as a magnet to attract additional donor funding for a potential Institute for Aging Research at Harvard, according to a statement released by the Medical School.

In 1965, ten years after he graduated from the Law School, Paul F. Glenn, founded the California-based Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, which supports studies aimed at finding treatments for age-related diseases.

“I wrote Larry Summers last fall and told him that the Law School is after me to make a gift,” said Glenn, whose 50th Law School reunion is in April, “But the only thing I learned in law school was that I didn’t want to do law. The time has come for Harvard to increase its study of the biology of aging.”

Associate Professor of Pathology David Sinclair, whose team discovered the group of genes responsible for aging, will direct the new laboratories. Sinclair’s lab is currently investigating the molecular pathways of calorie restriction, which they have shown increases the lifespan of flies and yeast.

“[The donation] is essential for the type of work we need to do, which is to take the discovery we’ve made in simple organisms like flies into mice,” Sinclair said yesterday. “We needed an infusion of support.”

Glenn’s donation will be used to fund the recruitment of two more professors who research the processes of aging and three technicians, including a mouse geneticist. Sinclair said that the professor search will begin next year.

The donation will also be used to fund other research into the underlying biology of aging and an annual symposium of researchers in the field.

The ultimate aim of the gift, Glenn said, is to attract more funding for the establishment of a larger aging institute.

“Normal aging is a key medical problem—Harvard has acknowledged that they’d like to have an institute, so our donation will be a leg up,” Glenn said.

Sinclair estimates that “a minimum” of $30 million will be needed to fully fund a future institute.

“We’ve set a timeline of five years for the establishment of the institute,” Sinclair said. “The Glenn Foundation, myself, and Harvard are going to work together to raise the funds to build it.”

Glenn said he hopes that the new labs will accelerate the pace of research that could potentially slow the aging process.

“The idea of rejuvenation was always considered just a quack idea,” he said. “But we’re getting closer to being able to legitimately use the word rejuvenation. We don’t know what the maximum lifespan will be, but I’m betting that we’re not there yet.”

—Staff writer May Habib can be reached at habib@fas.harvard.edu.