Renowned research in the biology of ageing Prof Cynthia Kenyon has been awarded the prestigious 2024 Lord Cohen of Birkenhead Medal by the British Society for Research on Ageing (BSRA), as a testament to her pioneering research uncovering genetic mechanisms of ageing.
In the 1990s Prof Kenyon, was one of the first people to show that ageing can be influenced directly by small changes to single genes. Despite initial scepticism from the research community at the time, her work in the tiny worm C. elegans led to the discovery of a pathway that influences ageing in many animals, including humans. It has been shown that changes in the downstream gene of this pathway is associated with centenarians and other long-lived groups of people and is a current target for research into drugs for healthy ageing.
Now, as Vice President of Aging Research at Calico, a large Californian company dedicated to Ageing that is part of the Google empire, Prof Kenyon has continued to work towards finding ways to slow ageing in humans using understanding from the basic biology of ageing.
Professor David Weinkove, Chair of the BSRA said “Prof Kenyon has made an incredible contribution to the field of biogerontology for many years. From her pioneering earlier findings on the genetics of ageing, to her brave move to work with Calico to develop interventions to slow ageing in humans, she is a world leader in the field. She is an outstanding candidate for the Lord Cohen award, and we’re pleased to host her at the University of Birmingham at BSRA 2024”.
The Lord Cohen Medal is the premier award in the field of gerontology, the study of the biology of ageing. Its award is infrequent, this will be only the 16th awarded medal in the last 40 years. To be considered, a candidate must be judged to “have made a considerable contribution to ageing research, either through original discoveries or in the promotion of the subject of gerontology”.
As part of this award, Prof Kenyon was invited to give a prize lecture at the BSRA’s annual conference, this year held at the University of Birmingham between 4th and 6th of September. Her talk focused on the challenges faced researching ageing, the avenues towards drug development to improve health in ageing humans and ended with a call for the formation of a ‘World Healthspan Organisation’, focused on lifelong ageing research.