Novato, CA -- Matthew S. Gill, Ph.D., a scientist at the Buck Institute for Age Research, has been awarded a prestigious Brookdale Foundation Fellowship. Dr. Gill will use his award to support a two-year study of how hormones influence life span in microscopic worms.
Four Brookdale Fellowships were granted in the United States this year, and of those, just two were in science. The Brookdale Foundation invites applications only from respected institutions with departments devoted to age-related research. This year, nearly 80 organizations, mostly universities and medical schools, were asked to compete. It was the second year the Buck Institute was invited to apply.
The aim of the Brookdale National Fellowship program is to support young researchers who are likely to emerge as leaders in the field of aging. The award will pay Dr. Gill’s salary for two years, allowing him to continue his research without sacrificing time to seek funding grants. He will remain a Brookdale Fellow for life, and will be invited to attend biannual fellowship meetings in New York City at foundation expense.
The new study will be Dr. Gill’s second using the nematode C. elegans as a model. The microscopic worm is an ideal aging study subject because it is a very simple organism and lives only 20 days. This means that during his two-year fellowship, Dr. Gill will be able to observe the life span equivalent of 2,500 years of human life. He hopes the study eventually "will have meaning for human health."
Earlier in his career, Dr. Gill was involved in studies on the dynamics of how healthy children grow, and clinical studies on the effects of human growth hormone in people of very short stature. Dr. Gill remains keenly interested in how science can help individuals. "I like the idea that at some point, something I do might touch on somebody’s life," he said.
Dr. Gill’s project mentor is Buck Associate Professor Gordon Lithgow, Ph.D. Dr. Lithgow described his colleague as a man gifted not only in science, but also in communication. Dr. Gill is able to link researchers from different disciplines and encourage dialogue and collaboration, according to Dr. Lithgow. In a field that tends to split into sub-specialties, that is a "unique skill that accelerates scientific advances," Dr. Lithgow said. "Matt is an embodiment of the spirit of the Buck Institute, which encourages collaboration across disciplines."
With Dr. Gill’s award, the Buck Institute now has two Brookdale fellows on its staff. Associate Professor Julie K. Andersen, Ph.D., was named a fellow in 1994 when she was on the faculty at the University of Southern California. In addition, two former members of the Buck Institute’s Scientific Advisory Board, John W. Rowe, M.D., and T. Franklin Williams, M.D., are Brookdale Senior Fellows.
Dr. Gill, 29, recently moved to the U.S. from the United Kingdom to take up a postdoctoral position at the Buck Institute. He was previously based at the University of Manchester, where he completed his Ph.D. in endocrinology in 1997. In 1998, he was awarded a Medical Research Council Research Fellowship to conduct a three-year study of genetic influences on the growth of nematode worms, which initiated his collaboration with Dr. Lithgow. It was during this time that Dr. Gill became interested in the questions of how and why we age. That interest led to his involvement in a landmark paper, published by the journal Science, which showed that a man-made anti-oxidant drug could dramatically extend the life of the nematode C. elegans. The Brookdale Fellowship now will allow Dr. Gill to focus on understanding the basic biology of aging in the unique research environment provided by the Buck Institute.
The Buck Institute for Age Research is a non-profit organization that conducts clinically relevant research into aging and age-related diseases such as cancer, stroke, and Alzheimer’s. Its mission is to extend the healthy years of life through basic research. At the Institute, a multi-disciplinary group of researchers uses state-of-the-art technologies to understand why we age, and to seek ways to delay or prevent age-related diseases. The Buck Institute is the only free-standing institute devoted to age research in the United States, and one of only three in the world. It is located 20 miles north of San Francisco. For more information, please visit the Buck web site at http://www.buckinstitute.org.