Dr. Nir Barzilai

Dr. Nir Barzilai is the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Human Aging Research and of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging. He is the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair of Aging Research, professor in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics, and member of the Diabetes Research Center and of the Divisions of Endocrinology & Diabetes and Geriatrics.

Dr. Barzilai’s research interests are in the biology and genetics of aging. One focuses on the genetic of exceptional longevity, where we hypothesize and demonstrated that centenarians have protective genes, which allows the delay of aging or for the protection against age-related diseases. In a Program he is leading we take full advantage of phenotypes, DNA, and cells from the Ashkenazi Jewish families with exceptional longevity and the appropriate controls and his group have established at Einstein (over 2600 samples of which ~670 are centenarians) and discovered underling genomic differences associated with longevity. Longevity Genes Project (LGP) is a cross-sectional, on-going collection of blood and phenotype from families with centenarian proband. LonGenity is a longitudinal study of 1400 subjects, half offspring of parents with exceptional longevity, validating and following their aging in relationship to their genome. The second direction, for which Dr. Barzilai is holding an NIH Merit award that focuses on the metabolic decline of aging, and his team hypothesize that the brain leads this decline. His lab has identified several central pathways that specifically alter body fat distribution and insulin action and secretion by intraventricular or hypothalamic administration of several peptides that are modulated by aging including: Leptin, IGF-1, IGFBP3 and resveratrol.

Ha recibido numerosas subvenciones, entre ellas las del Instituto Nacional sobre el Envejecimiento (NIA), la Federación Estadounidense para la Investigación sobre el Envejecimiento, la Fundación Médica Ellison y la Fundación Médica Glenn. Ha publicado más de 280 artículos revisados por pares, revisiones y capítulos de libros de texto. Es asesor del NIH en varios proyectos y forma parte de varios consejos editoriales y es revisor de numerosas otras revistas. El Dr. Barzilai es director científico y miembro del consejo de la Federación Estadounidense para la Investigación sobre el Envejecimiento, es su codirector científico y ha trabajado en varias secciones de estudio del NIA. También es fundador de CohBar Inc., una empresa de biotecnología que desarrolla péptidos derivados de mitocondrias como terapia para el envejecimiento y sus enfermedades, y de la empresa de biotecnología Lifebioscince. El Dr. Barzilai ha recibido numerosos premios prestigiosos, entre ellos el Beeson Fellow for Aging Research, el Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar in Aging Award, el Paul F. Glenn Foundation Award, el NIA Nathan Shock Award, el Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction in Aging Research 2010 y el IPSEN Longevity Prize (2016).

Actualmente, lidera un esfuerzo internacional para aprobar medicamentos que puedan actuar sobre el envejecimiento. Targeting Aging with METformin (TAME) es un estudio específico diseñado para demostrar el concepto de que las múltiples morbilidades del envejecimiento pueden retrasarse con metformina, y trabaja con la FDA para aprobar este enfoque que servirá como modelo para futuros esfuerzos para retrasar el envejecimiento y sus enfermedades en humanos.

Born in Israel, Dr. Barzilai served as chief medic and physician in the Israel Defense Forces. He graduated from The Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and completed his residency in internal medicine at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. He served in a refugee camp during the war in Cambodia (1979-1980) and built a nutritional village in the homeland of the Zulu (1983 – Kwazulu). He has completed 2 fellowships at Yale (metabolism) and Corenell (Endocrinoology and molecular Medicine). He was an invited speaker to the 4th Israeli President Conference (2012) and a Vatican conference on efforts to enhance cures (2013, 2016). He has also taken part in Global initiatives and spoke at The Milken Global Institute, Asian Megatrends and is an advisor for the Prime Minister of Singapore on Aging. Dr. Barzilai has been on the ‘Forward 50, top 50 influence Jews in the US (2011). His work has been profiled by major outlets, including the New York Times, the BBC and PBS' NOVA science now, TEDMED and several TEDx talk is the leading feature on the Ron Howard/Jonathan Silberberg/National Geographic film about the Age of Aging. He authored Age Later (2019)

1. Genómica de la longevidad excepcional en humanos.
   1. Barzilai N, Atzmon G, Schechter C, Schaefer E, Lipton R, Cheng S, Shuldiner AR. Fenotipo y genotipo de lipoproteínas únicas asociadas con una longevidad excepcional. JAMA. 2003. 290:2030-40
   2. Atzmon G, … Barzilai N: Lipoprotein genotype and conserved pathway for exceptional longevity in humans. PLoS Biol. 2006 Apr;4(4):e113. PMC1413567.
   3. Atzmon G, … , Barzilai N, Govindaraju DR, Suh Y. Genetic variation in human telomerase is associated with telomere length in Ashkenazi centenarians. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Dec 4 PMC2868292
2. La resiliencia al deterioro cognitivo con longevidad excepcional.
   1. Ismail K, Nussbaum L, Sebastiani P, Andersen S, Perls T, Barzilai N, Milman S. Se observa una compresión de la morbilidad en cohortes con una longevidad excepcional. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2016 agosto;64(8):1583-91. doi: 10.1111/jgs.14222. Publicación electrónica 5 de julio de 2016. PMID: 27377170 PMC4988893
   2. Perice L, Barzilai N, Verghese J, Weiss EF, Holtzer R, Cohen P, Milman S. Un menor nivel de factor de crecimiento similar a la insulina circulante se asocia con una mejor cognición en mujeres con una longevidad excepcional sin comprometer la masa y la función muscular. Aging (Albany NY). 14 de octubre de 2016;8(10):2414-2424. doi: 10.18632/aging.101063. PMID: 27744417 PMC5115897c)
   3. N. Barzilai, G. Atzmon, CA Derby y RB Lipton, Un genotipo de longevidad excepcional se asocia con la preservación de la función cognitiva (2006). Neurology; 67: 2170 PMID: 17190939 PMC3347321
   4. Sanders AE, Wang C, Katz M, Derby CA, Barzilai N, Ozelius L, Lipton RB. Asociación de un polimorfismo funcional en el gen de la proteína de transferencia de ésteres de colesterol (CETP) con el deterioro de la memoria y la incidencia de la demencia. JAMA. 13 de enero de 2010;303(2):150-8.PMID: 20068209, PMC3047443
3. Metabolismo y envejecimiento en mamíferos. Muzumdar R, … Barzilai N. El tejido adiposo visceral modula la longevidad de los mamíferos. Aging Cell. 18 de marzo de 2008. PMCID: PMC2504027.
   1. Cobb LJ, … Barzilai N, Cohen P. Naturally occurring mitochondrial-derived peptides are age-dependent regulators of apoptosis, insulin sensitivity, and inflammatory markers. Aging (Albany NY). 2016 Apr 10. PMCID: PMC4925829.
   2. Heo HJ, Tozour JN, Delahaye F, Zhao Y, Cui L, Barzilai N, Einstein FH. El fenotipo de envejecimiento avanzado se revela mediante modificaciones epigenéticas en el hígado de ratas después de la desnutrición intrauterina. Aging Cell. 29 de julio de 2016. PMCID: PMC5013021
4. Eje GH/IGF-1 y envejecimiento en mamíferos. Muzumdar RH, …, Barzilai NEfectos centrales y opuestos del IGF-I y la proteína de unión al IGF-3 sobre la acción sistémica de la insulina. Diabetes 2006;55(10):2788-96.
   1. Huffman DM, … Barzilai N. Central insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) restores whole-body insulin action in a model of age-related insulin resistance and IGF-1 decline. Aging Cell. 2015 Nov 4. PMCID: PMC4717281
   2. Milman S,…Barzilai N. Low insulin-like growth factor-1 level predicts survival in humans with exceptional longevity. Aging Cell, 2014 Mar12. PMCID: PMC4116456.
   3. Suh Y, …, Barzilai N, Cohen P. Functionally-significant insulin-like growth factor-I receptor mutations in centenarian. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Mar 4;105(9):3438-42. PMCID: PMC2265137
   4. Ben-Avraham … P, Barzilai N, Atzmon G. The GH receptor exon 3 deletion is a marker of male-specific exceptional longevity associated with increased GH sensitivity and taller stature. Sci Adv. 2017 Jun 16;3(6):e1602025. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1602025. eCollection 2017 Jun. PMID:28630896