Exercise, Inflammation, & Aging - The Langston Lab at Yale School of Medicine

Transcript

• 00:05We think about inflammation as
• 00:07sort of a pathological reaction
• 00:08to an invader
• 00:10or an injury
• 00:12and actually exercise induced inflammatory
• 00:14responses are what we call
• 00:15physiological inflammation.
• 00:17And they're essentially this
• 00:18symphony of cells responding to
• 00:20a perturbation as a reaction
• 00:22to a stress imposed by
• 00:24exercise.
• 00:25And we know already that
• 00:26exercise stimulates the immune in
• 00:28young and old animals, but
• 00:29it seems that there's a
• 00:29bit of an intolerance of
• 00:31the immune system to exercise
• 00:32in old animals and also
• 00:33in in old people. So
• 00:34we're trying to rejuvenate the
• 00:36immune system to hopefully give
• 00:37a more youthful response to
• 00:39exercise to improve muscle function
• 00:40and then therefore,
• 00:42reverse frailty and, improve, health
• 00:45span.
• 00:49We are interested in exercise
• 00:52and aging as two contexts,
• 00:54but we really wanna understand
• 00:55how the immune system is
• 00:57recognizing
• 00:58stress in the form of
• 00:59exercise or associated with age.
• 01:01What are the things that
• 01:02they see and then what
• 01:03did they do in reaction
• 01:04to the stress to help
• 01:05restore the tissue and the
• 01:07organism to, its homeostatic set
• 01:09point where it's it's steady
• 01:10state. And so we take
• 01:12a a combination of approaches
• 01:13to understand this and the
• 01:14ultimate goal is to translate
• 01:16this into therapies that are
• 01:17inspired by the the natural
• 01:19processes induced by exercise.
• 01:24We look at, metabolic mechanisms,
• 01:27so how metabolic stress is
• 01:28induced by exercise,
• 01:30mechanical stress that might be
• 01:31due to changes in tissue
• 01:32stiffness, which requires some bioengineering
• 01:34expertise.
• 01:35So we pull, techniques from
• 01:37all these disciplines, metabolic biology,
• 01:38immunology,
• 01:39bioengineering,
• 01:40and we sort of span
• 01:42different scales. We look at
• 01:43the level of the animal
• 01:44to the tissue level, which
• 01:45for us is usually skeletal
• 01:47muscle, but we also look
• 01:48at adipose and and liver,
• 01:49all the way down to
• 01:50cells and molecules.
• 01:52And so we might use,
• 01:54flow cytometry or single cell
• 01:55sequencing to look at cells
• 01:56and molecules.
• 01:57And we also have,
• 01:59exercise protocols that we subject
• 02:00our animals to to measure
• 02:01their performance. So we use
• 02:03a wide array of techniques
• 02:04from different disciplines to help
• 02:06us answer this very complex
• 02:07question of what induces physiological
• 02:09inflammation and what is it
• 02:11doing.
• 02:14We've seen that immunology has
• 02:16sort of transformed
• 02:17cancer research
• 02:19And in particular, immunotherapy,
• 02:21leveraging the immune system as
• 02:22a tool to combat,
• 02:24afflictions like cancer has been
• 02:25transformative.
• 02:26I think that the same
• 02:27potential exists for exercise biology
• 02:29and aging biology.
• 02:30So we like to say
• 02:31that we are trying to
• 02:33discover exercise inspired immunotherapy
• 02:36that can combat age related
• 02:37dysfunction and also bolster responses
• 02:40to exercise because exercise is
• 02:41our best medicine,
• 02:43to counteract aging and also
• 02:45in other context, disease states
• 02:46as well. We know exercise
• 02:47is beneficial.
• 02:49And so I'm really motivated
• 02:50in using the repertoire of
• 02:51skills that I've developed as
• 02:52a scientist to understand this
• 02:55tug of war between the
• 02:55yin and yang of the
• 02:57deterioration and the building up
• 02:58that, agent exercise cause so
• 03:01that we can sort of
• 03:02skew the balance, you know,
• 03:03in favor of resilience.
• 03:05And the lab has already
• 03:06uncovered some interesting mechanisms that
• 03:08we can use to to
• 03:09push this balance. And so
• 03:10that's even more motivating that
• 03:11I think that there are
• 03:12tractable mechanisms that we can
• 03:14target
• 03:15that can have an effect
• 03:17on this balance.