Arlan G. Richardson, Ph.D., will become an Honorary Life Member of the British Society for Research on Aging this week.
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By Will Sansom

Arlan G. Richardson, Ph.D., professor of cellular and structural biology at the UT Health Science Center and director of the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies, is receiving a rare honor from the British Society for Research on Aging during its 61st meeting July 11-14 in Brighton, England.

The society’s membership recently voted to confer the title of Honorary Life Member upon Dr. Richardson. Only five such awards have been made in the society’s history, and the honor is reserved for those who have contributed in the very highest degree to the field of gerontology.

Under the constitution of the society, honorary membership is limited to a maximum of 10 individuals at any one time. The last such award was in 1966.


At the Brighton meeting, Dr. Richardson will also contribute to a roundtable discussion on the physiological and ethical aspects of aging research.

Oxford lecture
On July 15, he will deliver an invited lecture at the Museum of Natural History at Oxford University. The title is “Can We Slow Aging? Should We?” He will discuss the discovery that rapamycin, an antifungal agent, extended the life spans of mice. This was the first report to demonstrate that a pharmaceutical intervention significantly increases lifespan and was identified by Science as one of the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of 2009.

Former Health Science Center graduate student Chen-Yu Liao, Ph.D., (left) and James Nelson, Ph.D., professor of physiology at the Barshop Institute, were authors on the study about dietary restriction.

Best journal article of 2010
In other Barshop Institute news, faculty received word that an article on dietary restriction in mice was named the best article of 2010 by the journal that published it.

The article, “Genetic variation in the murine lifespan response to dietary restriction: from life extension to life shortening” was written by several authors. They include Chen-Yu Liao, Ph.D., who received his doctorate at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences commencement in May; James F. Nelson, Ph.D., professor of physiology at the Barshop Institute; Vivian Diaz, project coordinator at the institute; and University of Colorado collaborators Brad Rikke, Ph.D., and Thomas Johnson, Ph.D.

The editorial board of the journal Aging Cell voted to award this paper the Aging Cell Best Paper prize for 2010.