The Nathan Shock Centers

The Nathan Shock Center (NSC) Program was created in what is now the Division of Aging Biology of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) in the early to mid-1990s, with the first round of Centers funded in 1995. Named for the long-time Director of what is now the Gerontology Research Center, the intramural research arm of the NIA, Nathan Shock is often called the “Father of American Gerontology.” In addition to his many other accomplishments, he also created with William W. Peter, the most comprehensive and longest-running study of normal human aging in the world. That study, the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, began in 1958 and continues today.

The full name of these Centers is Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging, which aptly describes their original purpose. That purpose was to enhance the ability of institutions with already well-developed research programs in basic aging research to acquire and employ state-of-the-art research resources for their studies. From the original three centers in 1995, the program has now grown to include eight centers as of 2020 (Fig. 1). The emphasis on basic research was a complement to the NIA’s Claude Pepper Older American Independence Centers program, which focuses on clinical research and care.

Fig. 1.

Geographical distribution of the current Nathan Shock Centers and AFAR, the Coordinating Center. See text and subsequent articles for details about the centers

From their original beginnings, which was to enhance research resources for institutions with already well-developed aging programs, the Nathan Shock Centers’ mission has both expanded and turned outward. The Centers’ missions now provide intellectual leadership and innovation for studying basic mechanisms of aging biology to the broader research community. This includes providing new state-of-the-art resources and technical guidance to researchers at institutions outside the Shock Centers network. In addition to leading the science, Shock Centers also support research career development for the next generation of leaders in aging research. Both goals are facilitated by pilot grant programs offered by all NSCs and that are open to early career investigators from any institution or investigators from allied fields who would like to transition their efforts to basic aging research. In addition, Centers provide workshops and seminars throughout the year that are open to the research community.

For much of their history, while the NSCs traditionally operated essentially independent of one another, a major goal was to establish communication and collaboration among the centers. To facilitate that goal, in 2017 the NIA funded the Nathan Shock Centers Coordinating Center. The twin goals of the Coordinating Center, which is housed at the American Federation for Aging Research, are to enhance coordination and collaboration among the existing NSCs and enhance their leadership role and visibility in basic aging research. This issue of Geroscience, which describes the resources offered at each of the NSCs, is a product of the NSC Coordinating Center. In brief, the articles in this issue will highlight the eight current NSCs described below including the themes of their core resources. The Centers are:

1. University of Alabama at Birmingham Nathan Shock Center, directed by Steven Austad and Thomas Buford, focuses on comparative energetics and aging including data analysis and comparative mitochondrial health.

2. Albert Einstein College of Medicine Nathan Shock Center, directed by Nir Barzilai, focuses on proteostasis, human multi-omics, and health span.

3. The Jackson Laboratory Nathan Shock Center, directed by Gary Churchill and Ron Korstanje, focuses on aging animal models, animal phenotyping, bioinformatics, and image analysis.

4. Oklahoma Nathan Shock Center, directed by Arlan Richardson, focuses on geropathology, gero-informatics, redox biology research, and multiplexed protein analysis.

5. San Antonio Nathan Shock Center, directed by Randy Strong, focuses on aging animal models and longevity assessments, integrated physiology, pathology, as well as analytic pharmacology and drug evaluation.

6. San Diego Nathan Shock Center directed by Gerald Shadel focuses on human cell models of aging, cell and tissue heterogeneity, and integrative models of aging.

7. University of Southern California and Buck Institute Nathan Shock Center directed by Pinchas Cohen and Eric Verdin, focuses on genomic translation across species, cellular senescence, and studies aging using a variety of technology platforms that support geroscience approaches.

8. University of Washington Nathan Shock Center, directed by Peter S. Rabinovitch and Matt Kaeberlein, focuses on protein and metabolite phenotyping, invertebrate longevity and healthspan, and the use of artificial intelligence and bioinformatics to study aging.