Dr. Wenting Zhao | Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Dr. Oliver Dreesen | A*STAR, Skin Research Lab, Singapore; Prof. Isabella Saggio | Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy
Competition Sponsor: Ministry of Health and National Research Foundation of Singapore
Awardee year: 2022
A significant hallmark of aging is the deterioration of the nucleus in cells. A better understanding of how aging-related genetic and epigenetic altercations is triggered by or leads to the physically mis-organized nuclear morphology is important for the discovery and evaluation of anti-aging therapeutics. However, a reliable and quantitative detection of the abnormal nuclear morphology is technically challenging. Here, we propose to introduce nanofabrication-enabled nuclear patterning to quantify abnormal nucleus in aged and senescent cells. The success of this proposal will establish nanostructure-based nuclear patterning as a new strategy to detect cellular aging and open a new angle to develop anti-aging therapeutics.