$125M in NIH Grants to Study Cellular Aging to Be Coordinated by PSC and Other Pittsburgh Institutions

Oct. 20, 2021 — National Institute of Health grants totaling approximately $125 million over five years to 16 U.S. institutions will fund research to explore the human body at the molecular level, studying how cells and tissues age and the role cellular aging plays in health and disease.

Coordinated by scientists in Pittsburgh, the Cellular Senescence Network (SenNet) will create a navigable, 3D map of the body that offers data and analysis on cellular aging, designed to shed light on nerve degeneration, diabetes, cancer and normal tissue functions. A team to coordinate and provide the computational infrastructure necessary for the effort, led from Pittsburgh, will be funded at a level of $3.5 million in the first year, with a total of $17.5 million over five years.

SenNet’s Consortium Organization and Data Coordinating Center (CODCC) will be led by principal investigators (PIs) Jonathan Silverstein of the University of Pittsburgh, Ziv Bar-Joseph of the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science and Phil Blood of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), a joint research center of CMU and Pitt.

About the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences: The University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences include the schools of Medicine, Nursing, Dental Medicine, Pharmacy, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and the Graduate School of Public Health. The schools serve as the academic partner to the UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center). Together, their combined mission is to train tomorrow’s health care specialists and biomedical scientists, engage in groundbreaking research that will advance understanding of the causes and treatments of disease and participate in the delivery of outstanding patient care. Since 1998, Pitt and its affiliated university faculty have ranked among the top 10 educational institutions in grant support from the National Institutes of Health. For additional information about the Schools of the Health Sciences, please visit www.health.pitt.edu.

About UPMC: A $20 billion health care provider and insurer, Pittsburgh-based UPMC is inventing new models of patient-centered, cost-effective, accountable care. The largest nongovernmental employer in Pennsylvania, UPMC integrates 89,000 employees, 40 hospitals, 700 doctors’ offices and outpatient sites, and a nearly 3.6 million-member Insurance Services Division, the largest medical insurer in western Pennsylvania. In the most recent fiscal year, UPMC contributed $1.2 billion in benefits to its communities, including more care to the region’s most vulnerable citizens than any other health care institution, and paid $587 million in federal, state and local taxes. Working in close collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences, UPMC shares its clinical, managerial and technological skills worldwide through its innovation and commercialization arm, UPMC Enterprises, and through UPMC International. U.S. News & World Report consistently ranks UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside on its annual Honor Roll of America’s Best Hospitals and ranks UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh on its Honor Roll of America’s Best Children’s Hospitals. For more information, go to UPMC.com.

About CMU School of Computer Science: Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science is widely recognized as one of the first and best computer science programs in the world. Our programs train the next generation of innovators to solve real-world problems and improve the way people live and work.

About PSC: The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) is a joint computational research center with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. PSC provides university, government and industrial researchers with access to several of the most powerful systems for high-performance computing, communications and data storage available to scientists and engineers nationwide for unclassified research. PSC advances the state of the art in high-performance computing, communications and data analytics and offers a flexible environment for solving the largest and most challenging problems in research. See www.PSC.edu.