“If we think of aging as a driver for multiple age-related pathologies, the idea would be that a new generation of physicians will take a much more holistic approach. That’s the idea-it would revolutionize the way we’re thinking about medicine nowadays. And just to remind you, 80% of patients in the hospital receiving acute medical attention are over the age of 65. So the idea is that senolytics would be one weapon that geriatricians will have in their arsenal of weapons to treat aging holistically as opposed to one disease at a time.”
IN MEMORIAm
Judith Campisi, Ph.D
March 12, 1948 – January 19, 2024
Professor Judith Campisi, PhD was a founding member of the Academy for Health and Lifespan Research. Dr. Campisi received a PhD in biochemistry from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and completed her postdoctoral training in cell cycle regulation at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. As an assistant and associate professor at the Boston University Medical School, she studied the role of cellular senescence in suppressing cancer and soon drew the conclusion that senescent cells contribute to the process of aging. She joined the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a senior scientist in 1991. In 2002, she started a second laboratory at the Buck Institute. At both institutions, Dr. Campisi established a broad program to understand the relationship between aging and age-related disease, with an emphasis on the interface between cancer and aging.
Dr. Campisi was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Campisi served on advisory committees for the Alliance for Aging Research, Progeria Research Foundation, and NIA’s Intervention Testing Program. She was also an editorial board member for more than a dozen peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Campisi was a scientific founder of Unity Biotechnology, a California-based company focused on developing therapies for age-related pathologies. She also served on the scientific advisory boards of the Geron Corporation, Sierra BioScience, and Sangamo Biosciences.