Fountain of Youth

Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon set sail for continental North America nearly half a millennium ago in search of eternal youth. His target was a legendary wellspring of mystical waters said to prolong life, but the voyager's search proved fruitless.

de Leon, it turns out, was looking in the wrong place.

The secret to longevity isn't located in some exotic locale, says UofL researcher Eugenia Wang. Rather, it's hidden within each one of us, entwined with our DNA and passed on from generation to generation at the genetic level.

Wang, who holds a doctorate in cell biology, has devoted her life's work to studying human genetics in an effort to solve the fundamental mysteries of aging. Why, for example, do some people have substantially longer lives or possess the ability to resist fatal cancers?

But Wang's research focuses on more than simply extending life span. An equally important factor is quality of life.

"Suppose we find the gene that determines life span," says Wang, a biochemistry professor at UofL. "We could all potentially live longer lives, but we might also be ravaged by illnesses in the process.

"I'd rather not live my last 100 years fighting diseases."

Wang, who came to UofL in March after 13 years at McGill University in Montreal, is chairwoman of the biological science section of the Gerontological Society of America and has served as chairwoman of the biological science section of the Canadian Association on Gerontology.

She is a Merit Award winner from the National Institute on Aging; a Biological Sciences, Gerontological Society of America Fellow; and a 1997 winner of the Glenn Award for the best scientific presentation in the biology of aging at the American Society for Cell Biology.

She also has longtime ties to Louisville. Her husband, Alan Bloch, was raised here, and her father-in-law, Austin Bloch, was a UofL geriatrician.

Wang's appointment to UofL is seen as a giant step in the university's effort to launch a research center where scientists can develop new gene-based technologies for studying a variety of age-related diseases.

The facility, to be called the Gheens Center for Aging and Age-Related Diseases, is being established in the School of Medicine with a $2.5 million gift from the Gheens Foundation, a Louisville-based organization supporting charitable and educational endeavors.

"The average life span now is higher than ever," says Wang, who is a native of China. "Thirty years ago people rarely lived to be 70. But that's changed now. Soon, we will have a baby boomer generation coming up.

"With this explosion there will be a phenomenal increase in our elderly population. I want to find a way for people to reach old age in a quality manner, without the diseases that affect the elderly."

On the premise that virtually every change in our bodies is connected to genetic make-up, Wang has been seeking to pinpoint the genes that cause age-related diseases like Alzheimer's, cancer, osteoporosis and heart failure. By identifying these genes, Wang and other scientists want to provide the means to develop drugs that can slow down and eventually cure diseases.

She has been studying Taiwanese and Danish populations for about four years with the ultimate goal of improving significantly the quality of life in later years-specifically, age 90 and beyond.

"I am not the kind of person to say I want to live forever," Wang explains.

"I say I will make sure the life I do live is the best life I can have. For me, that life is disease-free. I don't mind dying at 85 as long as I am healthy, happy and can do everything I want to do.

"Now if you tell me that I can have a longer life and you can guarantee quality of life, I can have my cake and eat it, too. I like that."

Wang attributes her passion for such research to the way her parents' lives played out. Her father was 64 when he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed for the last 20 years of his life. When he died at 84, Wang says, he was no longer the father she had known.

In contrast, her mother suffered a massive stroke at 69. She died within 30 minutes.

"I'm not saying that is what I would choose, but my mother had the maximum enjoyment of her life right up until the end," notes Wang, the youngest of four children.

Recently, Wang has been studying a molecular cell model to determine how some people live to be 100 without suffering age-related maladies.

"There are people who have done this," she points out. "We can learn from their genetic makeup."

In her research, Wang uses skin biopsies and blood samples to grow cells found in tissues that develop age-dependent diseases.

She then examines the cells looking for genes that predispose some people to diseases of the elderly.

"For example, if I can identify what causes a particular woman to have breast cancer, I can offer preventive medicine or early diagnosis and treatment," she explains.

"I want to be able to tell people, regardless of their family history, whether they are predisposed to develop an age-dependent disease."

"This would allow them to take certain steps to prevent the disease from developing."

In addition to extending life, such an approach would greatly reduce health care costs, she notes.

Wang uses age-dependent maladies like Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular degeneration to illustrate her research.

Strategic cells like neurons and cardiomyocytes begin to die off much sooner in people with these conditions than they do in the population at large, and Wang believes this premature cellular death is controlled by a specific group of genes.

When she finds the appropriate gene, Wang says, researchers can begin determining why it sometimes becomes active when it shouldn't be-causing cells to die off-and what can be done to correct the errant process.

She compares her work to a detective story. Defective genes are the murderers in the cases she solves, and by following clue after clue she narrows the list of suspects down to the culprit.

"I watch Hercule Poirot on PBS all the time," she says, laughing in reference to the fastidious Belgian TV sleuth. "He gets a certain look on his face when he knows the answer to a mystery and he gets the greatest kick when he tells everybody. And that's probably what I enjoy the most."

Wang wanted to be an artist before various opportunities conspired to turn her to science. She points out that scientists are artists of a sort, requiring the same degree of creativity, imagination and discipline.

"Without art, you are just a technologist," she insists.

When Wang was five she and her family moved to Taiwan, where Wang spent her formative years. After earning a bachelor's degree at National Taiwan University, she moved to the United States for her post-graduate work.

She earned a doctorate at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland and then worked at the Rockefeller University in New York for 14 years.

There Wang earned an international reputation when, in 1983, she discovered a gene found exclusively in in vitro aged cells -- that is, cultured cells that have lost their growth potential and can no longer reproduce.

In 1987 Wang accepted the directorship of the Bloomfield Centre for Research in Aging in Montreal. She also taught at McGill's School of Medicine there and at Concordia University in Montreal.

She has published five books on aging and numerous papers in journals specializing in gerontology and molecular and cellular biology.

In spite of this professional activity and a most impressive track record, Wang says she tells people she is a mother, a wife and a scientist -- in that order.

"People know me for who I am, not for what I do. If what I do overshadowed who I am, I would no longer be a normal person."