Member Spotlight

Q&A with Rodolfo G. Goya, Senior Scientist from the Institute for Biochemical Research at La Plata (INIBIOLP) from La Plata, Argentina.

Q: How long have you been a member and how does GSA assist with your professional development?
A: I became a GSA member in 1986 when I was doing postdoctoral training on the neurobiology of aging at Michigan State University. This membership is a way for me to keep in contact with the American gerontological community.

Q: How did you get interested in the field of aging?
A: My interest in the concept of aging and death began when I was 11 or 12 years old. Despite my limited knowledge, I was marveled by life, especially animal life and I regarded death as a tragedy as it represented the destruction of such a wonderful thing as a living being. Looking at old people I began to think that my parents and other beloved adult people would age and eventually die. I rebelled at that inexorable fate that Mother Nature was imposing on all of us and felt that I should try to change it. When I became a teenager and was in secondary school I decided that I would devote my life to understanding and defeating the aging process. I believed that the fundamental mechanism of aging should lie in the molecules of life, so when the time to choose a university career came I chose biochemistry. I keep faithful to my teenager motivations and believe that science and technology will eventually achieve the cure for aging. This is why my current biomedical research on brain aging is heavily based on novel methodologies like gene therapy and nanotechnology.

Q: What are your key responsibilities at your job?
A: My key professional responsibility is conducting basic gerontological research. I am the head of a group which includes young and senior researchers, postdocs and graduate students as well as technical staff. The group is based at the Department of Biochemistry at the School of Medicine of La Plata, a university city located some 30 miles south of Buenos Aires. Other responsibilities include postgraduate teaching, and participation in a number of review boards.
 
Q: What is your most memorable research experience?
A: In basic research I think that the more memorable experiences of an investigator are those related to exciting new findings. In my case, three of those events come to my mind. The first was our discovery that gene therapy with insulin-like growth factor -I (IGF-I) in a region (the hypothalamus) of the brain of very old rats restored the activity of the dopaminergic neurons of that region which typically become dysfunctional in old rats. In humans the loss of dopaminergic neurons from the region of the brain known as the substantia nigra, is the cause of Parkinson´s disease. The second memorable experience was our finding that when we implemented gene therapy using a synthetic gene we constructed in collaboration with French colleagues, we were able to prevent the premature ovarian aging that typically occurs in mutant mice that congenitally lack the thymus gland, an immune organ which is also key during early life for the maturation of the reproductive system. That synthetic gene encoded a peptide (termed thymulin) produced by the thymus. Finally, a third memorable experience was our finding that the neurons of the spinal cord of very old female rats retain the ability to proliferate. In other words, we discovered that neurogenesis remains active in the spinal cord of female rats during virtually their entire lifespan which brings hope for medical interventions to restore functionality in the spinal cord of old (and young) people affected by neurodegenerative problems in that region of the central nervous system.

Q: How do you feel GSA serves the field of gerontology and aging research?
A: I believe that it is desirable that young scientists truly motivated by the problem of aging, join the GSA in order to bring novel technologies and bold research ideas, even those innovative ideas that today may be considered “heretic” by mainstream basic gerontologists.

Q: Do you have any tips for emerging gerontologists?
A: The problem of aging is a monumental one. In order to defeat it biomedical gerontologists should resort to the cutting-edge technologies and interventions that are currently emerging. My advice to young gerontologists is that they be bold and creative, even scientifically heretic by conventional standards. Intellectual conservatism and timidity should be left aside when approaching such a daunting problem as aging. We all should turn gerontological research into an exciting adventure, one that may catch the interest of the general public. 

Q: Tell us a little about your most recent activities/accomplishments?
A: I have given a brief account on item 4. I can add that currently we are collaborating with German and Spanish nanotechnologists with the aim of using magnetic fields and magnetic nanoparticles in order to make gene therapy in the brain (particularly the aging brain) less invasive and more effective. We are also collaborating with American gerontologists like Dr. William Sonntag at Oklahoma University, to apply those technologies to different rodent models of age-associated cognitive impairment. 

Q: Have you had an important mentor in your career? If so, how did it make a difference?
A: Yes, the late Professor Joseph Meites, a pioneer in the field of the neuroendocrinology of aging. After I got my PhD in biochemistry (1984), in Argentina, I went to Michigan State University in order to work under Dr. Meites on neuroendocrine aging in rats. I spent three years in his laboratory at the Department of Physiology at Michigan State University (MSU). As I mentioned above, I was already highly motivated to do research on aging when I went to MSU, but it was there that I had the opportunity to have a real contact and training with the experimental research on brain aging. Interacting with Dr. Meites and his research team was an enormously enriching and gratifying experience for me. My years at the beautiful MSU campus left me with the warmest of memories. From time to time I visit my friends and colleagues there.