Investigators at HCOA collaborate with several individual laboratories elsewhere using various model systems of cellular senescence on normal human fibroblasts, adrenocortical cells, hepatocytes and melanocytes and various immortal human cells lines. The Baylor College of Medicine scientists involved in this interinstitutional project include Gretchen Darlington, Ph.D., Nikolai Timchenko, Ph.D., and Estela Medrano, Ph.D. They collaborate with former Baylor investigators James Smith, Ph.D., Olivia Pereira- Smith, Ph.D., and Peter Hornsby, Ph.D., at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio, Texas via a sub-contract from an NIA-Program Project Grant. This team works together on similar goals, using common techniques and approaches to answer questions regarding the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in senescence and immortalization. These studies examine the changes in gene expression that occur in cells as they age in vitro and in vivo in order to establish the differences and similarities in the pathways that lead to inhibition of cell proliferation, and to eventually understand the basic molecular mechanisms involved in human cellular senescence and the reverse phenomenon of immortalization.

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