Human Performance Clinical Research Laboratory Translational Research on Aging and Chronic Disease Laboratory
Research in the TRACD lab uses an integrative approach to studying age-associated chronic diseases.
Dr. Karyn Hamilton
Director
Associate Director for the Columbine Health Systems Center of Healthy Aging
What We Study and How We Study It
Overall objectives include identifying approaches to maintain stress resistance across tissues, with the goal of improving healthspan. Special areas of focus include mechanisms of stress resistance and resilience, proteostatic maintenance, and mitochondrial function. Projects include strategies encompassing nutrition, pharmacology, and exercise for the purpose of extending human healthspan.
Through the combined expertise of the lab we are able to address research questions using cell culture, animal models, in vivo human studies, and clinical interventions. We have established cardiac, skeletal muscle, and human coronary endothelial cell models. Additionally, we use long-lived animal models and animal models for hypoxia, myocardial ischemia-reperfusion, exercise training, and voluntary physical activity. In human subjects we rely on stable isotopic tracer techniques as well as tissue sampling. Cells and tissues are analyzed using a variety of biochemical and molecular techniques.