How do our bodies age? This UCLA dermatologist is looking to skin for answers

As a dermatologist at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, UCLA physician-scientist Amy Vandiver sees the effects of aging written across her patients' skin.

Over decades, cellular damage can make skin thinner, more fragile and more vulnerable to disease and injury. Because skin is visible and relatively easy to study, Vandiver sees it as a window into a bigger question: What makes a tissue biologically old? What drives that process? And could some of those changes eventually be prevented, slowed or reversed?

Vandiver, an assistant professor of dermatology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, is also a member of the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center and the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. In her clinical practice, she cares for patients with age-related skin diseases, while her lab examines the cellular damage accumulating beneath the surface. She is particularly focused on mutations in the DNA carried by mitochondria and uses stem cells to investigate how that damage changes the way skin cells behave.

Her research suggests that chronological age may tell only part of the story. Two people the same age can have dramatically different levels of physical and cognitive function, and different tissues within the same person may age at different rates. Scientists are developing biological "aging clocks" to capture some of those differences, but Vandiver believes individual tissues may need their own clocks. Comparing sun-exposed skin with protected areas of the same person allows researchers to distinguish aging-related changes from those accelerated by environmental damage.

Vandiver's lab studies how mitochondrial damage affects cell behavior using stem cells. The researchers create clones with varying age-related mitochondrial mutations and differentiate them into skin cells. By comparing these cells, they aim to understand the impact of mitochondrial damage and how tissues can eliminate dysfunctional cells. Their ultimate goal: to learn how to prevent, slow or reverse molecular damage in tissues.

Read more about Vandiver's research and how she protects her own skin.