As a master’s student studying biology at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, Sneha Dutta came across research in one of her classes that fascinated her. Authored by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s William Mair, it demonstrated that regulating a metabolic pathway in the brain could change the way we age. For a whole host of diseases, the biggest risk factor was simply getting older. “There’s a plethora of noncommunicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and neurodegeneration that plague our society, where the primary risk factor is old age,” Dutta says. “So you can really think about aging as a sort of disease.”
