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Mobility
Even for the healthiest individuals, movements are slower and limited compared to younger individuals. Disease, functional loss, economic factors, psychological factors and political factors converge during the aging process to compromise and limit mobility. The SCL has recognized the importance of this topic and has initiated a major project within an interdisciplinary framework to address this fundamental challenge. Anne Friedlander has recently been hired as the Director of the Mobility project. Dr. Friedlander will work to coordinate the interdisciplinary faculty in this broad topic area. She has initiated the process of establishing a core advisory group that will define the major challenges associated with mobility and provide focus for the SCL activities in this area. She plans to establish an internship program that links undergraduate and graduate students with mobility related projects within the campus and in the surrounding private sector community. She has begun working with Steve Goldband, SCL’s Director of Private Sector Initiatives, to integrate new technologies into the mobility project and to institute streamlined methods of assisting Stanford faculty with the development of innovative ideas. In her own laboratory, Dr. Friedlander is researching methods to improve health and mobility through the development of novel technologies that both alter disease physiology and motivate people to maintain
healthier lifestyles through improved diet and exercise.
Interdisciplinary Efforts
The major disciplines currently represented within this project are Biology, Medicine, Engineering, Psychology, Economics, and Urban Planning. Affi liations within the Stanford community include a close collaboration with faculty from the Design School to support graduate students projects that are relevant to mobility and to implement a design based on “Agile Aging.” During the first year, we have put together our core faculty, with interests spanning the scope of topics described above.
Major Efforts Within This Project
•Dr. Tom Andriacchi (School of Engineering) has designed footwear that is fashioned to modify an individual’s gait so as to limit the development of osteoarthritis in the knee. Initial studies have demonstrated a remarkable benefi cial effect. Ongoing research is focusing on improving the design and further evaluating the efficacy.
•Dr. Tom Rando (School of Medicine) has discovered how to promote the repair of muscle in old mice by stimulating the stem cells in the old tissue to form new muscle. This work has important implicationsfor the field of “Regenerative Medicine” in general as it applies to an aging population and suggests that advances in stem cell biology may have direct applications to improving repair of injuries to tissues throughout the body, including skin, bones, and possibly even brain. Ongoing research is focusing on the specific biochemical process that control stem cells in different tissues and how those change with age.
•Dr. Ken Salisbury (Departments of Computer Science and Surgery) is developing the first platform for a robot that will live among people and perform useful tasks to assist in activities of daily life. A personal robot must be safe, reliable and non-threatening. No existing robot with significant capability meets this test. In order to foster wide innovation from many developers, the robot platform must be open to innovative collaboration the way the PC is open to software from many sources. Development funding for PR-1 can speed collaboration and rapid innovation.
•Dr. Anne Friedlander (SCL) is investigating a high altitude simulation chamber that rapidly pressurizes and depressurizes to provide cyclical fluctuations in ambient pressure. The resultant pulsatile pressure has been anecdotally reported by users to decrease joint swelling and pain, alter hormone levels and improve glucose tolerance. If proven to be effective in a controlled laboratory setting, the chamber could be used by individuals of all ages to enhance mobility and decrease risk factors of diseases associated with the metabolic syndrome.
Private and Public Sector Outreach
Outreach to the private sector has included meetings with representatives from Volkswagon which has a major effort dedicated to “mobile ageing” in automobile design, initial discussions with Audi which has an interest in developing a “smart car” for seniors, and licensing of stem cell technology to Telomolecular Corporation. Telemolecular Corporation is a biotechnology company whose major focus is the development of treatments for human aging, age-related diseases, and cancer. Private outreach also includes assessment of strategies, with the School of Business, for marketing “the shoe.” Outreach to the public sector has included joint efforts with government programs that address policy issues related to mobility, both on the state (California Department on Aging) and national (U.S. Administration on
Aging (AoA) levels.