What is the UConn Pepper Center Pilot and Exploratory Studies Core?
The UConn Pepper Center Pilot and Exploratory Studies Core (PESC) works to develop and support innovative pilot and exploratory studies that will enhance function and independence in older adults while also advancing knowledge in the field of precision gerontology. The PESC provides funding and access to the each of the UConn Pepper Center research cores resources including research plan implementation, biostatical and biomarker analysis guidance. In addition, the PESC provides mentorship and oversight to the investigators to ensure each project is developed, conducted and to be impactful to the world of aging research.
The goals of the Pilot and Exploratory Studies Core are to:
- To promote high-quality pilot and exploratory research that contributes to the understanding of precision gerontology.
- To foster the careers of earl stage faculty members dedicated to aging-related research and/or more established shifting their research focus towards aging and precision gerontology.
- To collaborate with and contribute to the reach of the UConn OAIC Resource Cores.
Faculty Contacts
Faculty Advisors
Core Co-Leader
Lisa C. Barry, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Associate Professor
Email: libarry@uchc.edu
Dr. Barry is a chronic disease epidemiologist and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the UConn School of Medicine and the UConn Center on Aging. Her research interests include the interface between mental health and functional disability in older persons, and the relationship among mental health, physical function, and cognition in older incarcerated individuals or those transitioning from incarceration to the community in later life. Dr. Barry has received research funding from NIA, NIMH, and foundations including the Donaghue Foundation and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Dr. Barry received a M.P.H. (1998) and Ph.D. (2004) in Epidemiology and Public Health from Yale University where she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Geriatric Clinical Epidemiology and Aging-related Research. Prior to joining the UConn School of Medicine faculty in 2011, Dr. Barry was an Assistant Professor in the Yale Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Geriatrics.
Core Co-Leader
Blanka Rogina, Ph.D., M.S.
Professor
Email: rogina@uchc.edu
Blanka Rogina, Ph.D., is a Professor at the University of Connecticut (UConn) School of Medicine, Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences and an affiliated investigator of the UConn Center on Aging. Dr. Rogina’s research focus is on the genetic mechanisms of aging. She has been involved in identification and determination of the role of several genes in Drosophila health and longevity. Her research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging. the American Federation for Aging Research, and the Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging. Dr. Rogina is actively involved in training the next generations of scientist as the Director of Genetics and Developmental Biology Graduate Program. Dr. Rogina received her Masters and Doctoral degrees from the Zagreb University, Croatia.
The Pilot and Exploratory Studies Program is created by the Pilot and Exploratory Studies Core of the UConn Pepper Center. The goals of the program are to identify, support, and nurture multidisciplinary investigators who would like to expand their research with aging research.
The Pilot and Exploratory Studies Core facilitates the development and progress of innovative research for faculty relating to the Pepper Center focus on Precision Gerontology.
Current Pilot and Exploratory Study Investigators
Pilot Project 1
“Apathy: An Early Manifestation of Frailty and Disability in Older Adults with Depression?”
Project Overview
Older adults are at risk of declining financial capacity – or the cognitively complex activity that includes practical (e.g., paying bills) and judgment (e.g., investment decision making) abilities necessary for independent living. For example, older adults lost almost $1.7 billion in financial scams in 2021, and errors in the ability to manage one’s own financial affairs may be one of the earliest signs of impending cognitive decline. Better understanding of financial decision making in older adults is necessary in order to help seniors avoid fraud and prolong their autonomy and independence.
The overall objective of this research is to understand the cognitive, affective, and motivational components of financial decision making in older adults and understand whether a subtype of depression in older adults – apathy – heralds the onset of disability. This pilot project will test the hypotheses that there will be differences in functional performance and blood-based biomarkers between older depressed adults with and without apathy. Apathy is an adverse symptom of geriatric depression associated with worse cognition, increased mortality, and a poor response to antidepressant. Apathy is found in 35-47% of older adults with major depression, and depression syndromes are a leading cause of disability for some 4.5 million older adults each year.
Traditional views of apathy as a construct have identified it as a syndrome related to low motivation. Older adults with apathy often fail to initiate activities and are described as “content to do nothing”. Apathy may indicate the earliest functional changes in older adults with depression. While baseline apathy is associated with subsequent frailty and disability in population-based studies of older adults, there is surprisingly little evidence linking apathy to disability in older adults with major depression. Understanding the pathophysiology underlying apathy may also help identify treatment targets in older depressed adults. While apathy may correlate with neurodegeneration in older adults, increasing evidence also suggests an apathy-inflammatory connection.
Co-Investigator
Kevin Manning, Ph.D.
Dr. Kevin J. Manning earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Neuropsychology from Drexel University and completed internship at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and fellowship at the Weill Cornell Institute of Geriatric Psychiatry. He is a licensed clinical neuropsychologist who specializes in the cognitive evaluation of older adults with mild cognitive impairment, dementia, and mood disorders. He is heavily involved in clinical research at the University of Connecticut, particularly that aimed at understanding the 1) the treatment of mood and cognitive symptoms in depressed elders and 2) investigations into the pathophysiology of depression and apathy, debilitating symptoms that may herald a larger syndrome associated with frailty and neurodegeneration. This research is supported by the Alzheimer’s Association and National Institute of Health. Dr. Manning also maintains a clinical practice at the UConn Center on Aging where he evaluates patients with cognitive problems and educates patients and families on the early signs of dementia and ways to stay cognitively fit.
Pilot Project 2
“Re-Engaging Black/African American Older Adults During the COVID-19 Era”
Project Overview
The sudden closure of churches and senior centers caused by the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacts the health and well-being of communities of color, particularly Black/African American (BAA) older adults. Traditionally, these institutions have been a hub for social engagement for the BAA community by providing spiritual healing, education and political activism. Yet, closure of these community social networking centers has resulted in involuntary disengagement. Previous research suggests that activity disengagement among older adults is associated with decreased quality of life and negative mental and health outcomes. This association is likely mediated by social isolation and loneliness such that disengagement results in social isolation and loneliness which then lead to negative outcomes including higher risk of depression and disability.
Although senior centers and churches in Hartford have reopened and offered online engagement, many older persons who used to utilize these centers/churches have either completely become disengaged or utilize the senior centers/churches less frequently than they did before the pandemic. Anecdotal evidence from BAA community and faith-based leaders in the greater Hartford area suggests a significant decline in participation and an increase of health and mental health issues among BAA older adults due to the lack of meaningful engagement during COVID-19. Re-engaging these individuals (i.e., getting them back to their baseline level of attendance) may be an important means of preventing or delaying depression and/or disability.
Despite evidence that disengagement in activities has a negative influence on the health and wellbeing of older adults; gaps exist in our knowledge regarding the best solutions to address this problem. There is limited research on why older adults disengage in certain activities, and what it may take for them to do activities that they enjoy again. Given the aforementioned background, the long-term goal of this research project is to develop a psychoeducation intervention to address the re-engagement needs/concerns of BAA older adults as a means of preventing or reducing depressive symptoms and disability.
Co-Investigator
RuPal Parekh, Ph.D.
Rupal Parekh is an Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work. She has over a decade of professional and practice experience working with ethnically diverse older adult populations across the continuum of care. Her primary research aim is to examine the risk factors that cause or exacerbate social isolation or loneliness among BIPOC and immigrant older adult populations within a biopsychosocial framework and life course perspective. Additionally, she examines the use of community engagement activities and resources within an age-friendly framework to ensure residents of all ages living in communities historically affected by economic disinvestment, health disparities, and environmental contamination have an opportunity to reap the benefits from brownfields redevelopment and access adequate, reliable transportation. As a clinical translational interventionist, she uses Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach to involve the local community in the design and implementation of interventions.
Pilot Project 3
“The Heterogeneity of Vulnerabilities in Aging Cohort (HVAC): A new resource for early biomarker discovery and validation”
Co-Investigator
Jacob Earp, Ph.D.
My primary research interest is to optimize muscle quantity and quality (function relative to size) through precision exercise, dietary, supplement and therapeutic interventions to improve physical function. In my early professional career, I worked primarily with high performance athletes, using various forms of physical training and supplementation to optimize sport performance and prevent injury. This included my work with the athletes and coaches from four different country’s Olympic committees and several professional and collegiate sports teams.
As a sports scientist, I specialized in strategies to improve athletes muscle quality because excess mass if often detrimental to performance. Therefore, I worked to ID and exploit pathways to improve muscle function independent of increasing muscle mass such as changing a muscle’s underlying structure (fascicle angle/length), composition (density/adiposity), or stiffness, or by targeting neurological, tendinous, or metabolic adaptations.
However, after collaborating with a group of aging researchers on several of their studies, meeting the researchers at the UConn Center of Aging, and seeing multiple groups of aging researchers (e.g., Sarcopenia Definitions Outcomes Consortium & the European Working Group on Sarcopenia-2) highlight a need for better understanding of the role that loss of muscle quality plays in the loss of physical function other experienced with aging, I decided to make the timely transition of my muscle quality research to older adults.
My current research objective is to ID the aspects of muscle quality that are most related to loss of physical function in older adults and creating geroscience guided approach to retaining and/or improving muscle quality using precision interventions that best target these pathways (e.g., physical therapy, nutrition, supplement, heating/cooling, tissue manipulation, or therapeutics). Additionally, I’m working to determine how specific medical conditions and/or physical characteristics affect each component of muscle quality (e.g., frailty phenotype, obesity, Parkinson’s Disease, etc., so that interventions that account for the increased heterogeneity of health observed with aging can be accounted.
Personally, I see the opportunity to translate my research from athletic populations to older adults with varying levels of physical function and with different underlying physiological conditions to improve individuals’ physical function, quality of life, health and longevity is a very exciting prospect. Being new to aging research I am excited to work with the UConn Pepper Center and am looking to build collaborations with other aging researchers with similar interests.
Co-Investigator
Oh Sung Kwon, Ph.D.
Dr. Kwon is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Kwon completed his undergraduate and master degrees at Seoul National University in Seoul, South Korea. He completed a master’s degree at the East Carolina University under the direction of Dr. Darrell Neufer and doctoral degree at the University of Florida under the direction of Dr. Scott K. Powers. After completing his doctoral program, Dr. Kwon worked with Dr. Micah Drummond and then joined Dr. Russell Richardson’s Utah Vascular Research Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow. Through extensive educational and laboratory experiences, his research topics range from the study of cells and rodents to human and from basic science and molecular science to clinical science in the skeletal muscle and vascular physiology. Utilizing an integrative approach that combines in–vivo and in–vitro techniques, Dr. Kwon’s research focuses on examining the impact of oxidative stress and mitochondria dysfunction on skeletal muscle and vasculatures with advancing age and skeletal muscle and cardiovascular diseases.
Dr. Kwon’s current research interests include an integrative approach to the study of vascular and skeletal muscle function in both animal and human models. Specifically, he is interested in identifying the role of oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction on skeletal muscle and vasculatures with aging and age-related diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart failure, and hypertension. To undertake mechanistic studies, his lab employs a wide array of techniques (permeablized mitochondrial respiration, isolated vessel pressure myography, electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, ultrasound doppler, and a host of molecular and cellular biology techniques) with the goal of achieving an integrative view of muscle, vascular, and pathophysiology.