Replay: Eric Verdin shares Five Things He's Learned about Covid-19, Aging, and the Immune System
Check out the first five minutes of his recent class.
"Three years after a global shut down, the death toll from Covid-19 is nearing nearly 7 million worldwide. Even though the virus appears here to stay, most people have resumed their normal lives, thanks to a barrier of immunity built from infections and vaccines. But the virus continues to spread and variants still pose a threat. In addition to further understanding the virus itself, research is also focused on developing treatments that block infection and/or bolster the body’s response to it. It’s clear to me that understanding aging needs to be a key factor in the effort."
– Eric Verdin, Five Things I’ve Learned about Covid-19, Aging, and the Immune System
Eric Verdin is the President and chief executive officer of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. A native of Belgium, he received his Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Liege and completed additional clinical and research training at Harvard Medical School. Here’s the first five minutes of our recent 90-minute class in which he shares the Five Things He’s Learned about aging and immunity from Covid-19 – and about ways we can increase our chances of surviving and even thriving in a world still under threat from pathogens.
Five Things I’ve Learned about Covid-19, Aging, and the Immune System addresses vaccines and scientists’ ongoing efforts to come to grips with long-Covid. Eric also details coming treatments, the future of vaccines that may one day be used to treat non-infectious diseases such as cancer, and what we can all do to increase our chances of surviving and even thriving as we age.
Eric’s conversation with Kris Rebillot is part of our ongoing series, Five Things I’ve Learned about Living Better Longer. These 90-minute sessions share the insights, perspectives, and experiences of renowned researchers and scientists devoted to exploring the ways in which we age and to applying their knowledge to improve our lives.
If you’re eager to discover the insights we need to make the most of the possibilities that await us as we age, this conversation is for you.
In 2016, Eric established his lab at the Buck to study the relationship between aging and the immune system. He is an elected member of several scientific organizations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians. He has published more than 270 scientific papers and holds 18 patents. Eric has held faculty positions at the University of Brussels, the National Institutes of Health, the Picower Institute for Medical Research, and the Gladstone Institutes. He is also currently a professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco.
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