Dr Lorenzini focus is on longevity determinants. His research has developed both searching for cellular mechanisms affecting species longevity that analyzing human healthspan determinants.
Current research:
1- Role of lifestyle on health-span.
The parameters capable of affecting healthspan and disease susceptibility are numerous: general-anthropometric (age, sex, body weight, waist circumference), lifestyle related (smoking habit, diet quality, alcohol intake, level of physical activity and of psychological stress), medical (adherence to eventual therapy, blood pressure, glycemia, cholesterolemia, etc.) etcetera. This complexity calls for the use of artificial intelligence in deciphering their interrelation and their rank in affecting health, especially for the purpose of creating personalized guidelines.
2- Development and longevity.
At the cellular level, damage repair and cell cycle arrest are interrelated, allowing sufficient time for repair prior to cell cycle progression. Organisms have evolved so that developmental timing is linked to environmental conditions, such as nutrient availability and predation. Recent results regarding species-specific differences in how cells handle DNA damage, suggest that a stable cell cycle arrest is a feature of long-lived species. The implication of these results is that long-lived species delay cell cycle progression to a greater degree than short-lived species, allowing for higher fidelity repair. In other words, the ability to devote longer periods of time to repair and maintenance could be a key feature of long-lived species. The capacity to finely tune DNA repair with the possibility of resuming cell division, could be a determinant of species lifespan.
