As the newest research centre at UBC’s Faculty of Medicine, the Edwin S.H. Leong Centre for Healthy Aging is fostering new collaborations and establishing UBC as a global leader in the study of healthy aging. 

Although aging is often perceived as something that begins later in life — perhaps when the first grey hair or fine line appears at middle age — the reality is that it’s a lifelong journey. 

“Aging isn’t something that starts when we turn 40 or 50. It starts the moment we are born — and perhaps even before,” says UBC’s Dr. Michael Kobor, a world-renowned biomedical researcher and the Edwin S.H. Leong UBC Chair in Healthy Aging (a UBC President’s Excellence Chair).

And because aging is a lifelong process, deepening our understanding of it requires looking across the lifespan. That means bringing together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to investigate the many social, cultural, environmental and genetic factors at play.

Here at UBC, it’s exactly this kind of interdisciplinary, ‘society to cell’ approach that is being embraced and fostered at the Edwin S.H. Leong Centre for Healthy Aging — the Faculty of Medicine’s newest research centre.

“To me, it’s really exciting to see the Edwin S.H. Leong Centre for Healthy Aging serving as an umbrella, helping bring diverse minds together and transcend traditional research boundaries in order to advance our understanding of aging in a really comprehensive way,” says Dr. Kobor, the Centre’s inaugural director.

Since its launch in the spring of 2023, the Centre — established thanks to a transformative donation from philanthropist and UBC alumnus Dr. Edwin S.H. Leong — has witnessed rapid growth.

Now home to more than 40 investigators and over 30 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from 19 UBC departments and schools across the two UBC campuses, the Centre has become a well-established hub for healthy aging innovators, with expertise in everything from molecular biology and neurobiology to geriatrics, occupational therapy, sociology and nursing.

The Centre has also attracted new faculty members from beyond UBC’s borders, hailing from some of the world’s most prestigious research institutes.

“In our first year we’ve seen exceptional momentum, and it’s this diversity that will enable us to build capacity, advance research excellence and develop novel strategies to tackle age-related diseases and help people stay healthy, happy and active longer into old age,” says Dr. Kobor.

At the heart of the Centre’s work lies a deep connection to the Faculty of Medicine’s vision — to transform health for everyone.

“What inspires me about what we’re doing here at the Centre is that we’re helping to create a future of healthy aging for everybody — and our collective efforts will help us achieve what none of us could do alone,” says the Centre’s research director Dr. Kim Schmidt, reflecting on some of the early impacts stemming from the Centre’s knowledge translation and community engagement programs, including free public lectures on healthy aging delivered in partnership with Providence Health Care.

In recent months, the Centre has also formed new international collaborations with institutions such as Stanford and Columbia universities — connections that will help not only broaden the Centre’s reach, but facilitate new opportunities for the next generation of researchers, a core priority of the Centre.

Together, these developments are helping to attract new investment and support — including $6.5 million in recent funding from a Canadian-based charitable organization to develop an innovative, collaborative research initiative — helping to further establish UBC as a world leader in aging research.

“UBC is well on its way to becoming a global leader in aging research and all of us here at the Centre are dedicated to continuing to advance Dr. Leong’s vision of enhancing quality of life for older people, not just here in B.C., but in communities across Canada and around the world,” says Dr. Kobor.