provider and aging patient talking together outside in the garden

Reshaping Aging and Restoring Health

At Duke, we believe the right science can transform how people age — restoring health, preserving independence, and redefining what’s possible across the lifespan — and we are leading the way.

The Challenge

Heart disease, cancer, memory loss, and frailty all become more common as we age. Yet the biological processes that increase vulnerability begin years — and often decades — before symptoms appear. Despite this, medicine still treats each disease separately and typically after symptoms emerge. For decades, this approach was unavoidable. Chronological age served as a crude proxy for biological aging, masking vast differences in resilience, fitness, and disease risk. Today, advances in aging science reveal a new reality: aging is a lifelong, highly individualized process — one that can be measured, influenced, and improved. These insights have fueled a rapidly expanding longevity market where unproven interventions are frequently marketed directly to consumers. What’s urgently needed is trusted institutional leadership to turn validated science into rigorous, ethical, evidence-based aging care.

Why Duke?

Researchers in the lab

By seamlessly uniting scientific discovery, clinical care, and population research across major disease areas, Duke is uniquely equipped to turn bold ideas into evidence-based advances that extend health, independence, and vitality for generations to come. Key focus areas include:

  • Aging Science: For over 70 years, Duke has been a national leader in aging science, home to the nation’s longestrunning academic research center and
    an NIH Center of Excellence focused on early Alzheimer’s biology — helping shift the field from treatment to prevention.
  • Metabolic Science: Duke scientists are reshaping metabolic science by exploring how incretin drugs (e.g., Ozempic) work, the gut’s influence on appetite and metabolism, and age-related changes in cellular metabolism with implications for heart, muscle, and brain health.
  • Clinical Expertise: Duke’s multidisciplinary care models, alignment of clinical and academic missions, and unparalleled track record in complex clinical trial design mean we deliver discoveries to patients faster.

Recent breakthroughs and advances highlight Duke’s ability to reshape aging and restore health, independence, and longevity:

  • Exciting metabolic research findings demonstrate that aging in mice can be reversed, and that incretin drugs, such as GLP-1, may slow biological aging across organ systems.
  • New early-stage research shows that reprogrammed glial cells have the potential to rebuild lost neural circuits, opening the door to therapies that restore health after stroke and other brain injuries.
  • With partner institutions, Duke is leading efforts to create a low-cost injectable therapy that harnesses the body’s own capacity to regenerate joint tissue.
  • Duke faculty-developed DunedinPACE, the world’s most validated tool for measuring the pace of biological aging, is part of a landmark longitudinal study expected to yield major insights in the next five years.
  • Duke-led teams are creating practical tools to determine how fast the brain is aging before cognitive or neurological symptoms appear, enabling early intervention to potentially slow the course of disease.

Building on decades of leadership and pioneering discoveries in aging research, Duke is uncovering how aging unfolds across organ systems and over time, with far‑reaching insights that will shape the future of health.

The Opportunity

This moment — where science meets demand, combined with Duke’s unique strengths and leadership — creates an extraordinary opportunity to lengthen the healthspan: the number of years of life lived in good health.

With your investment, we will accelerate breakthrough science and transform aging-related health care while building enduring foundations to advance the leading edge of aging science for decades to come.

Changing how we age changes everything.

You Can Make a Difference

Philanthropic partners are essential to our success. Every expendable, endowed, or planned gift makes a difference. You can help Duke define the future of healthy aging with a gift to:

Invest in Exceptional Leaders

An endowment of $1,000,000 to $5,000,000 will establish support for exceptional leaders, from early-career fellows to medical directors and senior faculty, and provide them the resources they need to innovate and lead.

Educate, Develop, and Inspire Tomorrow’s Experts

Gifts of $250,000 or more will help us attract the next generation of talented clinicians, caregivers, and scientists, providing trainees with the necessary resources to thrive as professionals and advance aging science and care.

Fuel Transformative Research

Gifts of $100,000 or more will support cutting-edge research that deepens our understanding of aging and pioneers new approaches that preserve health, resilience, and well-being as we age.

Expand State-of-the-Art Infrastructure

Gifts of $100,000 or more will support modern research and clinical spaces, advanced technologies, and next-generation tools and equipment to speed translation of aging research from laboratory discoveries to real-world impact.