Researchers, clinicians and community leaders gathered at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology on Feb. 27 for the inaugural USC Asian Health and Longevity Symposium, a groundbreaking daylong event focused on the factors shaping health and well-being for Asian and Asian-American communities.
The first-of-its-kind symposium highlighted how biology, culture, migration histories and social environments influence health across the lifespan. In Southern California, home to one of the nation’s largest and most diverse Asian populations, speakers said those patterns present both urgent health challenges and important opportunities for research, clinical care and community partnership.
Steven Shapiro, USC senior vice president for health affairs, said the symposium reflected a broader shift toward more personalized medicine.
“We’re at an incredible time in our human history to make progress on understanding the mechanisms of disease,” Shapiro said. “All of our diseases are just a constellation of our genes and our environment, so why not think about populations, such as Asians, individually as a road to this personalized care?”
Pinchas Cohen, dean of the USC Leonard Davis School and USC Distinguished Professor of Gerontology, Medicine and Biological Sciences, said the event represented years of planning and collaboration.
“This event has been an effort that’s been in motion for over two years and represents the culmination of a tremendous amount of work by many people, but it’s been a labor of love,” Cohen said.
Biodemography Research Paints a Nuanced Picture
Keynote speaker Eileen Crimmins, USC University Professor and AARP Chair in Gerontology, opened the scientific program with a broad look at health and longevity in Asian countries and among Asian Americans in the United States.
“The longest-lived people in the world are Asian,” Crimmins said, pointing to Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. She noted that the U.S. now ranks 48th in the world in average lifespan, while Singapore, Japan and South Korea also lead on healthspan, or the years spent free of chronic disease or disability.
“It’s not just mortality, it’s also morbidity that’s better in these countries,” she said.
Crimmins said people of Asian descent in the U.S. appear to retain some of that advantage, with an average lifespan of 85 years compared with 78 years for white Americans. Asian Americans also have rates of heart disease and cancer about half those of white Americans, even though they show a higher prevalence of diabetes, including at a normal weight.
Using 22 biomarker measurements, Crimmins and her team have found that people of Asian descent appear to show slower epigenetic and transcriptomic aging, longer telomeres, fewer senescent cells and lower chronic inflammation. But she cautioned against reading those findings as a complete explanation.
“Across these measures of biology, this is a population that looks healthier than the majority population in many ways, but biology is not the whole story,” Crimmins said.
Brain Health in Asian Communities
As the symposium moved from population patterns to specific diseases, brain health emerged as a major focus.
Arthur Toga, director of the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, described how advances in imaging and data science are changing the study of neurological disease. He said precision medicine depends on research that includes diverse participants.
“If you look at the faces of the people around you, we’re all humans — we all have eyes, noses, mouths — but we’re all different,” Toga said. “The same is true in the brain.”
Helena Chui, professor and chair of neurology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, discussed Alzheimer’s disease in Asian populations and the mix of genetic and lifestyle factors that shape risk. She noted that APOE4, the most studied Alzheimer’s risk gene, is less common in Asians but appears to carry a stronger risk when present.
“25 percent of the people in this room have one copy of APOE4, and 5% have two copies,” Chui said.
While genetic risk cannot be changed, Chui said several lifestyle factors can be addressed across the lifespan.
“The most important thing in early life is education; cultures that emphasize education are making a really good investment for the future,” she said. “And in mid-life, that’s when we really start to affect the curve for later life. There are many things we can do.”
She also pointed to physical activity, including Tai Chi, as one protective measure.
Understanding Metabolic Health Beyond BMI
Another major theme was the need to rethink how clinicians assess metabolic risk.
Anne Peters, professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, drew on decades of treating diabetes patients around the world.
“I’ve traveled the world teaching about diabetes and learning from other people, and I’ve learned there is no one type of diabetes but a thousand,” Peters said. “I treat everyone from an individualized perspective, but if I know this population has these features, I’m more likely to treat them appropriately.”
Kurt Hong, clinical professor of medicine and gerontology, focused on the limits of body mass index as a measure of risk. BMI, he said, was designed as a population screening tool and does not reveal how fat is distributed in the body.
“BMI only uses height and weight. It doesn’t tell us anything about one’s risk based on body composition,” Hong said.
That matters, he added, because Asian individuals often carry more visceral fat — stored around the organs — at lower BMI levels. “If we rely only on BMI, we may miss people who are at real risk,” he said.
Asian Cohort Data Sheds Light on Powerful Proteins
Cohen described emerging research on mitochondrial microproteins, small molecules produced from the separate, smaller genome within cells’ mitochondria versus the larger genome in the cell nucleus. These tiny proteins appear to play big roles in metabolism, muscle function and aging. One of the many such molecules discovered in the Cohen laboratory, MOTS-c, appears to help regulate metabolism and protect muscle tissue and has enormous clinical potential, he said.
“These microproteins can have powerful effects on metabolism and disease,” Cohen said. He predicts that MOTS-c, which has cleared a Phase 1 trial for patient safety, could become an important treatment for diabetes, obesity, sarcopenia (loss of muscle mass), and more. “These discoveries open entirely new directions in biology and aging research, with the potential to develop therapies that mimic the benefits of exercise.”
In addition, MOTS-c treatment may also one day be recommended for carriers of a gene variant that is much more common in Asian populations. The gene produces a mutant form of the protein that is biologically inactive and is linked to a huge increase in Type 2 diabetes risk for men who carry the gene and are sedentary, Cohen explained.
Hiroshi Kumagai, adjunct research associate professor of gerontology, discussed how muscle biology contributes to healthy aging and described how physical activity can reduce levels of another mitochondrial microprotein, PUTZ, linked to negative metabolic health outcomes. Similarly to MOTS-c, a variant of the gene found more commonly in East Asian individuals codes for a form of the protein linked to significant increases in sarcopenia.
One day, a medicine containing a neutralizing antibody for the disadvantageous protein could help, especially for individuals with the genetic variant or for those with frailty or mobility issues, Kumagai said. For now, the recommendation is clear.
“Skeletal muscle is not just for movement – it also functions as an endocrine organ that plays key roles in metabolism and longevity,” Kumagai said. “Physical activity can dramatically reduce risk. … Start exercising today, not tomorrow.”
Tailoring Treatment for Oral and Systemic Health
The symposium also highlighted the connection between oral health and broader health outcomes.
Yang Chai, dean of the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC, said the mouth can provide important clues about systemic disease.
“Oral health is deeply connected to systemic health, with aging biology, chronic disease management, and precision therapeutics,” Chai said. “The mouth is both a mirror and a mediator of systemic disease.”
That discussion included the risks associated with medications used to treat osteoporosis. Parish Sedghizadeh, professor of clinical dentistry, said bisphosphonate-related osteonecrosis of the jaw is a serious complication that can arise when treatment standards do not account for population differences.
“This treatment is one-size-fits-all, and that’s where the problem arises,” Sedghizadeh said.
Uttam Sinha, professor at the Keck School and director of the USC Head and Neck Center, noted that head and neck cancers are especially prevalent in Asia, particularly Southeast Asia, and said prevention must be part of the response.
“Over the last two to three decades, incidence and mortality have risen,” Sinha said. “We have to do something different than the way we practice today.”
Cancer Disparities and Community Translation
Lihua Liu, associate professor of population and public health sciences at the Keck School and director of the USC Cancer Surveillance Program, led a discussion on cancer in Asian populations.
Wendy Setiawan, professor of population and public health sciences at the Keck School and co-leader of the USC Cancer Epidemiology Program, said that even within Los Angeles County, cancer risks vary widely across Asian ethnic groups.
“We cannot lump all Asians together as one group,” Setiawan said. “We have to look at specific ethnicities to identify high-risk groups and provide targeted prevention strategies.”
Gino In, associate professor of clinical medicine, described how precision oncology has sometimes advanced only after researchers studied tumors in Asian populations.
“The tide is turning in the war on cancer, and targeted therapy and precision medicine is going to be the key to this,” In said. “Our differences and our diversity should not be seen as something that divides us, because in scientific cancer research, our differences and our diversity can actually push progress, can push breakthroughs, and can save lives.”
Jennifer Tsui, inaugural director for cancer care delivery research and implementation science at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, described working with the county’s Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) to provide staff training and community education encouraging patients to receive cervical cancer screenings. She said science only matters if it reaches the people it is meant to help.
“We’ve talked about amazing science all day, but the question is how successful is that if it never makes it to the people affected?” Tsui said.
Holistic Wellness Shaped by Both Eastern and Western Ideas
Conventional Western medicine and traditional Asian health practices can be complementary to one another versus conflicting, said Vivian Mo, chief medical officer for USC Care Medical Group and director of the Women’s Cardiovascular Center at USC. She spoke about her experience with patients using Traditional Chinese Medicine alongside mainstream care, noting that trust and communication are critical.
“It’s honestly a mutual education; I’ve learned a lot from my patients,” Mo said.
USC Trustee and CEO of East West Bank Dominic Ng said many Eastern health traditions emphasize prevention and wellness rather than waiting until illness develops.
“People are paying a lot more attention to wellness; people want to live well and stay healthy while they extend the longevity of life,” Ng said.
Hua-Bing Wen, who practices acupuncture and herbal medicine in West Los Angeles, said Traditional Chinese Medicine offers a holistic framework for aging that focuses on preserving function and resilience.
“Anything we do in Chinese medicine is based on patterns. We come up with that pattern by gathering all the information together,” Wen said. “Along with a physical exam, this information can also include imaging tests, bloodwork, and other results.”
Sean Curran, professor of gerontology and vice dean of the USC Leonard Davis School, said research from his lab points to intriguing overlaps between traditional approaches and geroscience. His team found that tea and compounds derived from oolong tea extended lifespan in C. elegans and appeared to reduce tau aggregation in models of Alzheimer’s disease.
“We don’t know the exact mechanism yet,” Curran said, “but with the possibility that we can pharmacologically treat this with something that was just found in tea, we start to move away from the anecdotal idea of tea being healthy for you to identifying the molecule that might be leading to increased health.”
Supporting Continued Investigation
As the symposium concluded, Cohen reflected on an “amazing day” and the breadth of ideas shared throughout the symposium. He also recognized USC Leonard Davis School Board of Councilors member Mei-Lee Ney for her support of aging research and scholarship.
In 2018, Ney gave the largest donation in the USC Leonard Davis School’s history to establish the Ney Center for Healthspan Science. Cohen, who directs the Ney Center presented Ney with a personalized Ney Center lab coat and described her as a valuable member of the research team.
“This day wouldn’t be complete without recognizing those who help us do this important work,” Cohen said. “I’m proud to call Mei-Lee a friend and colleague.”
Several attendees shared their appreciation and enthusiasm for the event and the wider initiative on health and longevity in Asian populations.
“What I found especially interesting was how the event showed both the ways Asian populations are connected to broader population health issues and the ways they have unique health and aging experiences that deserve focused attention,” said USC Leonard Davis PhD in Gerontology candidate Mengzhao Yan. “To me, having our school lead this initiative focused on Asian health and aging is important because it demonstrates a commitment to recognizing and addressing the specific experiences of underexamined communities, while also creating knowledge that can improve health for the whole population.”
Photos: USC/Kristopher Head; Beth Newcomb
