The Los Angeles Gerontology Research Group has created a tax-exempt Supercentenarian Research Foundation to fund tissue sampling of all living Supercentenarians (persons 110 years or older) worldwide.

The aim of the Foundation is “to develop a rigorous, statistically significant database of the most important SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) of ‘gerontic’ (longevity) genes,” said Los Angeles Gerontology Research Group Co-founder L. Stephen Coles, M.D., Ph.D.

“We have come to learn in the last few years that the phenotype of longevity is inherited in the DNA (‘choose your parents wisely’) more than it is influenced by life-style choices that clearly impact the expression of these gerontic genes (‘watch what you do
for exercise, nutrition, vitamin supplements, etc.’).”

The group has also been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as a world authority on human longevity for its rigorous validation of the age claims of Supercentenarians. Dr. Coles is a specialist in “interventional biogerontology” — seeking the “Fountain of Youth,” or “searching for the means to achieve radical life-extension with youthful decades waiting in the wings, hopefully within our own lifetimes. We presently recognize 73 Validated Living Supercentenarians — 65 women and 8 men.”

Dr. Coles is also a collaborator in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UCLA, where he has performed autopsies on four Supercentenarians (only a grand total of seven such autopsies have been known to have been done in all of history).