LA JOLLA — While the population is aging at a greater pace than ever, surprisingly, researchers say, little is known about the human aging process because it’s hard to study lifespans of eight decades or more. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, however, hace replicated premature aging in the lab, allowing them to study ageing-related disease — in a dish. In the Feb. 23 online edition of the journal Nature, Juan-Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, a professor in the Salk Institute’s gene expression laboratory, and his team reported that they successfully generated induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from the skin of patients with Hutchinson-Gilford progeria, a condition that makes them age eight to 10 times faster than normal. With those cells, researchers can see the telltale signs of vascular aging. “The slow progression and complexity of the aging process makes it very hard to study the pathogenesis of cardiovascular and other aging-related disorders,” said Izpisúa Belmonte. “Having a human model of accelerated aging may give us new insights into how we age. It may also help prevent or treat heart disease in the general aging population.” For those with progeria, the aging process is put on fast-forward and afflicted people rarely live longer than 13 years. Almost all of the patients die from complications of arteriosclerosis, the clogging or hardening of arteries or blood vessels caused by plaques, which leads to heart attack and stroke. Scientists are particularly interested in progeria because they hope it might reveal clues about the normal human aging process. However, the disease is exceedingly rare and only 64 children living with progeria are known, so access to patients is very difficult.