Prospects and perspectives in primate aging research.

As improvements in standard of living and advances in medicine have resulted in greater life expectancy, the relative proportion of elderly has continued to increase in human populations across the globe. The primary goal of aging research is to gain a better understanding of the series of events that lead to increased frailty and disease vulnerability with age. The direct study of human aging is an active area of research; however, the opportunity to conduct mechanistic studies and gain insights into the underlying biology is limited. In this special forum issue of Antioxidant & Redox Signaling, we present a selection of articles and reviews that illustrate some of the recent advances in primate aging research. The overarching goal of this work is to underscore the potential for mechanistic discovery that is presented by nonhuman primate models, and to promote studies that validate novel approaches and techniques in nonhuman primates before their adaptation for human health care.