Why are some 100 plus-year-old men and women as cognitively alert and intact as peers thirty years younger? Why has Alzheimer’s disease (AD) not impacted them? Thomas Perls, MD, MPH, FACP, professor of medicine and Stacy Andersen PhD, assistant professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and their colleagues seek to learn more about these centenarian cognitive super-agers, thanks to a $20 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National institute on Aging and the McKnight Foundation.

Air-liquid interface culture promotes maturation and allows environmental exposure of pluripotent stem cell–derived alveolar epithelium
Type 2 alveolar epithelial cells (AT2s), facultative progenitor cells of the lung alveolus, play a