Rochelle Buffenstein

Rochelle’s first tenured faculty position was in the department of physiology at the Medical School of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.^[2] Her early research was primarily field-based, and addressed physiological and molecular responses of various mammals to life in extreme environments. In this regard, she has worked with over 168 different species including desert rodents in Namibia and Kenya, tenrecs in Madagascar, mole-rats, golden moles, and bats in South Africa as well as marsupials in Australia.^[2]

Her career in the United States began at The City College of the City University of New York where she obtained numerous awards for her teaching. Bringing her colony of naked mole-rats with her, she began characterizing their negligible senescence in a collaborative study with Dr. Timothy O’Connor. Ten years later, she moved to the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio where she was a Professor in the department of Physiology and further expanded her aging research.^[2][3]

She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the American Aging Association and also was past chair of the Biological Sciences Section of the GSA and from 2013-2014 served as President of the American Aging Association. Rochelle is a fellow of the Cell Stress Society International.^[3]

Buffenstein's current research involves determining why some mammalian species can avoid the vagaries of aging and maintain good health for the majority of their long-lifespans.^[4] She uses a comparative biology approach to address age-related changes in physiological function, most notably cardiac function, and age-related diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration. She pioneered the naked mole-rat as a model system in biomedical research.^[5][6] Not only does she currently maintain the world’s largest captive colony, but over the years she has provided thousands of animals to numerous laboratories across the globe to expand their use in various fields of biomedical research. Her laboratory, using a multiomic approach specifically focuses on physiological and molecular mechanisms that may contribute to the prolonged good health and longevity of naked mole-rats.^{[7][8][9][10]} She has conducted research demonstrating the astonishing finding that naked mole-rats defy the Gompertz–Makeham law of mortality.^[11] Her lab has investigated the role of the immune system and numerous aspects of proteostasis in the extraordinary resilience of naked mole-rats against many forms of stress and disease including UV radiation, hypoxia, carcinogen, and chemotherapy exposure.^{[12][13][14][15][16]}

Buffenstein has authored more than 200 publications.^[17] Along with two of her colleagues, Thomas J. Park and Melissa M. Holmes, she published The Extraordinary Biology of the Naked Mole-rat in 2021.^[18]