SAM (Senescence Accelerated Mice) as a model for studying the ageing and age associated diseases (from II Int. Meeting "Modern Problems of Gerontology and SAM as an aging model", July 21-23, 2003, Sapporo, Japan)

Among several models of aging and age-associated diseases SAM is one of the most appropriate one, which provides studying the mechanisms of aging being not interfered with adaptation processes. SAM model was created by T. Takeda et al. around 80th of the previous century by brother/sister mating. The line is characterized by sufficiently shortened life-span (till 1 year) and several aging features like osteoporosis (SAMP6), memory and learning deficit (SAMP10), neurodegenerating diseases (SAMP3). All these defects are based on the disordering of oxidative metabolism, disturbing to some extent their metabolism. In short review possible reasons of such deviations in SAM metabolism are discussed focused during II International Meeting on modern problems of gerontology being hold on Sapporo between July 21-23, 2003.