Aging is the main cause behind most illnesses that eventually kill us. Your chance of dying doubles every 8 years. By the time you turn 80, half of your peers are dead. However, it turns out aging is a biological process, amenable to treatment. Research has demonstrated that we can postpone the onset of age-related disease. Lab mice know this already. Experiments with caloric restriction, senolytics and metabolic inhibitors have extended life and reversed aging - in mice. But how do we know these treatments will work in humans? We can wait and see if patients receiving these new treatments die later. Or see if onset of age-related disease is postponed. But this is slow. It takes many, many years to know for sure if the treatments work. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a faster way? Thanks to the discovery of the epigenetic clock, we can now accurately describe changes to gene regulation caused by aging. By turning this discovery into a blood test, we can measure the exact aging status inside human cells. This will be incredibly useful to researchers involved in aging research. They would know if a treatment works, much earlier than before. So that’s what we’re making: A biomarker for aging which is accurate, affordable and quick.
