Approved research

Discovering new drug targets to improve health during ageing

Lay summary

Increasing life expectancy in developed countries is revealing advancing age as the major risk factor for poor health. Experimental studies in laboratory animals have demonstrated that ageing itself is malleable and that genetic or pharmacological intervention into ageing can increase health during ageing, extend lifespan, and combat pathology in animal models of human age-related diseases. The aim of this project is to identify potential drug targets for a preventative, broad-spectrum approach to improve human health during ageing. By using the uniquely powerful human data from UK Biobank, together with state-of-the-art platform technologies, experimental analysis, bioinformatics and modeling we will be able to study variants that contribute to human longevity and identify mechanisms and genes that contribute to healthy ageing. In particular, we will exploit population, cell, tissue and informatics resources to investigate the association of natural genetic variation and whole human biomarkers and phenotypes of ageing, using multiple types of health outcome to derive biological and nuanced measures of ageing. This study will include the full cohort.