What Is Your Biological Age?

This lecture is one of the 2023 Senior Vice Chancellor’s Research Seminar series.

Speaker

Aditi U. Gurkar, PhD

Assistant Professor of Medicine (Division of Geriatric Medicine), Aging institute, School of Medicine

Topic

What Is Your Biological Age?

Registration for the lecture is required to receive event instructions.

Topic Overview:

Chronological age is the principal risk factor for several chronic diseases, yet it is an unreliable indicator of the body’s rate of decline and susceptibility to age-related disease. At a population level, individuals do not exhibit biological aging at the same rate. Rapid agers display a faster rate of functional deterioration relative to their chronological age. Biological age captures one’s physical and functional ability and is a more accurate determinant of health span (years lived in good health) than chronological age. Identification of molecular markers that reflect rapid biological aging and a diagnostic measure that can easily be applied in the clinic are critically needed. Early detection of rapid agers presents an opportunity for promising interventions. The dimensionality of metabolites in capturing both genetic and nongenetic features often influenced by disease, environment and lifestyle factors makes it an ideal candidate for measuring the complex process of aging. Furthermore, several interventions that have shown some promise for improving health span, like calorie restriction, metformin, rapamycin and intermittent fasting, are known to target metabolic pathways. Similarly, senescence—the accumulation of “zombie” cells that refuse to die—is a key feature of biological aging. Senescent cells produce a distinct group of inflammatory secretion factors, including cytokines and chemokines, collectively termed senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). Thus, the elimination of senescent cells and SASP attenuation have emerged as attractive therapeutic strategies. Gurkar will discuss her and her colleagues’ recent progress on an integrated profiling approach that simultaneously measures SASP factors and metabolites from serum samples to generate fingerprints for biological aging.