Global ageing research consortium tackles the challenge of healthy ageing

The global partnership led by Imperial will explore how humans age and aims to develop new interventions to support healthy ageing.

The BBSRC-MRC-funded UK-wide Ageing Research Networks (UKAN) – ATTAIN, BLAST, CFIN, ECMage, Food4Years, led by MyAge are forming a partnership with 14 institutions across the USA and Canada in response to the UKRI’s Strategic Theme around ‘securing Better Health, Ageing, and Wellbeing.’

Population ageing is a global issue that poses a number of problems in healthcare, society, and economics. Research in ageing currently focuses on many different aspects of ageing, from cells to society.

The aim of this global network is to bring together different aspects of this research and to create international activities to develop existing collaborations or support new ones with researchers from across the globe on several topics relevant to ageing research. The key focus is the challenge of healthy ageing especially in the last decade of life.

Dr Kambiz Alavian, Reader in Neuroscience, Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, Deputy Director of UKAN and Co-Lead for MyAge said: "This global consortium brings together a group of world-leading institutions and experts in ageing research.

Through the exchange of ideas and expertise and capacity building, the interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary partnerships will focus on transformative ideas that can generate scientific, interventional, and societal impact."

The future of healthy aging

This UK-North American partnership will focus on two broad areas of research. One will be to explore the mechanisms of ageing, and the second will be to develop new interventions on topics ranging from biomedical to environmental and social factors that play a part in ageing.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, the researchers aim to explore how people age and start developing pharmaceutical, behavioural, lifestyle, and clinical ways that could help people age healthily and improve their lifespan.

According to Dr Alavian: "true societal impact in this area requires a comprehensive understanding of the problem at all levels and a global effort to bring together solutions from a range of scientific disciplines."

This global partnership is funded through the UKRI Securing Better Health, Ageing and Wellbeing Strategic theme.