The BLAST Network: Building Links in Ageing Science and Translation

Ageing of human populations poses fundamental economic and social challenges. By 2050, for the first time in human history, there will be as many old people on Earth over the age of 65 as children under 15. It is extremely rare to grow old in good health, and by the age of 85 essentially everyone suffers at least one significant chronic disease. As COVID-19 has so clearly shown, older people are also at high risk of harm from infectious diseases. In the UK, it has been estimated that ~40% of the total budget of the NHS (£120 billion) is spent combating the consequences of ageing in poor health. The UK government has pledged to increase healthy life expectancy of the UK population by an extra 5 years (HLE+5) by 2035. Hitting this target will greatly improve individual quality of life as well as adding enormously to national productivity and wealth. This goal is potentially possible because of significant advances in basic research that has discovered what makes people age, how the ageing process can lead to many different diseases associated with ageing, and - importantly - new drugs and other treatments that can improve health in old age. Some of these treatments are already looking exciting in human clinical trials.

However, despite all these advances, there is a lack of joined-up thinking and information sharing between basic scientists, drug developers, doctors and those approving drugs for human use, which is holding back progress in improving the health of older people. We will overcome these hurdles by bringing together people who can make the progress happen, encouraging them to work collaboratively to solve big problems. We will also help train up new researchers, support new research to test novel ideas and provide easy-to-access information on ageing research advances for people working in health care and health policy. Importantly, we will engage with the general public including older people to gain their insights on what research should be done, as well as presenting to them what we plan to do and what we have achieved.

The demographic shift towards an ageing population poses significant health and societal challenges across the globe, with chronic ageing-related diseases, frailty and susceptibility to infection leading to poor quality of life and high healthcare costs.

Despite significant advances in understanding drivers of biological ageing and discovery of interventions that have reached early-stage human clinical trials for age-related chronic and infectious diseases, there is a lack of 'joined-up' thinking across disparate ageing research disciplines, and the new science of ageing has not penetrated into clinical practice or social policy. These barriers block progress in both new discovery science and in implementing research findings into practice through the translational pipeline.

To overcome these barriers, we will establish a new multidisciplinary network capable of 'Building Links in Ageing Science and Translation' (BLAST). The BLAST network will focus on increasing scientific understanding of the mechanistic drivers and biomarkers of biological ageing, by breaking down silos between researchers in the life, physical, environmental and social sciences. Through holding inclusive multidisciplinary workshops, summer schools and journal clubs, supporting new research through pump-priming funding, as well as establishing a significant online and social media community, we will facilitate interaction between network members to increase knowledge of ageing biology mechanisms and biomarkers. We will develop online training resources for health care practitioners and increase dissemination of ageing research findings to academics, business, policy makers and the general public. We will further partner with biotechnologists, chemists, engineers, health care professionals, social scientists, economists and policy makers to identify effective interventions in ageing processes and develop routes for translation of such interventions to improve health in later life.