The current clinical approach to ageing is reactive and disease-centric rather than focusing on preventing disease, improving long-term health and holistic optimisation of ageing in the period of time before the onset of any debilitating disease. Biological age estimation (“ageing clocks”) can help predicting disease and causes of death well before any specific disease is present. By identifying future disease years ahead of time, this approach has the potential to give a much wider window for intervention, potentially allowing caregivers and patients to make informed decisions on medical interventions and lifestyle changes. Yet, current clocks are limited in their ability to identify the specific mechanisms and modifiable clinical drivers of age-dependent diseases. Without such therapeutic targets and modifiable clinical factors, it is challenging to make these existing clocks clinically useful. Hence, there is a crucial unmet need to develop more actionable biological ageing clocks. Our aim is to develop novel ageing clocks that provide more actionable mechanistic insights to inform pre-emptive and preventative clinical and lifestyle interventions. To address this need, we will apply a data-driven approach, based on machine learning and statistical modelling techniques, with the aim of identifying clinically modifiable factors and therapeutic targets. The overarching hypothesis is that a biological ageing clock, constructed by combining clinical and -omics parameters, can identify states of abnormal ageing and processes that will result in increased mortality years before any actual disease is present. This project will be carried out over a duration of three years. Early and proactive modification of known risk factors, using primary disease prevention approaches as well as existing pharmacological interventions will be explored to optimise ageing trajectories and to delay manifestations of ageing, including age-related disease. Only fully developed and interpretable biological ageing clocks will allow healthcare providers and governments to navigate the complexities of the risk-benefit analysis required to add years to healthy lifespan by intervening decades before disease onset.
