The BLAST Network: Building Links in Ageing Science and Translation

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

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.