The BLAST Network: Building Links in Ageing Science and Translation

人口老龄化带来了根本性的经济和社会挑战。到2050年，人类历史上第一次，地球上65岁以上的老人将与15岁以下的儿童一样多。能健康地老去是极其罕见的，到85岁时，基本上每个人都至少患有一种严重的慢性疾病。正如COVID-19清楚表明的那样，老年人也面临传染病危害的高风险。在英国，据估计约有40%的国民保健服务总预算（1200亿英镑）用于对抗健康状况不佳的老龄化后果。英国政府承诺到2035年将英国人口的健康预期寿命再延长5年（HLE+5）。实现这一目标将极大地提高个人生活质量，并极大地增加国家生产力和财富。这一目标有可能实现，因为基础研究取得了重大进展，发现了导致人类衰老的原因，衰老过程如何导致与衰老相关的许多不同疾病，以及——重要的是——可以改善老年人健康的新药和其他治疗方法。其中一些治疗方法在人体临床试验中已经令人兴奋。然而，尽管取得了所有这些进步，但基础科学家、药物开发人员、医生和批准人类用药的人员之间缺乏联合思考和信息共享，这阻碍了改善老年人健康的进展。我们将克服这些障碍，把能够取得进展的人聚集在一起，鼓励他们合作解决重大问题。我们还将帮助培训新的研究人员，支持新的研究以检验新颖的想法，并为从事卫生保健和卫生政策工作的人提供易于获取的有关老龄化研究进展的信息。重要的是，我们将与包括老年人在内的公众接触，以获得他们对应该做什么研究的见解，并向他们介绍我们计划做什么和我们已经取得的成就。

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.