Aging is the primary risk factor for cancer, dementia, and cardiovascular diseases. As the understanding of the biology of aging constantly improves, there are already initial approaches to geroprotection, which seeks to reduce the age-related risk of disease and thus extend healthy lifespan.

In a discussion paper published by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the researchers involved recommend a paradigm shift in how research and medicine approach age-related diseases.

In the paper “Health-Extending Medicine in an Aging Society—Prospects for Medical Research and Practice,” they call for better research into the aging process, so that medicine can focus on aging itself—rather than waiting to treat age-related diseases.

As age increases, the body’s ability to monitor and guide cellular processes diminishes. This leads to increasing malfunction with respect to cell repair, for example. These malfunctions are often the cause of cancer or cardiovascular diseases in old age. Such age-related diseases pose a major challenge to the health care system in an aging society.

A better understanding of the mechanisms of aging offers great potential to develop new therapeutic approaches that could help maintain health during the aging process and effectively reduce age-related diseases. In order to understand the highly complex aging process, the authors of the discussion paper recommend establishing an interdisciplinary systems aging consortium in Germany.

This consortium would pool expert knowledge in the biology of aging and systems biology and make it possible to link research data from model organisms with human data such as biospecimens and patient data.

The availability, linking, and evaluation of large amounts of data are key to better understanding the aging process, identifying environmental factors that influence aging, and developing possible geroprotective measures. Multiomics data, which refers to combined data from various levels such as DNA, RNA, and proteins, could help researchers develop biomarkers for aging.

These biomarkers would provide information about the biological age of humans (which often differs from chronological age) and thus show the efficacy of geroprotective measures or medication in clinical studies. The authors of the discussion paper thus recommend setting up a national biological database. Similar to the British Biobank, multiomics data could be pooled here and made available to research.

This could enable numerous new treatment approaches, for example, for the pharmacological treatment of aging. Medications already exist—for example, to treat high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes—that have also been shown to have a geroprotective effect. The authors claim that analyzing large amounts of data could help identify additional existing drugs that could also be used as geroprotectors.

They also present cellular reprogramming as a highly promising strategy to reverse the aging process, in that it could help restore tissue functions. Additionally, reliable biomarkers could enable a future paradigm shift in GP practices and hospitals in order to provide patients with evidence-based advice on preventing disease and supporting resilience processes.

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Leopoldina