Thread by @dw2

Day One of #ARDD2020, "Aging Research & Drug Discovery", is just starting live-streaming. Speakers today include Kai-Fu Lee, Brian Kennedy, João Pedro de Magalhães, Carolina Reis, Nir Barzilai, Aubrey de Grey, Polina Mamoshina, and Steve Horvath agingpharma.org

The #ARDD2020 conference is using a dedicated Slack channel for discussion among attendees, including questions for speakers. It's an interesting experiment

First up is Brian Kennedy of the National University of Singapore, speaking on "Validating Interventions in Humans: Which approach is best?" #ARDD2020

The benefits of slowing aging: not just delaying or reducing the impact of chronic diseases, but also delaying or reducing functional decline and the impact of acute diseases #ARDD2020

The most effective way to validate anti-aging interventions is likely to involve tracking the results of interventions on biomarkers of aging: it's an approach that can proceed relatively quickly - Brian Kennedy at #ARDD2020

That approach depends on the reliability of the biomarkers of aging. Hence the importance of developing 3rd generation biomarkers that amalgamate more data and which have better correlation with other measures of frailty, quality of life, etc - Brian Kennedy at #ARDD2020

Now at #ARDD2020 Carolina Reis Oliveira, CEO of OneSkin Technologies, talks about senotherapeutic compounds and their possible use to prolong the health of our skin (and hence, potentially, the health of other parts of our body too)

Kai-Fu Lee is speaking now about "AI and Longevity". He says he has been researching AI for around 40 years, but has only recently been looking at the field of longevity #ARDD2020

AI has been arriving in successive waves with greater capability, and there are a number of signs of potential new waves with even greater capability - Kai-Fu Lee at #ARDD2020

Aside: for my own list of 12 ways in which the AI of 5-10 ways could be very different from today's, see dw2blog.com/2020/07/31/the…

Next-Generation AI powers every aspect of healthcare, but it is challenging, especially because of its black-box nature, which makes it difficult to trust - Kai-Fu Lee at #ARDD2020

Machine Learning techniques are helping with the development of a broad variety of "aging clocks" (biomarkers) to predict biological age - Kai-Fu Lee at #ARDD2020

Kai-Fu Lee highlights the discipline of federated learning as a way to gain insights from large sets of data whilst avoiding any centralisation of that data with its inherent risks to privacy and security #ARDD2020. See e.g. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated…

Now speaking at #ARDD2020 is João Pedro de Magalhães, on the topic "Longevity Pharmacology Comes of Age"

There's been an explosion in recent years in the number of drugs that are known to extend longevity in at least one organism - João Pedro de Magalhães at #ARDD2020 - see genomics.senescence.info

On the other hand, there's been a slowdown in the increase of genes associated with longevity. João Pedro de Magalhães at #ARDD2020 interprets this as a switch in research focus towards the biopharmacological approach

The world's largest longevity companies, measured by investment: the field is much bigger than 20 years ago - João Pedro de Magalhães at #ARDD2020

But although the field is growing, companies still face significant obstacles to commercialising their products. A single trial setback can cause stock prices to plummet - João Pedro de Magalhães at #ARDD2020

That's why the emerging in-silico approaches, to discover and validate potential new anti-aging drugs, are particularly significant. Data about drugs already known from other research can be analysed to highlight drugs with potential application to anti-aging #ARDD2020

Both João Pedro de Magalhães and Brian Kennedy drew attention, in their #ARDD2020 talks, to the relatively new company Centaura with its vision of "radically reversing aging" centaura.com

There's an impressive team at Centaura centaura.com

Now at #ARDD2020 Nir Barzilai from Albert Einstein College of Medicine speaks on the topic "'Age later' advice from those who do"

Nir Barzilai's talk at #ARDD2020 reviews three challenges for developing gerotherapeutics for humans, accepts that each challenge is hard, but indicates the likelihood of good solutions ahead

Apparent mechanisms whereby the drug metformin attenuates numerous hallmarks of aging - Nir Barzilai at #ARDD2020

A further indication of the significance of metformin: Metformin use is associated with reduced mortality rate from Covid-19 infection - Nir Barzilai at #ARDD2020

Christian Riedel of the Karolinska Institutet reported at #ARDD2020 an analysis of characteristics of a cohort of citizens from Stockholm, mapped against the number of years they subsequently lived. Walking speed was unexpectedly predictive of length of survival

Now at #ARDD2020 Anastasia Georgievskaya of Haut.AI talks about "Predicting chronological age using images of hands" - including photos of hands taken on iPhones

Drawbacks to estimating age from images of faces: faces are often covered by cosmetics; faces may change transiently due to lifestyle changes or allergy; privacy issues; large diversity of facial phenotypes depending on their skin tones - Anastasia Georgievskaya at #ARDD2020

Predicting age from images of hands is more accurate than predicting it from images of faces. So images of hands could be more useful in highlighting underlying health issues - Anastasia Georgievskaya at #ARDD2020

Predictions of age from images of hands is useful, despite the variation of hands as a result of profession (e.g. construction worker vs. office worker) - Anastasia Georgievskaya at #ARDD2020

Now at #ARDD2020 Aubrey de Grey speaks about "Can Covid-19 improve the medical incentives to develop longevity therapies?"

The world is looking for ways to prevent any repeat of the damage caused by the Covid pandemic. We can elevate focus from just thinking about vaccines and track-and-trace, to thinking about the aging of the immune system (which actually requires general rejuvenation) #ARDD2020

At #ARDD2020 Aubrey de Grey talks about the total lack of impact of the original "Longevity Dividend" initiative, and how things can be different this time round, due to the increased credibility of rejuvenation biotechnology. Here's my take on the subject dw2blog.com/2020/05/14/the…

At #ARDD2020 Martin Borch Jensen, CSO of Gordian Biotechnology talks about "In vivo screening as a shortcut to anti-aging therapeutics"

Gene therapy coupled with single-cell sequencing: these two techniques allow the in-vivo testing of multiple possible interventions at the same time, in a single animal with a disease, to find out which intervention actually impacts the disease - Martin Borch Jensen at #ARDD2020

Now at #ARDD2020 Polina Mamoshina, Chief Scientist of Deep Longevity (a spin-off of Insilico Medicine), talks about "Deep Biomarkers of human aging"

The overall translation rate of anti-aging interventions from animal experiments into humans is very low, which raises the priority of taking advantage of Deep Learning tools to predict the outcome of interventions - Polina Mamoshina at #ARDD2020

The second generation biomarkers of aging, based on epigenetic changes in DNA, enable predictions of someone's mortality (likelihood to die in the next 12 months). The people scoring in the top 5% of these metrics have twice the average mortality - Steve Horvath at #ARDD2020

More evidence from Steve Horvath at #ARDD2020 of the significance of measures of epigenetic changes in DNA: the rate of change in the GrimAge biomarker is strongly associated with increased hazard of death

Is it causation or just correlation? Steve Horvath replies "both", regarding the connection between DNA epigenetic changes and other signs of aging-related damage. One mechanism may involve the decline in power of stem cells, though more research is needed #ARDD2020

There's a packed "VC panel" ready to share their wisdom in the final session today of #ARDD2020 agingpharma.org

Alex Zhavoronkov recommends everyone attending #ARDD2020 to watch the recording of the talk from February's Startup Health Festival by Wei-Wu He, Executive Chairman of Human Longevity