New biological age clock estimates how well someone is aging

New biological age clock estimates how well someone is aging

A team of international researchers has developed a new biological aging "clock" that estimates how well someone is aging, not just how "old" they or their various organs might be. The IC clock described in a study inNatural ternmeasures intrinsic capacity (IC), the sum of six key functions that determine healthy aging: mobility, cognition, mental health, vision, hearing and nutrition/vitality.

Maintaining function during the aging process is important for older adults. Function should inform medical care rather than focusing on getting patients to a disease-free state. “

David Furman, PhD, senior author, associate professor and director of the Buck Bioinformatics and Data Science Core

The World Health Organization (WHO) developed the concept of intrinsic capacity and recognized its decline with aging as a condition in 2022 in the international classification of diseases ICD-11.

The IC watch was developed by scientists at The Buck, IHU Healthage (France) in collaboration with France's Inserm and the University of Montpellier, reflecting a growing alliance between U.S. and European researchers to advance the science of healthy longevity. Collaborators began developing the IC clock using data from the Inspire-T cohort, which consisted of 1,000 people (ages 20 to 102) in and around Toulouse, France, over 4 years of 10 out of 10 years. In addition to data based on physical and cognitive functions and lifestyle factors, researchers also had access to biospecimen including blood, urine, saliva and dental plaque, which are collected annually.

The IC Clock uses DNA methylation, a molecular signal found in blood or saliva, to non-invasively assess IC. After training the new model on data from the Inspire-T cohort, the team validated it with the Framingham Heart Study, a long-term, sustained cardiovascular cohort study of residents of the city of Framingham, Massachusetts. According to Furman, the IC clock, which factors in all currently recognized hallmarks of aging, outperformed all first- and second-generation aging clocks in predicting all-cause mortality. He also noted that research found links between higher IC clock scores and better immune system performance, reduced inflammation and healthier lifestyle choices, suggesting that this measure feeds into the core biology of aging and could be useful in evaluating longevity promotion interventions.

Furman's team is developing a dried blood spot solution for the IC watch that would reduce the need for labor-intensive clinic visits, making the IC watch useful for assessing functional decline in low- and middle-income countries. “If we can provide a scalable, affordable molecular-level tool to assess functional decline, the IC watch could help clinicians, researchers and policymakers better identify individuals at risk and tailor interventions that promote longer, healthier lives,” he said.

While the US FDA has embraced a decline in IC as a diagnostic for aging, the issue has yet to be addressed, which some see as a bottleneck in efforts to approve clinical treatments to combat biological aging. Furman believes the IC clock could offer a way to end the long-standing argument about whether aging should be classified as a disease. “We hope that the IC watch will ultimately allow the FDA to approve treatments that would improve health and function in older adults.”

The IC watch is used in the XPRIZE HealthSpan competition. Buck and colleagues at the Hospital-University Institute Healthage at the University of Toulouse have been named semifinalists for the 7-year, $101 million global competition aimed at changing how we approach human aging. Competing teams are tasked with developing and testing modalities that restore muscle, cognition and immune function by at least 10 years, with an ambitious goal of 20 years, in people ages 50 to 80 in a year or less.

The Buck-Toulouse team proposes a hybrid intervention that combines a daily ketone ester with a personalized intervention called Icope-ininsine, which includes exercise, cognitive training, nutrition and more. The IC clock is used to track and analyze responses between participants. ICOPE-INTIGENSE is the most robust non-medical intervention designed to improve intrinsic capacity to date.

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