#12 Inside Singapore's village of longevity
Can one of the world's oldest populations become 5 years older?
The Agenda 👇
News bulletin 📰
Inside Singapore's village of longevity
Recent funding in longevity 💰
Upcoming events 📅
Jobs in longevity 🧑💼
1/ News bulletin 📰
🇸🇦 Saudi Government and Insilico Medicine partner to expand region’s biotech capabilities - Memorandum of Understanding set to accelerate AI-driven biotech
🧠 Eisai and Biogen’s Alzheimer's drug study yields positive results - To my Neuro-buff readers, keen to hear your thoughts!
🇬🇧 Certific and PocDoc sign collaboration - pilot schemes for cardiovascular disease will be carried out with the NHS
🧬 UCL team discover new mechanism extends life of immune system - Published in Nature Cell Biology, discovery could have clinical utility for cancer and dementia
🐁 High-fat diet leads to joint degeneration in rats - new study demonstrates obesity accelerates ageing and is associated with several age-associated diseases
2/ Inside Singapore's village of longevity
The NUHS Centre for Healthy Longevity (NUHS CHL) launched last week a longevity clinical research unit to target the biggest risk factor for chronic disease – biological age. NUHS CHL has set itself one clear mission: to increase the average healthspan by 5 years in the Singapore population by slowing biological aging. The Centre’s focus is set to be on developing and validating ageing clocks in the Singapore population to test the efficacy of novel therapeutics in delaying biological ageing and extending healthspan. This includes plans to develop an integrative pre-clinical laboratory model and clinical human research pipeline that will focus on identifying and treating biological hallmarks of disease.
Singapore is soon to face a ‘silver tsunami’, with, 25% of its population estimated to be aged 65 or older by 2030. Although medical advancement and public health measures have improved life expectancy among Singaporeans to 84.8 years, its healthy life expectancy, or healthspan, has increased to only 74.2 years.
Historically, the South-East Asian population has been understudied in clinical research; with the three major races, Chinese, Malay and Indian, accounting for almost a third of the world’s population. Insights from the Centre’s research will have therefore global impact, particularly for Asian populations.
The CHL has also announced a clinical and translational partnership with the Healthy Longevity Translational Research Programme at NUS, whose research to slow ageing, and improve healthspan has received $5 million from the Lien Foundation. The collaboration has launched the ‘Hacking Ageing’ initiative which comprises three core themes: the first is a series of clinical studies to test novel supplements and repurposed therapeutics to slow ageing in adults aged 40-60 years. The second theme is to use “multi-omics” data to personalise supplements, repurposed therapeutics, and other interventions for optimal healthspan extension in these middle-aged participants. The third focuses on extending healthspan in older adults through strength training exercise, harnessing the Foundation’s Gym Tonic community of seniors.
Professor Brian Keith Kennedy, internationally recognised leader in longevity research, will be helming the Centre with co-director, Professor Andrea Britta Maier, a geriatrician by training and intensivist of chronic diseases. The 1,600 sqft CHL is based at Alexandra Hospital with a lab at NUS Medicine and will conduct trials with healthy participants from the age of 30. The Centre will develop strategies that integrate a combination of nutritional, pharmacological and exercise programmes for personalised adoption with the goal of optimising and individual’s peak performance during the entire lifespan. This means the screening programme will start from as young as 30!
If you are based in Singapore, or are launching your own longevity venture, there will be no shortage of opportunity in the region for years to come! This newsletter will be following the CHL closely over the coming months and be sure to report back how the Centre performs.
3/ Recent funding in longevity 💰
4/ Upcoming events 📅
🇨🇭 On September 28-30 the Longevity Investors Conference (LIC) are hosting their third annual conference in Gstaad! It will be a great opportunity to learn about diverse longevity investment strategies, network with like-minded leaders, and get acquainted with the recent scientific breakthroughs by the leading longevity experts in the world.
🇩🇪 The Rejuvenation Startup Summit returns this year in Berlin, Germany on October 14-15. This is a vibrant networking event that brings together startups and members of the longevity venture capital/investor ecosystem, all aiming to create therapies to vastly extend the healthy human lifespan.
🇧🇪 The Eurosymposium on Health Ageing is a unique biennial meeting of scientists working on the biology of ageing, and their next meeting is in Belgium, November 24-26th.
5/ Jobs in longevity 🧑💼
Scholar Rock Inc. // Sr. Manager, Supply Chain // Cambridge, MA
NewLimit // Senior/ Research Associate, Functional Genomics // San Francisco, CA
Juvena Therapeutics // Head of Translational Biology // Redwood City, CA
Rejuvenate Bio // Chief Medical Officer // San Diego, CA
Altos Labs // US general interest - UK general interest // US - UK