I'm thrilled to share our new study out in @NatureMedicine! We show that a blood test can estimate how aged or youthful one’s organs are and that these organ ages predict future disease and lifespan. Final paper from my PhD in the @wysscoray lab. 🧵1/12 🔗

Awesome new lab led by Kenny Chan studying gut-brain-immune axis is hiring!! I highly recommend.

Super interesting postdoc opening with an awesome mentor!

RT @KevinJTraceyMD: The FDA’s approval of @SetPointMed’s vagus nerve stimulation device marks a significant victory for patients with rheum…

I'll be presenting this work and new unpublished work tomorrow 9am ET at AAIC. Also presenting a poster in the Monday session, poster #102349. Hope to see you there!

New preprint! tl;dr — We ran around late at night to record wild rats in NYC and figured out how to quantify their behavior and environment. 🧵 w/ Dima Batenkov, @zamakany, @e_mackevicius https://t.co/FbxHwbTR16

The first pivotal, FDA-enabling clinical trial of a longevity drug is now fully enrolled We will monitor these dogs for the next ~4 years, quantifying millions of data points across biological changes, quality of life, disease, + lifespan

https://t.co/V3qgmJp9Ca

Very happy to share this perspective published in @NatRevImmunol with Alex Leunig, @MatteoGianesel2 @ScottRussoPhD on communication and connection between #nervous and #immune systems. Was fun to put this piece together! 🧠 🦴 🩸 👇🏻 https://t.co/LzVjRM07x2

Special thanks to @LeGuenYann, Nimrod Rappoport, @BrunetLab, and Mike Greicius for their help and insights! Hope you found this interesting. Proteomics is ripe for the future of aging and health biomarkers! Full study 🔗: https://t.co/2bxtfEJ0TS 12/12

Overall, we show plasma proteomics provides insights on organ age in living people. • Biological age cannot be explained by one number. • Brain and immune system youth are uniquely linked to longevity. • Potential biomarkers to test effects of health interventions! 11/12

It’s exciting to think about how the brain might regulate lifespan. Most of us know age-related chronic inflammation driven by the immune system is bad. Interestingly, recent studies show the brain can directly control inflammation through the peripheral nervous system 🤔 10/12

The more aged organs, the higher the risk of death: 5-7 aged organs -> 4.5x higher risk, 8+ aged organs -> 8.3x higher risk. Surprisingly, brain and immune system youth were uniquely associated with longevity, ~50% protection. Youth in other organs did not show benefit. 9/12

Ultimately, does organ age predict remaining life? We found all organs (brain especially) were linked to mortality independent of gold-standard aging markers like PhenoAge. Organ ages had stronger and more consistent prediction compared to PhenoAge across train and test. 8/12

What about lifestyle and environmental factors? Smoking and alcohol were linked to aged organs and vigorous exercise with youth. Notably, estrogen supplementation in women with early menopause was linked to a younger immune system, offsetting menopause-related aging. 7/12

But does organ age actually predict health? Yes, the most striking example: Compared to normal brains, an aged brain was linked to 3x higher risk of Alzheimer’s, while a youthful brain cut risk by 74%, all independent of APOE genotype, the strongest genetic risk factor. 6/12

We confirmed organs age at different rates. The average correlation between organ age gaps was only ~0.25. We also identified “extreme agers”, people with especially old or youthful organs. Unlike before, we now detect youthful extreme agers too. 5/12

We set out to answer these by analyzing data from the UK Biobank: ~50,000 plasma proteomes linked to longitudinal electronic health records. For each person, we estimated the “age gap” for 11 organs, how much older or younger their organs appeared vs. peers of the same age. 4/12

Key questions we wanted to answer here: ✔ Are findings reproducible in larger cohorts? ✔ Does organ age predict future, not just prevalent, disease? ✔ Is it shaped by lifestyle or medication? ✔ Is organ youth in particular linked to future health and longevity? 3/12

We previously found that blood proteins can be traced back to organs of origin and their levels can be used to estimate organ-specific biological age. We found organs age at different rates, but many questions remained. 2/12 Recap 🔗: https://t.co/SGNbsPKdn1