Findings

The main objective of this research field was to emphasise the potential of biogerontological breakthroughs to support active ageing and the economic potential of procedures and intervention designed to offset the ageing process.

The first part of the work in the biogerontology field was to strengthen the links and improve the flow of information between natural scientists/medics and other disciplines. Important achievements in the field of biogerontology suitable for translation were defined and a number of reviews on these topics published. A total of five reviews have so far been published, in which nutrition, gender and healthy life style were specifically addressed.

These reviews represent the first output from this research:

Cava, E. and Fontana, L. (2013) ‘Will calorie restriction work in humans?’ (PDF, 351KB), Aging, July, 5(7), 99, pp. 507–514.

Rizza, W., Veronesea, N. and Fontana, L. (2014) ‘What are the roles of calorie restriction and diet quality in promoting healthy longevity?’ (PDF, 602KB) Ageing Research Reviews, 13, pp. 38–45.

Fontana, L. and Hu, F. B. (2014) ‘Optimal body weight for health and longevity: bridging basic, clinical, and population research’ (PDF, 581KB), Aging Cell, pp. 1–10, Rizza et al., Ageing Research Reviews.

Mattson, M. P., Allison, D. B., Fontana, L., Harvie, M., Longo, V. D., Malaisse, W. J., Mosley, M., Notterpek, L., Ravussin, E., Scheer, F. A., Seyfried, T. N., Varady, K. A. and Panda, S. (2014) ‘Meal frequency and timing in health and disease’ (PDF, 959KB), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. USA, November. 25;111:16647-16653.

Giefing-Kröll, C., Berger, P., Lepperdinger, G. and Grubeck-Loebenstein, B. (2015) ‘How sex and age affect immune responses, susceptibility to infections and response to vaccination’ (PDF, 1MB), Aging Cell 2015, 1–13.

MoPAct Policy Brief 5 – Biogerontology a novel tool to stay healthy in old age (PDF, 749KB).

Research on treating ageing:

Fontana, L., Kennedy, B. K., Longo, V. D., Seals, D. and Melov, S. (2014) ‘Medical research: treat ageing’, Nature, 511, pp. 405–407.