(This article was created in collaboration with Claude AI)
Key Takeaways:
Your Organs Age at Different Speeds. Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray, D.H. Chen, Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University, revealed that within our body, not every organ ages at the same rate.
Blood Proteins Predict Disease Years Later. By measuring thousands of different proteins in the blood, researchers now estimate the age of many major organs to predict whether people may develop disease 10-15 years later.
The Numbers Are Striking. There’s almost a 12-fold difference in risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease between people with the youngest brains and those with the oldest brains, based on data from 50,000 people in the UK Biobank studies.
Preventing Diseases on a Personalized Basis. The goal is to prevent diseases on a personalized basis with interventions that work for individuals, not just for the population as a whole.
Age Gaps Predict Future Disease. The difference between your actual chronological age and the predicted biological age of each organ is called an age gap, and this gap is a powerful predictor of future disease of that organ.
At DOC 2024’s “Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics” session, Stanford neuroscientist Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray presented a fundamental shift in how we think about aging and disease prediction.
“You cannot give the age of an individual with one number,” he explained, “because you wouldn’t know whether you have a young heart or a young brain in that individual.”
The brain takes 30 years to reach peak function, but begins aging even as it develops. By age 65, 3-5% of people suffer from clinically defined dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Above 85, that number jumps to roughly one-third.
But current clinical tests give limited information about the future of your body and how it’s aging, focusing rather on pathological processes when you have an organ that is already sick and not functioning well. Wyss-Coray’s team developed a way to measure organ-specific aging.
His approach scales up routine blood tests dramatically. “We took this approach basically on steroids and now measure thousands of different proteins that are derived from different organs,” he said.
These proteins are then analyzed to estimate their biological age. The difference between chronological age and biological age creates an “age gap,” which is a strong predictor of whether that organ will develop disease in the future.
Looking at data from the 50,000 people in the UK Biobank studies, and comparing those with the youngest brains to those with the oldest, Wyss-Coray’s team found an “almost a 12-fold difference in your risk to get Alzheimer’s disease 10 to 15 years later,” he said. This approach works for many different organ-specific diseases, enabling predictions for heart disease, kidney disease, and others.
The practical application led Wyss-Coray to co-found Vero Bioscience with collaborators Paul Coletta and Markus Okumus. The company’s approach involves measuring organ-specific proteins, estimating each organ’s age, and then working with physicians to address accelerated aging.
“The idea is really here to prevent diseases on a personalized basis and have an intervention that works for you and not just for the population as a whole,” Wyss-Coray concluded.