Ageing, sarcopenia and multimorbidity
With an ageing UK population, age-associated health problems have become core business for the NHS.
Yet capacity for translational ageing research remains limited, as noted by the 2021 House of Lords Inquiry on Ageing. There is a major opportunity to translate the progress being made in the understanding of fundamental ageing processes into advances in the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of common ageing syndromes such as sarcopenia and multimorbidity (also known as multiple long-term conditions).
Building on our internationally-recognised research on ageing, our vision is to address this opportunity and to enable a step-change in translational ageing research that will deliver significant health benefits for older people. Taking a broad-spectrum approach to developing a translational pipeline, and working with patient and public partners, we will build a UK first experimental ageing medicine platform.
Our work is structured around three linked work programmes that address the following hypotheses:
- There are tractable risk factors and ageing mechanisms underlying sarcopenia and multimorbidity that can be identified through longitudinal deep-phenotyped cohorts
- An experimental ageing medicine platform can be built for early translation of these mechanistic insights into proof-of-concept diagnostic, treatment and prevention studies
- This research can operate synergistically across the BRC Themes and wider NIHR infrastructure to pull through into better health for older people in the UK and beyond
People
Professor Miles Witham
Professor of Trials for Older People & Ageing, Sarcopenia and Multimorbidity Theme co-lead
Professor Rachel Cooper
McArdle Chair in Ageing, Professor of Translational Epidemiology & BRC Interdisciplinary Research co-lead
Dr Karen Suetterlin
NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer & Ageing, Sarcopenia and Multimorbidity Theme emerging leader
Dr Antoneta Granic
Senior Research Associate & Ageing, Sarcopenia and Multimorbidity Theme EDI lead
Daniela Carpinelli
AGE Research Coordinator & Ageing, Sarcopenia and Multimorbidity Theme Administrator
Helen Atkinson
Ageing, Sarcopenia and Multimorbidity Theme Patient and Public, Involvement & Engagement Manager
