Advancing age is the major risk factor for many chronic diseases. Instead of tackling each of these diseases one by one, we should focus on the identification of shared mechanisms that compress multimorbidity and thereby contribute to healthy aging.
Why do some people age more healthily than others? This is the main question we try to address in our research group. To this end, we use two different approaches. The first approach is the identification and characterization of genetic mechanisms underlying healthy aging and extended lifespan in humans. The second approach is the identification of biomarkers of healthy aging, using data from large-scale international collaborations of human studies, that can subsequently be used as surrogate endpoints in clinical trials or intervention studies that are aimed at improving general health.
The overarching aim of our research is to identify biomarkers that provide information about the molecular mechanisms underlying aging and can be introduced in the clinic to identify vulnerable people in the population that are at high risk for developing multimorbidity.