An AGE clock for RESIlience in SweaT- AGE RESIST
Description: Aging is defined as the “progressive loss of physiological integrity, leading to impaired function and increased vulnerability to death”. The vulnerability is increased by the loss of resilience and stress resistance. Different biomarkers/tests, such as the pan-mammalian epigenetic clock, the inflammatory aging clock (iAge), and the timed walking test, have been developed and are applied within the R&D environment of aging. However, these biomarkers/tests cover single biomarker types only, are laborious, and mainly depend on specialized laboratories. A diagnostic tool integrating several types of biomarkers for aging in parallel, continuous, and real life is still lacking for convenient application in everyday life. In this cutting-edge project, an interdisciplinary consortium of renowned researchers from world-leading academic institutions have teamed up to develop the first wearable sweat-sensing platform to determine the biological age of resilience non-invasively, continuously, and lab-independently. Building on the successful research work from Aging, Wearable Sweat Sensing, Physiology, and Translational Medicine, a test is developed to determine if a person is physiologically resilient regarding the biological age. The AGE RESIST project is planned as follows: (i) Explore novel sweat-based molecular biomarkers to build up an age clock of resilience using machine learning algorithms, (ii) prospectively validate the biomarkers, (iii) implement the biomarkers into a cutting-edge wearable sweat analyzing platform, and (iv) a proof-of-concept study is conducted to demonstrate the feasibility to apply the sensing platform directly on humans. This project is highly innovative and promising as it (I) translates the knowledge gained from basic aging research over many years into a clinically applicable test, (II) determines the biological age of resilience from sweat, which is a completely novel approach, (III) fosters non-invasive, continuous, and lab-independent health monitoring by advancing the field of clinical wearable sweat analysis, (IV) once successfully validated, provides great potential for clinical medicine to guide surgical/therapeutic indication and rehabilitation especially in older and frail patients, and (V) brings world-leading and international researchers from different academic fields into close discussion and collaboration with the public, patients, physicians, and regulatory to develop a clinically meaningful solution.
Amount: CHF 991,100
Funding type: research
Funder scheme: Project funding
Start date: 2024-09-01
End date: 2028-08-31
Investigator: Goldhahn, Jörg
Institution: ETH Zurich – ETHZ
Subfield: Biomedical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Funded outputs count: 0
Funder award ID: 10000659
OpenAlex ID: G391497672