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An increasing aging population poses a significant challenge to societies worldwide. A better understanding of the molecular, cellular, organ, tissue, physiological, psychological, and even sociological changes that occur with aging is needed in order to treat age-associated diseases. The field of aging research is rapidly expanding with multiple advances transpiring in many previously disconnected areas. Several major pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and consumer companies made aging research a priority and are building internal expertise, integrating aging research into traditional business models and exploring new go-to-market strategies. Many of these efforts are spearheaded by the latest advances in artificial intelligence, namely deep learning, including generative and reinforcement learning. To facilitate these trends, the Center for Healthy Aging at the University of Copenhagen and Insilico Medicine are building a community of Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) in these areas and launched the annual conference series titled "Aging Research and Drug Discovery (ARDD)" held in the capital of the pharmaceutical industry, Basel, Switzerland (www.agingpharma.org). This ARDD collection contains summaries from the 6th annual meeting that explored aging mechanisms and new interventions in age-associated diseases. The 7th annual ARDD exhibition will transpire 2nd-4th of September, 2020, in Basel.

Aging is emerging as a druggable target with growing interest from academia, industry and investors. New technologies such as artificial intelligence and advanced screening techniques, as well as a strong influence from the industry sector may lead to novel discoveries to treat age-related diseases. The present review summarizes presentations from the 7th Annual Aging Research and Drug Discovery (ARDD) meeting, held online on the 1st to 4th of September 2020. The meeting covered topics related to new methodologies to study aging, knowledge about basic mechanisms of longevity, latest interventional strategies to target the aging process as well as discussions about the impact of aging research on society and economy. More than 2000 participants and 65 speakers joined the meeting and we already look forward to an even larger meeting next year. Please mark your calendars for the 8th ARDD meeting that is scheduled for the 31st of August to 3rd of September, 2021, at Columbia University, USA., Aging, 12 (24), ISSN:1945-4589

The regeneration of tissues and organs has been a matter of dream and Greek mythology since ancient times as the liver regeneration in Prometheus punished by Zeus. It is now emerging a new way of treating injuries and diseases, which is based on regenerative medicine. Clinical and social needs related to the aging and diseases led to innovative medical therapies that will enable the repairing and regeneration of damaged tissues and organs. This position paper gives a future vision for 2030 of the biohybrid organs and tissues that will be used for patient therapy and in the overcoming the age-related pathologies. The research strategies for the next 20 years will focus on the implantation of bioartificial tissues and the induction of the regeneration. Biomaterials and bioreactor technologies will play pivotal roles in the regeneration and in the production of individualized biological implants. Future challenges will include the development of multifunctional biohybrid organs and tissues. These concepts are based on a multidisciplinary approach bringing together various scientific fields, which will contribute to the new and fascinating medical therapies.

What is aging? No one definition suits all contexts, but for the purposes of this chapter, the term can be defined quite precisely: aging is a progressive, lifelong process of alterations to the structure of the body that eventually compromise its function, culminating in death.

It may seem premature to be discussing approaches to the effective elimination of human aging as a cause of death at a time when essentially no progress has yet been made in even postponing it. However, two aspects of human aging combine to undermine this assessment. The first is that aging is happening to us throughout our lives but only results in appreciable functional decline after four or more decades of life: this shows that we can postpone aging arbitrarily well without knowing how to prevent it completely. The second is that the typical rate of refinement of dramatic technological breakthroughs is rather reliable (so long as public enthusiasm for them is abundant) and is fast enough to change such technologies (be they in medicine, transport, or computing) almost beyond recognition within a natural human lifespan. Here I explain, first, why it is reasonable to expect that (presuming adequate funding for the initial preclinical work) therapies that can add 30 healthy years to the remaining lifespan of healthy 55-year-olds will arrive within the next few decades, and, second, why those who benefit from those therapies will very probably continue to benefit from progressively improved therapies indefinitely and thus avoid debilitation or death from age-related causes at any age.

Keywords: longevity ; aging ; biomarkers ; geroprotectors ; epigenetics ; transcriptomics Reference EPFL-ARTICLE-227576doi:10.18632/aging.101163View record in Web of Science Record created on 2017-05-01, modified on 2017-05-26