Scientists publish a blueprint to apply artificial intelligence to extend human longevity

27th of January, Wednesday, Hong Kong – Deep Longevity, a fully-owned subsidiary of Regent Pacific (HKEX: 0575), specializing in the development and the application of next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) for aging and longevity research, today announced the publication of an article in Nature Aging titled “Artificial Intelligence in Longevity Medicine”..

In the article the authors describe a new field of study converging AI, basic research, and medicine referred to as Longevity Medicine. Another definition for Longevity Medicine is the preventative and restorative medicine enabled by the deep aging clocks and artificial intelligence.

The article was authored by Alex Zhavoronkov, the founder and chief longevity officer of Deep Longevity, a computer scientist with a PhD in biophysics, Evelyne Yehudit Bischof, a practicing medical doctor trained in the top European and the US medical schools actively engaged in aging research and gerooncology at the University Hospital Basel in Switzerland, and at Shanghai University of Medicine and Health Sciences, and one of the most prolific scientists and entrepreneurs in artificial intelligence, Kai-Fu Lee.

The traditional approach to medicine is to treat diseases. However, scientists estimate (Cutler and Mattson, 2006) that complete elimination of cancer would result in only 2.3 year increase in life expectancy in the US at birth and 1.3 year gain at age 65. Complete elimination of influenza and pneumonia would yield gains of 0.5 years and 0.2 years in life expectancy in general.

These numbers are so small because there are many age-associated processes and diseases that manifest in unison in late life,¿ so the elimination of just one individual cause does not lead to the intuitively assumed gains in life expectancy. The main driver of most of these diseases and processes is aging.

Aging is a universal feature shared by all living beings. Modern artificial intelligence systems achieved superhuman accuracy in predicting the various features and learning complex patterns using many data types. When trained to predict age using large longitudinal data sets, deep neural networks (DNNs) often learn the basic biological and physiological processes that transpire slowly in time, are highly interdependent, and result in pathologies.

In the article the authors describe the basic framework for the application of deep learning to longevity research and the opportunities for longevity medicine in clinical care and the longevity industry.

“Artificial intelligence holds great potential for medicine in general; however, the ability to track and learn the minute changes that transpire in human body every second over the patient’s lifetime and in large number of patients enables the development of a new field of medicine – longevity medicine”, said Evelyne Yehudit Bischof, a physician at Human Longevity, Inc, and associate professor at Shanghai University of Medicine and Health Sciences.

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The article is available as open access at Nature Aging.

To cite the article:
Zhavoronkov, A., Bischof, E. & Lee, KF. Artificial intelligence in longevity medicine. Nat Aging 1, 5-7 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-020-00020-4

Deep Longevity has been acquired by Regent Pacific (HK:0575), a publicly-traded company. Deep Longevity is developing explainable artificial intelligence systems to track the rate of aging at the molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, system, physiological, and psychological levels. It is also developing systems for the emerging field of longevity medicine enabling physicians to make better decisions on the interventions that may slow down, or reverse the aging processes. Deep Longevity developed Longevity as a Service (LaaS)© solution to integrate multiple deep biomarkers of aging dubbed “deep aging clocks” to provide a universal multifactorial measure of human biological age. Originally incubated by Insilico Medicine, Deep Longevity started its independent journey in 2020 after securing a round of funding from the most credible venture capitalists specializing in biotechnology, longevity, and artificial intelligence. ETP Ventures, Human Longevity and Performance Impact Venture Fund, BOLD Capital Partners, Longevity Vision Fund, LongeVC, co-founder of Oculus, Michael Antonov, and other expert AI and biotechnology investors supported the company. Deep Longevity established a research partnership with one of the most prominent longevity organizations, Human Longevity, Inc. to provide a range of aging clocks to the network of advanced physicians and researchers.
https://longevity.ai/

Regent Pacific is a diversified investment group based in Hong Kong currently holding various corporate and strategic investments focusing on the healthcare, wellness and life sciences sectors. The Group has a strong track record of investments and has returned approximately US$298 million to shareholders in the 21 years of financial reporting since its initial public offering.