Jan Hoeijmakers to present at the 8th Aging Research & Drug Discovery Meeting 2021

Friday, 11th of June, 2021, London — Jan Hoeijmakers, Ph.D., will present the latest research on the topic DNA damage induced transcription stress and its connection with aging and neurodegeneration and the impact of nutrition at the worlds’ largest annual Aging Research and Drug Discovery conference (8th ARDD). Dr. Jan Hoeijmakers is the Professor of Molecular Genetics at the Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Jan Hoeijmakers research focuses on the mechanism and clinical impact of mammalian DNA repair. His team cloned ~half of all key genes involved in nucleotide excision and transcription-coupled repair pathways, enabling elucidation of the underlying molecular mechanisms. His laboratory generated the largest set of mouse repair mutants providing insight into the etiology of human repair disorders, such as Cockayne syndrome (CS) and trichothiodystrophy (TTD), including the identification of accelerated but bona fide aging. He discovered that accumulating DNA damage and consequent transcription stress are a main cause of systemic aging, but also trigger an anti-aging, calorie-restriction (CR)-like ‘survival’ response that prioritizes resilience and maintenance mechanisms at the expense of growth.

His team found that applying actual CR to progeroid mouse repair mutants, trippled lifespan and dramatically delayed all aspects of accelerated aging by lowering DNA damage, disclosing at least in part why CR delays aging. Counterintuitive clinical application of reduced nutrition to CS/TTD children strongly improved neurofunction and overall health and led to a complete reversal of the nutritional guidelines for CS and TTD, instead of more patients should get less nutrition. These discoveries have wide medical implications for many aging-related diseases, most strongly neurodegeneration, for reducing side effects of chemo- and radiotherapy, and ischemia reperfusion injury associated with surgery and organ transplantation.

“Understanding the molecular basis of aging will enable healthy aging.” said Dr. Jan Hoeijmakers, Professor of Molecular Genetics at the Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Jan Hoeijmakers heads research teams in the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology (Utrecht), the CECAD in Cologne and the Erasmus Medical Center. For his scientific achievements he has obtained numerous (inter)national awards and distinctions.

The conference proceedings of the ARDD are commonly published in peer-reviewed journals with the talks openly available at http://www.agingpharma.org. Please review the conference proceedings for 2019 and 2020.

“Aging is emerging as a druggable condition with multiple pharmaceuticals able to alter the pace of aging in model organisms. The ARDD brings together all levels of the field to discuss the most pressing obstacles in our attempt to find efficacious interventions and molecules to target aging. The 2021 conference is the best yet with top level speakers from around the globe. I’m extremely excited to be able to meet them in person at the University of Copenhagen in late summer.”, said Morten Scheibye-Knudsen, MD, Ph.D., University of Copenhagen.

“Aging research is growing faster than ever on both academia and industry fronts. The ARDD meeting unites experts from different fields and backgrounds, sharing with us their latest groundbreaking research and developments. Our last ARDD meeting took place online and was a great success. This year’s event will be a hybrid meeting with virtual and in-person attendees. I am particularly excited that being part of the ARDD 2021 meeting will provide an amazing opportunity for young scientists presenting their own work as well as meeting the experts in the field.” said Daniela Bakula, Ph.D., University of Copenhagen

“Aging research is gaining traction in the biopharmaceutical industry. To my knowledge, 6 out of the top 30 pharmaceutical companies in the world prioritized aging research for early-stage discovery or therapeutic pipeline development and several companies employ artificial intelligence for this purpose. We organize the annual ARDD conference for eight years in a row and the level of interest in aging biomarkers and noticed exponential growth in registrations over the past two years”, said Alex Zhavoronkov, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, and the founder of Deep Longevity.

Building on the success of the ARDD conferences, the organizers developed the “Longevity Medicine” course series with some of the courses offered free of charge at Longevity.Degree covered in the recent Lanced Healthy Longevity paper titled Longevity medicine: upskilling the physicians of tomorrow.

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At ARDD, leaders in the aging, longevity, and drug discovery field will describe the latest progress in the molecular, cellular and organismal basis of aging and the search for interventions. Furthermore, the meeting will include opinion leaders in AI to discuss the latest advances of this technology in the biopharmaceutical sector and how this can be applied to interventions. Notably, this year we are expanding with a workshop specifically for physicians where the leading-edge knowledge of clinical interventions for healthy longevity will be described. ARRD intends to bridge clinical, academic and commercial research and foster collaborations that will result in practical solutions to one of humanity’s most challenging problems: aging. Our quest? To extend the healthy lifespan of everyone on the planet.

In the Scheibye-Knudsen lab we use in silico, in vitro and in vivo models to understand the cellular and organismal consequences of DNA damage with the aim of developing interventions. We have discovered that DNA damage leads to changes in certain metabolites and that replenishment of these molecules may alter the rate of aging in model organisms. These findings suggest that normal aging and age-associated diseases may be malleable to similar interventions. The hope is to develop interventions that will allow everyone to live healthier, happier and more productive lives.

Deep Longevity has been acquired by Regent Pacific (SEHK:0575.HK), whose shares are listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. 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://deeplongevity.com/

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. https://www.regentpac.com/