Shiqing Cai to present at the 8th Aging Research & Drug Discovery Meeting 2021

25th of May, Tuesday, 2021, 2PM London — Shiqing Cai, PhD, will present the latest research on the topic Two conserved epigenetic regulators prevent healthy ageing – at the worlds’ largest annual Aging Research and Drug Discovery conference (8th ARDD). Dr Shiqing Cai is the Senior Investigator at the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Shiqing Cai got his bachelor degree in1997 from China Agricultural University in Beijing?and received his Ph.D. degrees from Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology & Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2002. From 2004 to 2009, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Dr.Federico Sesti lab at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey. He joined ION in October 2009 as Principal Investigator and the Head of the Laboratory of Ion Channel Regulation. His major research interests are regulation of potassium channels and aging of the nervous system.

“Aging is accompanied with behavioral and cognitive decline. The neural basis of age-related behavioral decline is largely unclear. Through genome-wide RNA-interference-based screening of genes that regulate behavioural deterioration in ageing C. elegans, we identify 59 genes as potential ageing modulators. Among these modulators, two neuronal epigenetic readers BAZ-2 and SET-6 accelerate behavioural deterioration in C. elegans by reducing mitochondrial function, repressing the expression of nuclear-encoded mitochondrial proteins. The mechanism is conserved in cultured mouse neurons and human cells. Examination of human databases shows that expression of the human orthologues of these C. elegans regulators, BAZ2B and EHMT1, in the frontal cortex increases with age and correlates positively with the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Ablation of Baz2b, the mouse orthologue of BAZ-2, attenuates age-dependent bodyweight gain and prevents cognitive decline in ageing mice. Taken together, these findings have unravelled conserved neuronal mechanism underlying healthy ageing, suggesting possible ways to achieve healthy ageing.” said Dr. Shiqing Cai, Senior Investigator at the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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/