Brighton researchers at the heart of UK project to transform older age health

The BLAST (Building links in ageing science and translation) network brings together biomedical researchers from across the country to increase our understanding of how the ageing process causes illness and impairment in later life. It will set the nationwide research agenda for the development of new tools and interventions to help people stay healthy as they grow old and treat conditions for which little can be done today.

Potential new developments include better ways of dealing with senescent cells – dysfunctional cells which build up as we get older – which are known to be a major cause of ageing. Treatments could include finding ways to remove them from tissue or learning how to activate the cellular recycling process to help these cells function well again.

Breakthroughs such as these would greatly increase older people’s quality of life in the UK and have a significant impact on national productivity and wealth. Research in the USA, for example, found that adding just one year to healthy life expectancy would add trillions of dollars to the economy.

Funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Medical Research Council, BLAST is directed by two of the UK’s leading experts on ageing, Professor Richard Faragher, Professor of Biogerontology in the School of Applied Sciences at University of Brighton and Professor Lynne Cox of Oxford University. Key cross-disciplinary expertise is also contributed by Professor Richard Hartley Professor of Chemical Biology at Glasgow University and Dr Colin McClure of Queen’s University Belfast.

BLAST will partner with academics across multiple disciplines including biologists, engineers, chemists, social scientists and economists, as well as with biotech, pharma, business, healthcare professionals and policymakers to identify effective interventions in ageing processes and promote the implementation of findings through translation into policy and practice.

Professor Faragher said: “We are at the cusp of scientific developments that will transform health in later years here in the UK and around the world. Keeping millions of older people healthy and out of hospital will hugely reduce costs and pressures on the NHS, GPs and the wider health and care systems. Not only will this benefit us as individuals, living longer, healthier and more productive lives, it will also help the UK continue to lead the way as a healthcare pioneer recognised around the world.

“A race is now on, and the countries and companies that can capitalise on the biology of ageing will be in a position to shape global healthcare provision as life expectancy continues to rise to levels previous generations could only dream of.”

The BLAST project is one response to the UK government’s pledge to increase the healthy life expectancy of the population by an extra five years by 2035 without increasing inequality. Ten other ageing networks, bringing together forty UK universities, have also been funded by BBSRC and MRC, but with BLAST playing a key role in harmonising and facilitating this new national effort.

This recognises the leading role University of Brighton researchers have played for more than two decades in deciphering the fundamental biology of ageing – not least through Professor Faragher's pioneering studies of cell senescence and the ways in which it can be reversed. University of Brighton students work at postgraduate level alongside Professor Faragher and other leading researchers in the Centre for Stress and Age-Related Disease on the distinctive Stress, Ageing and Chronic Disease MRes.

In addition to his work at University of Brighton, Professor Faragher is a past Chair of the British Society for Research on Ageing and a Director of the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR). He has been awarded the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Medal for scientific achievement and the Lord Cohen Medal of the British Society for Research on Ageing for his work on cell senescence. He also holds a Living Legend award from Help the Aged for his championship of older people and the use of research for their benefit.