Award details

AGEing and NuTrition Sensing (AGENT)

Reference	BB/W018381/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Gary Frost
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Dr Bernadette Carroll, Dr Viktor Korolchuk, Professor John McLaughlin, Professor Craig Ritchie
Institution	Imperial College London
Department	Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	196,853
Status	Current
Type	Research Grant
Start date	14/02/2022
End date	13/02/2024
Duration	24 months

Abstract

Lifestyle and particularly nutrition has profound effect on ageing. Although it is known that aging has an effect on metabolism, there is no real understanding about why some people metabolically age at a faster rate than others. A number of hypotheses exist to explain how nutrition and ageing impacts metabolism to effect ageing. However, there are still major gaps in our knowledge. For example, food insecurity and shortage, which is associated with accelerated deterioration in healthspan, is a situation in which nutrient sensing becomes aberrant, paradoxically, food insecure people are in fact more likely to be obese, which severely impacts health span. Our proposal directly addresses the challenge area of the call "health span and quality of life in old age" it does this by bringing together a multidisciplinary network of scientist that have not worked together previously to focus on nutrient sensing and ageing. The network will cut across a wide number of disciplines. From nutrition to cellular biology and human physiology to population health. To address the current gaps in knowledge and to develop deeper mechanistic and translational understanding in the area of nutrient sensing and ageing, we have brought together five university partners that are Imperial College London, Newcastle, Bristol, Manchester and Edinburgh, all of which have a track record in either nutrition, nutrient sensing and ageing. Although each University has a lead CoI, they bring with them many specialities and networks based in their institution, which are both established and new to the area of nutrition sensing as ageing. This has given us a highly multidisciplinary start to the network that goes form fundamental cell biology to policy making. The network will use hackathon methodology (we have used successfully in other networks) to develop multidisciplinary research topics which the network will support to develop into full grant applications and papers.

Summary

While it is known that age has a profound effect on metabolism, there is no real understanding about why some people metabolically age at a faster rate than others. A number of hypotheses exist to explain how nutrition and ageing impacts metabolism to effect ageing. Studies in model organisms have shown that nutrition and the systems used to sense the nutritional environment play a role in ageing and several genes and pathways have been identified that are associated with greater lifespan. The proposed network will focus on nutrient sensing and the role it plays in the ageing process, we aim to address the priority area of "healthspan and quality of life in old age". To address the current gaps in knowledge and to develop deeper mechanistic and translational understanding in the area of nutrient sensing and ageing, we have brought together five university partners that are Imperial College London, Newcastle, Bristol, Manchester and Edinburgh, all of which have a track record in either nutrition, nutrient sensing and ageing. Although each University has a lead CoI, they bring with them many specialities and networks based in their institution, which are both established and new to the area of nutrition sensing and ageing. This has given us a highly multidisciplinary start to the network that spans fundamental cell biology through to policy making. The network will use hackathon methodology (a methodology which we have used successfully in other networks) to develop multidisciplinary research topics which the network will support to develop into full grant application and contribute to the scientific literature. The network will have an open-door policy to welcoming new members into the network. We will also develop an early career network to ensure capacity development. As a major aim of the network is to develop new ideas for research application we believe that this will give the network life far outside of the funding period.

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	Ageing Interdiciplinary Research Network [2021]
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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