A Biomarker of Aging Based on Protein Glycosylation Patterns

Today I'll note the development of a commercial aging clock based on glycosylation patterns of immunoglobulin G, a marker for the inflammatory status of the immune system, by startup biotech company GlycanAge. There are at present any number of approaches to measuring biological age, the burden of cell and tissue damage that leads to dysfunction. Stage of development varies widely, with the most work to date being on clocks based on changes in DNA methylation. There are also clocks that use protein levels in blood, weighted combinations of simple measures such as grip strength, and other approaches besides these. The important goal in these efforts is to produce a measure that can quickly be applied before and after a potential intervention to quantify the degree to which it reverses aging. A generally accepted, fast, cheap measure of age would greatly accelerate development of rejuvenation therapies, and might finally focus more research attention on repair-based interventions that have a greater chance of producing large effect sizes. That still lies a way in the future, however. The challenge with near all of these clocks is that they are constructed by comparing data that is far downstream of the causes of aging against outcomes such as mortality risk. Thus there is no good understanding of what exactly it is that these biomarkers of aging are actually measuring, under the hood. The glycosylation clock is more clear than most, in that it is very directly an assessm...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs