Ageing Research Translation (ART) of Healthy Ageing Network

The global population is ageing - more people are living longer lives and a greater proportion of the population are aged 65 and over than at any time in the past. This is clearly good news, however improvements in healthspan (that is, the number of years people spend in good health, living independently) have not kept pace with improvements in lifespan (the number of years people live for). This means that the additional years of life are not always lived in good health.

To address this, the UK government has set the ambitious target of ensuring that people can enjoy at least five additional healthy, independent years of life by 2035. However, a recent House of Lords Science and Technology Committee report on healthy ageing has concluded that this target is unlikely to be met unless we develop new ways to research ageing that lead to the identification of effective methods to promote healthy ageing across life.

In particular, the House of Lords committee noted the need to join up different areas of ageing research to make sure that discoveries in the laboratory are followed up by studies in people.

The aim of the Ageing Research Translation (ART) of Healthy Ageing Network is to address this scientific challenge. Our Network will create links between laboratory research, detailed studies in humans, and existing sets of information on health, illness and lifestyle. We will combine these areas of expertise to build a unique Translational Platform (a series of studies with standardised protocols, shared recruitment methods and shared outcome measures) for Healthy Ageing across the Life Course to test ways to improve people's health and wellbeing from birth to old age.

To achieve this vision, the Network will bring together researchers from different academic disciplines across the UK and beyond, including people with expertise in the biology of ageing, epidemiology, patient care, physiology, clinical research studies including trials, mathematics, statistics and data science along with members of the public and representatives from charities, policymakers and industry.

Through their involvement in the Network and the wide range of activities organised, members will be supported to work together to find new ways to study underlying biological processes of ageing in humans and, to use the evidence generated from this research to develop and test interventions that promote healthy ageing. We will hold a series of stakeholder meetings and conferences to bring people together to form new links and share knowledge.

Importantly, we will nurture the careers of new researchers. The ART of Healthy Ageing Network will provide the training and opportunities that they need to build successful careers in translational ageing research and work successfully with a broad range of colleagues. Finally, the ART of Healthy Ageing Network will promote opportunities for closer working through a series of pilot projects, enabling different groups of researchers to start solving problems and overcoming technical, ethical and organisational barriers to make sure that we can build this UK-wide platform to conduct ageing studies in humans.

The activities of the ART of Healthy Ageing Network will deliver a growing interdisciplinary network of researchers, a thriving community of early career researchers with interdisciplinary training, a broad and engaged stakeholder community, a clear road map for growing the Network and developing UK infrastructure, and projects showing initial proof-of-concept for our Translational Platform for Healthy Ageing across the Life Course. It will generate new collaborations between researchers with the critical mass necessary to develop credible applications for further funding.

By delivering additional funding and hence capacity to do more research, our ART of Healthy Ageing Network will accelerate translational Ageing research in the UK and internationally to deliver the goal of improving healthspan for all.