Establishing a network to catalyse collaboration for reducing immune ageing (CARINA: CAtalyst Reducing ImmuNe Ageing)

Maintaining good health across the lifecourse is influenced by a large range of different factors, and it is important that we understand all these factors to be able to take steps to prevent ill health in older age. Our immune system plays a crucial role in many aspects of health. Most people understand our immune system protects us from infectious disease, and when it malfunctions it can cause autoimmune disease.

However, the actions of the immune system can have much wider consequences and it has been implicated in many different diseases such as cardiovascular disease, dementia, diabetes, kidney disease and cancer. Indirect effects occur also, for example inflammation can restrict movement in the joints, which leads to reduction in activity and consequential loss of fitness.

Therefore, understanding how to maintain a healthy Immune System throughout the lifecourse is essential to a healthy older age.

There are multiple different components of the immune system itself, which means that specialism in research usually results in individual researchers studying just one aspect of immune ageing in isolation. Moreover, the immune system is itself affected by other systems and a full understanding of immunity needs to consider the effect of other influences such as nutrition, metabolism, exercise, chronobiology, neurobiology, microbiota.

Understanding social drivers of health-related behaviour is also critical to communicating information about interventions that have long term beneficial consequences. Therefore, it is critical that we build collaborative teams of researchers to facilitate improved immune health in older age. To sustain the activity through to the long term it is essential that we encourage and support early career academics to take a lead in this area.

The proposed CARINA network will actively engage with researchers from different disciplines, and at different career stages, to facilitate focussing their research towards immune ageing. An initial meeting will showcase a short summary of activities from a number of individuals who have already expressed an interest (2 slides, 5 mins each). Breakout sessions of different groups will be set tasks to discuss how to deliver each of our aims, which are:

A gap analysis of key research questions Establish new interdisciplinary partnerships Assimilate new technology and experimental systems Explore disciplinary cross-over with immunity Investigate routes for intervention to enhance immunity Widen stakeholder engagement

Each group will summarize their discussions and we will identify key observations that will be collated and sent to the whole network. This identifies initial key areas of potential for integrated expertise and would potentially deliver research impact.

Subsequently, platforms for information and data sharing will be established. There will be a series of online meetings where we will expand our discussions to further pinpoint areas that coalesce research activity towards a new direction for impact on ageing immunity and identify any further individual/institutional/industrial members of the network.

Our early career academics will be encouraged to lead the discussions. A second face to face meeting, within the first 12 months, will intermix the discussion groups and structure the discussions around the promising areas for research - gaps that can ideally be met through interdisciplinary studies. Months 12-24 will follow a similar pattern of meetings, the difference being that we will be able to identify areas for interdisciplinary grants by the partners of the network.

Subcontracted support from the British Society for Immunology (BSI) is crucial for effective communication and conference delivery and is more cost effective than recruiting a single Project Manager, as many different experienced individuals from the BSI can deliver support for different aspects of the network.