The Aging Proteome: Clocks, Cohorts, and Clinical Trials

Geroscience proposes that slowing the biology of aging could delay many chronic diseases at once. Testing that idea requires biomarkers that are precise, reproducible, and responsive to intervention.

In this GEN webinar, two experts will show how ultra-sensitive, multiplexed proteomics can measure both the pace of aging and the effects of interventions designed to change it. In his talk, Michael Corley, PhD, will explain why the aging field is limited less by ideas than by evidence, and how completed clinical trials with banked samples can be used to screen candidate interventions quickly. He will share proteomic and epigenetic findings from a randomized trial of semaglutide, including cardiometabolic and inflammatory protein changes during treatment and after the drug is stopped. He will also describe XPRIZE Healthspan, a global competition whose central biorepository will hold samples from 20 intervention trials.

Then Xiao-Jun Ma, PhD, will present a data-driven proteomic module identified across three cohorts that tracks biological aging. He will show how a clock built from this module relates to mortality, cognition, and comorbidity burden, how it compares with DNA methylation clocks, and what it reveals about when proteomic aging accelerates. Key takeaways include:

• Why evidence, not ideas, is the bottleneck in geroscience, and how completed trials can help close the gap
• How proteomic measurements capture intervention effects that epigenetic clocks may miss
• How an intrinsic, unsupervised protein module can serve as a portable measure of biological aging
• What large, harmonized trial biorepositories mean for biomarker discovery in aging research

A live Q&A session will follow the presentation offering you a chance to pose questions to our expert panelists.

Produced with support from: