June 18, 2020 at 11:00
Teams Talk
“Predictors of Biological Age”
Dr. Maria Giulia Bacalini, PhD
IRCCS Istituto delle Scienze Neurologiche di Bologna
Host: Prof. Maria Rosa Ciriolo
Aging is the major etiological agent for the development of several non-communicable diseases. According to this view, age-related diseases represent a deviation from the trajectories of healthy aging and are characterized by an acceleration of its cellular/molecular changes, leading to a discrepancy between the chronological age of individuals and their biological age. This discrepancy can be grabbed by a biomarker of aging. Given the increase in human lifespan and the burden of age-related diseases, the search for reliable biomarkers of aging is a hot topic in biomedical research, which has been boosted in the last 10 years thanks to technological advances and the “omic” revolution. Different predictors of biological age have been proposed so far. During the talk, I will review some of them (with particular regard to telomere length, glycomic age, brain age and epigenetic age), showing you some of their applications, from the study of major non-communicable diseases to the analysis of the effects of lifestyle or socioeconomic status.
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Dr. Maria Giulia Bacalini obtained her PhD in Human Biology and Genetics at the University of Rome “Sapienza”. Then she moved to the “Alma Mater Studiorum” University of Bologna joining the group of Prof. Claudio Franceschi, a pioneer on the study on centenarians and the theory of inflammaging that obtained many national and large EU-funded projects. MGB actively contributed to the activity of research group dealing with “omic” approaches, with a particular focus on the epigenetic remodeling which occurs during aging and in age-related conditions. She is now a researcher at IRCCS Istituto delle Scienze Neurologiche di Bologna where she is involved in the management and the development of several H2020 projects expanding the knowledge on the biological basis of major neurodegenerative diseases and of their relationship with the aging process.
