Lectures and seminars Faculty event: Joris Deelen

Title

Elucidating the mechanisms underlying healthy ageing and longevity in humans using biomarkers and genetic approaches

Abstract

The main question we are trying to address in my group is; why do some people age more healthily than others? To this end, we are using two different approaches: (1) identify and validate biomarkers of healthy ageing and (2) investigate the effect of genetic variants that are unique to long-lived individuals on the functioning of pathways implicated in ageing and/or age-related diseases. During my talk I will discuss our work on metabolomics-based biomarkers, which is based on the Nightingale Health platform. Moreover, I will summarise the work we, and others, did to unravel the genetic component of human longevity and related traits. I will present a novel pipeline that we created to functionally characterise (in cell lines and mice) rare genetic variants that we identified in exceptionally long-lived individuals or human families exhibiting longevity. 

About the speaker

Joris Deelen obtained his PhD at the Leiden University Medical Center in The Netherlands in 2014 in the group of Prof. Dr. Eline Slagboom. In 2016, he joined the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing as a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Dr. Linda Partridge, where he was promoted to independent Research Group Leader in 2020. In 2022 he received both an ERC Starting Grant and a Longevity Impetus Grant to support his work on the functional characterisation of genetic variants linked to human longevity. Read more about him here: Joris Deelen 

Join the faculty event in Wargentin! After the seminar, faculty lunch will be served in Ljusgården.