Oxford scientists collaborate with A.I firm on ageing related diseases

The MouseAge.org initiative is being managed by UK charity; Biogerontology Research Foundation and will also include researchers from Harvard and Youth Laboratories in the development of tools for cross-species analysis and novel biomarkers of ageing and various diseases in mice.

Insilico Medicine which provides advanced machine learning services to skin care companies, is using the field of ‘omics’ to introduce a broad range of deep-learned biomarkers of ageing and age-related diseases.

Highly accurate biomarkers​

Meanwhile, Youth Laboratories is developing highly accurate biomarkers of ageing and health status using pictures and video that primarily focus on human skin.

While there are many experiments conducted around the world that examine the lifespan in mice, this artificially intelligent MouseAge system is set to help determine which interventions make mice look younger – providing correlations between health and appearance.

“The plan is to develop an accurate predictor of mouse biological age based on images of mice and then apply transfer learning techniques to other datasets and data types​," said Vadim Gladyshev, professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

Promising for the cosmetics industry…​

According to Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO of Insilico Medicine; ageing research can generate billions of quality-adjusted life years over time and save the global economy.

“We are very happy to contribute to and support the MouseAge project. Our Young AI system for tracking multiple biomarkers during human ageing is currently in the alpha stage and is launching in the fall​,” said Zhavoronkov.

The biological relevance of many of the biomarkers and interventions is yet to be established, and the MouseAge project contributes to the body of fundamental science required to bridge AI and longevity research.

The project campaign has been launched at research crowdfunding platform Lifespan.io​.