How close are we to developing treatments to combat ageing? Lords to hear evidence

In the first session the committee will ask what advances are being made in medical treatments that target age-related diseases and the ageing process, in order to tackle the consequences of ageing as a whole.

• Professor Sir Michael Ferguson, Regius Professor of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee, Wellcome Trust Board of Governors
• Professor Dame Linda Partridge, Managing Director, Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing, and Institute of Healthy Ageing, UCL
• Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed, Professor of Molecular and Clinical Pharmacology, University of Liverpool
• Professor Miles Witham, Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University

The session will begin at 10:15 in Committee Room 1 of the House of Lords. Other questions likely to be asked include:

• Should ageing be treated as a disease/condition in and of itself?
• In what timeframes may treatments that tackle the ageing process be ready for use in the NHS?
• If treatments that target the whole ageing process (such as senolytics) prove to be promising, how and to whom would they be administered?

The second session will focus additionally on the effect of ageing on the immune system, and whether there are adequate funding opportunities for researchers studying the ageing system as whole.

• Professor Arne Akbar, Professor of Immunology, UCL; and President, British Society for Immunology
• Professor Lynne Cox, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford
• Professor Jesus Gil, Professor of Cell Proliferation, Imperial College London

Other questions likely to be asked include:

• What is the state of the evidence underlying senolytics drugs to target the processes of ageing?
• What challenges face the development and trialling of treatments that target the ageing process?
• How does an ageing immune system interact with other systems in the body?