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Diseases of Ageing’ will review what is known about the origins of the major diseases of ageing, in the context of new insights into the fundamental biology of ageing. It will work towards replacing the fragmented view of senescent pathologies that characterises contemporary medicine, with an integrated overview of senescence (ageing), the diseases that it causes and their interrelationships. You will gain an insight into how the knowledge obtained through the study of the biology of ageing can be harnessed to achieve better health in older humans.

The topics covered can be subdivided into 3 parts:

1. The biology of ageing.

You will learn the main concepts and findings in contemporary biogerontology, including: the potential causes of ageing and the diseases of ageing; the main theories of ageing (mechanistic and evolutionary); study of ageing in model organisms and how it relates to human ageing; genetics of human ageing. We will focus on the target of rapamycin (TOR) pathway and cellular senescence due to their relevance to potential treatments.

2. The diseases of ageing.

You will learn about the main diseases of ageing, including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, dementias and cancer, masculoskeletal ageing and their inter-connections. The diseases will be discussed from a biomedical and population perspective and their interrelationships and links to ageing will be emphasized.

3. Future treatments for diseases of ageing.

We will explore how the view of diseases of ageing can be integrated with the basic biology of ageing. Prospects for treating diseases of ageing by treating senescence will be explored. The students will learn how ageing itself could be targeted by interventions aimed at improving human health with strong focus on the TOR pathway and cellular senescence.

The module is offered through the Institute of Healthy Ageing with key input from clinicians and epidemiologists from Department of Population Science and Experimental Medicine and acrossÌýUCL.

Indicative lecture topics – based on module content in 2022/23

• Intro and overview of diseases of ageing
• Evolutionary and mechanistic theories of ageing
• Lessons from model organism biogerontology
• Cellular senescence as a cause of senescent pathology
• Human ageing: Genes versus environment
• Interactions between diseases
• The ageing eye
• Age-related decline in peripheral metabolic tissue homeostasis
• Epidemiology of metabolic diseases
• Insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes
• Cardiovascular disease
• Cancer as a disease of ageing
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Aging and inherited neurodegenerative disorders
• Clinical manifestations of dementia
• Dementia/cognitive epidemiology
• Musculoskeletal ageing: osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and sarcopenia
• Immune senescence and inflammation
• Preventative approaches to ageing I
• Preventative approaches to ageing II (treatments)

Learning objectives

• To understand key concepts in the biology of ageing and how they relate to human diseases of ageing, including the relationship between ageing and disease.
• To gain a broad understanding of some key human age-related diseases, integrating information from diverse disciplines (ranging from molecular biology to epidemiology), and an understanding of human ageing more broadly.
• To develop an insight into how understanding ageing can lead to treatments of age-related disease and age-related functional decline in humans.