The socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy are widening, people living in the most deprived areas can expect to live their last 18 years in ill health compared to 9 years for those in affluent regions. This health inequality is even more stark between different ethnic groups, where Asian and Black people in Britain are twice as likely to live in poverty compared with White people.
A key biological factor underpinning the inequality in healthy ageing seen in socioeconomic disadvantaged populations are changes in cellular metabolism. For example, many chronic age-related conditions are associated with metabolic dysregulation. Therefore, understanding changes in cellular metabolism throughout the life course is essential if we are to identify ways of addressing this inequality.
This networking grant proposes to bring an interdisciplinary team together to investigate how cellular metabolic dysfunction of the ageing cell is dictated by both intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms from an early age. As intrinsic and extrinsic factors never work in isolation, we will bring together artificial intelligence (AI) experts and bioinformaticians to integrate intrinsic and extrinsic datasets with the aim of modelling the dysregulated metabolism within cells during the life-arc.
Specifically, the network will probe the following:
1. Intrinsic factors (genetic and pathway-driven) that influence cellular metabolism over a life course
2. Extrinsic factors (environmental, biopsychosocial and epigenetic) that influence cellular metabolism over a life course
3. Integration of intrinsic and extrinsic factors to model cellular metabolism over a life course
The alliance has been formed that connects the host Institute in East London, QMUL (Drs Henson & Chan) with other areas in England that also have similar levels of socioeconomic deprivation (yet differing in ethnicity) including Birmingham (Prof Tennant), Liverpool (Dr Vasilaki), Newcastle (Dr Ramsey) and Leicester (Dr Pareek). The network comprises biologists, geneticists, clinicians, nutritionists, sports scientists, epidemiologists, geographers, AI and bioinformatic experts, economists, policy makers, urban planners and architects; who will work alongside stakeholders including The Dunhill Medical Trust, Dance4 and the North Thames diabetes lay panel. An advisory panel will oversee network activities made up of six renowned experts from the relevant scientific fields and other stakeholder representatives, including the Director of the Digital Environment Research Institute (DERI) and the Co-Director of the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place.
The interdisciplinary nature of this network will be enhanced through pump priming funds, workshops to explain the nature of datasets and the metadata contained within them, together with shadowing opportunities. By removing academics from their silos it is hoped that we will find the collective insight and imagination to recognise, tackle and redress health inequalities to benefit our most disadvantaged communities though an understanding of the deregulation of cell metabolism.