Preventing or delaying multimorbidity and frailty

We treat ageing as a risk factor for disease, much like smoking is a risk factor in cancer. We are devising practical solutions to slow down the rate of ageing to prevent multimorbidity and boost resilience in frail older adults.

Healthy lifespan hiking
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Non-clinical approaches

We’re investigating how nutrition, physical activity, employment, commercial practices and other factors are linked to health. With this insight we will assess how innovative public health and social policies, health practices and guidance can transform the ageing process.

Enabling behaviour change

We're looking at why people find it hard to change their lifestyle, even if they have had a medical diagnosis telling them they need to. By understanding which methods and motivations do and don’t work, we can provide more effective support for people trying to make change. We can also give guidance to public authorities about how society can be organised best to enable people to make healthy lifestyle choices more easily.

Drug development

We will establish a unique pre-clinical in vitro and in vivo research facility for testing interventions for multimorbidity and frailty, and for the validation of non animal technologies. We are investigating geroprotectors, drugs or supplements that target the root cause of ageing and age related disease, developing treatments that target multiple diseases and identifying medication that boosts patient resilience to frailty.

Multicentre trials

Patients with multimorbidity and frailty are under-represented in clinical trials despite being the major users of drugs. This is because their complex medical needs make trials more challenging due to the variability of responses. We will identify new ways to include these patients in clinical trials and new ways to measure outcomes.

Centres of excellence

The University's cross-faculty research centres harness our interdisciplinary expertise to solve the world's most pressing challenges.