Project description
Loss of muscle function through advancing age, injury or disease significantly decreases both the quality of life and life expectancy of millions of individuals globally. Treatments tackling this issue have proven elusive as in vitro systems aimed at modelling age-related muscle atrophy are primarily murine based and fail to capture the complexity of this process in humans. In particular, these models neglect to accurately account for the impact of cellular-ageing and senescence on the advancement of sarcopenia-induced muscle wastage. This project aims to address these problems by firstly developing a more human aligned in vitro ageing model to elucidate key pathways associated with muscle loss. From this in vitro model, we will identify key mechanistic pathways driving age-related muscle loss at the transcriptional and translational level. Supplied with suitable data, artificial intelligence (AI) has to potential to rapidly accelerate the discovery of novel therapeutics. As such, here, informed by data derived from the human in vitro model, Nuritas’ proven artificial intelligence platform will be applied to identify novel bioactive peptides that have the potential to counter the impact of cellular aging thus ameliorating muscle loss. This innovative proposal affords the experienced researcher the opportunity to bring his knowledge at the forefront of ageing research back to Europe and combine it with the expertise of an industry leader in AI therapeutic discovery, facilitating decisive two-way intersectoral transfer of knowledge. By integrating these distinct interdisciplinary skillsets this project has the expected outcomes of discovering more clinically relevant, translational models and therapeutics for muscle wastage disorders.
