Key Note Speaker I: Liz Sampson
How can we get the message across to politicians and bureaucrats who plan health care services?
Liz Sampson is one of the leading voices on how to improve delirium care with a focus on «delirium lobbyism» at the hospital director level and above.
Liz Sampson is an inaugural chair in the Queen Mary University of London and Bart’s Health Academic Centre for Healthy Ageing (ACHA), leading on mental health, dementia and delirium. She is a liaison psychiatrist at the Royal London Hospital.
Her research focuses on the complex interfaces between physical and mental health, particularly in older adults and those who are frail, clinical studies of delirium and how this translates to policy influence.
She studied medicine at the University of Birmingham and gained her MD from the UCL Institute of Neurology. Liz is President Elect of the European Delirium Association and research lead for the UK Faculty of Liaison Psychiatry Executive Committee.
Key note speaker II: Evandro Fei Fang-Stavem
How can we improve cooperation between neuroscience and clinical delirium research?
Evandro Fei Fang-Stavem, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Molecular Gerontology at the University of Oslo and Akershus University Hospital, Norway. His research focuses on how cells remove damaged mitochondria through mitophagy, and on the central role of the NAD⁺–mitophagy/autophagy axis in healthy ageing and the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease.
After finishing his PhD at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, he had a 6-year postdoc training with Prof. Vilhelm Bohr on molecular gerontology and Prof. Mark Mattson on neuronal resilience in Alzheimer’s disease at the National Institute on Ageing, Baltimore. He opened his lab in Oslo in the fall of 2017. He is the founding (co-)coordinator of the Norwegian Centre on Healthy Ageing (NO-Age, www.noage100.com) and the Norwegian National anti-Alzheimer’s disease Network (NO-AD, www.noad100.com).
Fang has published extensively in leading journals such as Cell, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Ageing and Nature Biomedical Engineering, and is actively involved in multiple NAD⁺-based clinical trials aimed at promoting longer and healthier human lives.
Abstract
Why do we age and how can we age successfully? To address these questions, we need to understand the sophisticated and multi-layered nature of biological ageing. One cause of ageing is compromised autophagy. In this lecture, I will share the mechanisms of autophagy and the linkage between compromised autophagy (especially mitophagy) and ageing and several other conditions, with a focus on neurodegenerative diseases. Publicly accessible approaches such as calorie restriction and exercise and small natural molecules such as NAD+ precursors, urolithin A, and a small molecule EFF-AA from passion fruit hold promise for the slowing down of ageing and dementia, likely at least partially via mitophagy induction. I will also give an update on our translational progress, including NAD+-based clinical trials investigating the treatment of conditions such as premature ageing diseases, brain diseases, and the applications of autophagy proteins and NAD+ pathway intermediates as biomarkers of disease progression; progress on a Phase II clinical trial looking into the potential benefits of urolithin A for Alzheimer’s patients will be covered. Opportunities and strategies in addressing ageing challenges in the populational and societal levels are included.