Experts, innovators, investors and the curious meet online in the biggest Longevity conference ever staged.
As we enter the fourth day of Longevity2020, we thought we’d share some interesting stats. With more than 1,300 registered participants so far, and more than 50 expert speakers from across the aging spectrum, we think this is potentially the biggest Longevity conference ever held – and there are still two days to go!
Longevity.Technology’s editor-in-chief Phil Newman is delighted with how things are shaping up.
“What I’m seeing is that the event is bringing the community together and building bridges between the different disciplines that Longevity touches on,” he said. “It’s not just experts from one area talking to their peers, people are joining sessions outside their field of expertise because they understand it’s all connected – and that is hugely encouraging.”
Yesterday, the AI & Longevity session demonstrated that the use of machine learning in the fight against aging and age-related disease is about much more than drug discovery, and that it plays a role in a wide range of exciting new areas.
Opening the day’s conversation, Margaretta Colangelo of Deep Knowledge Ventures hosted a heavyweight panel discussion featuring the AI Precision Health Institute’s John Shepherd, King’s College London’s Richard Siow, and Insilico Medicine’s Alexander Zhavoronkov. Their discussions included how accessible health technologies need the latest AI and need to work for broad phenotypes, as well as the use of AI in the fight against COVID-19.
Joe Geraci of NetraMark spoke about how AI can be used to discover subpopulations that we do not even know are there, likening this approach to “cartographers mapping out a new world.” His company has been able to use AI to discover previously unknown fundamentals about Alzheimer’s, dementia and aging.
Longevity International’s Tina Woods took to the virtual stage to talk about our world BC (before COVID) and AD (after the disease) and how data can help us to do better. As the joint leader of the UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group for Longevity, she revealed a key focus is to develop new population models for tracking health.
Looking at how AI can enable an approach to super-longevity, Ben Goertzel of SingularityNET showed how probabilistic data analysis on supercentenarians is now able to predict the same outcomes as study literature – a validation of its capability.
Insilico’s Zhavoronkov returned to deliver a fascinating presentation, including how AI can be used to assess photographs of corners of the eye to estimate biological age. He also explained how AI is being trained to understand aging so that it can predict disease before it occurs by looking at a wide range of factors, ranging from molecular biomarkers to medical imaging data.
Taking the audience in a different but equally compelling direction, Oliver Armitage from BIOS Health talked about neural networks as the next frontier of AI. He explained how using neural technologies to intervene and correct the messaging between the brain and our organs will ultimately enable chronic disease to be cured.
Any investment by a major VC like Andreessen Horowitz in Longevity is going to capture the interest of the sector, so participants were keen to hear from BIOAGE’s Kristen Fortney. She outlined her company’s approach to using data to drive the discovery of key aging targets, sharing an example of how they have identified potential targets for cardiovascular disease.
Finally, NaNotics’ Lou Hawthorne showed his company’s nano-medical platform consisting of in vivo ‘NaNots’ that deplete from blood specific molecular signals or signal inhibitors that drive or enable disease progression. The company is building NaNots against three inflammatory targets and three inhibitory targets, which are the drivers behind most age-related diseases.
