A recently released UK House of Lords Committee report revealed that it is very worried about aging and said that the government is woefully underprepared for a rapidly greying population. The report identifies how England will see a 50 percent rise in the number of those aged 65 and older, and a 100 percent increase in those aged 85 and older by the year 2030.

In view of those statistics the committee said it believes urgent action is needed. "An aging society will greatly increase the number of people with long-term health conditions, and health and social care services will need a radically different model of care to support such people," commented Lord Filkin, chairman of the Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change, which penned the report.

Model Needs Changing

The committee concluded that the current model of health and social care provision is failing older people now and is inappropriate to care for the increasing numbers of older people there will be with chronic health conditions.

It is a situation that is not unique to England with many other countries facing the same situation and the prospects of rapidly escalating health care costs from the increasing number of older people with long-term health conditions.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration on Aging reported that the nation is getting older. Currently about 40 million people, or 13 percent of the population, are 65 or older; by 2030, it is estimated there will be about 72.1 million in that age group, representing 19 percent of the population.

In a Council of Economic Advisers paper in 2009, the department reported that health care expenditures in the U.S. was running about 18 percent of GDP, and that share was projected to rise sharply. The report noted that if health care costs continued to grow at historical rates, the share of GDP devoted to health care in the U. S. is projected to reach 34 percent by 2040. Of that increase, roughly one-quarter was estimated to be due to the aging of the population and other demographic effects.

Politicians certainly will be looking to the biotech industry to come up with innovative medicines that will allow people to live longer, healthier and more productive lives and ease the burden on an already stressed health care system.

They will be encouraged by a just-released report by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which reveals that America's biopharmaceutical research companies are developing 465 new medicines indicated in the 10 leading chronic conditions affecting seniors, including diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and Alzheimer's disease (AD).

According to the Alzheimer's Association, there are more than 5 million Americans afflicted with the disease and that number could increase to 8 million people by 2030 unless a new drug or preventive measure is discovered. It has, however, been tough sledding for biopharmaceutical companies trying to come up with novel therapies to treat AD, and there have been several late-stage disappointments.

In response, the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research issued draft guidance in February on the development of drugs in early stage Alzheimer's disease, which lays out a potential approach to select subjects with early AD and those at risk of developing the disease for enrollment into clinical trials. The document, posted by the FDA on Feb. 8, also discusses trial endpoints and the demonstration of disease modification. (See BioWorld Today, March 15, 2013.)

In early research, an Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) grant is supporting research into the role of mitochondria in AD. The award of $205,260 will go to CohBar Inc., of Pasadena, Calif., which is developing a mitochondrial peptide designed to protect neurons from dying by improving mitochondrial function, reducing inflammation, increasing insulin sensitivity and decreasing oxidative stress.

The one-year research project will evaluate the activity of the peptides at preventing stress to cells related to AD, looking for evidence that the peptides cross the blood-brain barrier and establishing efficacy in mice. (See BioWorld Today, March 7, 2013.)

The peptides are based on humanin, a peptide encoded by mitochondrial genetic material that CohBar said it believes is effective against several age-related diseases.

New Thinking About Aging

Leading the charge on research into anti-aging is Aubrey de Grey, the co-founder and chief science officer of the SENS Research Foundation in Cambridge, UK. He argued that a better understating of the "common denominator" of aging and its concomitant diseases could usher in a new era of preventive medicine.

The researchers at the foundation are working towards discovering regenerative therapies that "remove, repair, replace, or render harmless the cellular and molecular damage that has accumulated in our tissues with time."

There is no doubt that the industry is deep into the era of personalized medicine where the focus now is not on treating sickness but on improving wellness.

In an aptly named ongoing Wellderly study, researchers at Scripps Genomic Medicine are seeking to understand the mechanisms that help keep people healthy and protected from disease well into old age, and to translate evolving key discoveries into improvements in patient care.

"We all carry genes that make us susceptible to diseases, but some of us avoid the major illnesses that afflict others," said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute and Scripps Genomic Medicine and the study's principal investigator. "Looking at the genes of healthy elderly people is a unique approach to understanding the underpinning biology of health, and ways this can be inherited."

In October 2011, Scripps and Complete Genomics Inc. reported a collaboration with the company undertaking sequencing, at its own cost, the complete human genomes of 1,000 participants, who are 85 and older, in the Wellderly study. According to Topol, the purpose of the study is twofold. First, it is to uncover the genetic underpinnings of healthy life span and, second, healthy older individuals are ideal controls for genetic studies of late-onset diseases such as various cancers, heart disease, AD and Parkinson's disease.