Deep Longevity Repurposes a Blood Aging Clock for Saliva Samples

Endurance RP Limited's wholly owned subsidiary Deep Longevity, Inc, a leading provider of deep biomarkers of aging and longevity is pleased to announce the publication of its Frontiers in Aging article "Adapting blood DNAm aging clocks for use in saliva samples with cell-type deconvolution".

Blood is the most popular human tissue used for clinical analysis. It is a liquid tissue that permeates all other organs and thus reflects the state of the whole organism. Blood is also preferred by most biogerontologists, who study the aging process and its footprints.

In the meantime, drawing blood is a painful procedure that requires an appointment with a clinic — something many consumers are unwilling to do. Saliva is a much easier tissue to collect, for example, with home kits.

Last year Deep Longevity released the most accurate epigenetic aging clock — DeepMAge. It uses the information about DNA modification to estimate one's pace of aging, which has been shown to be associated with cancer, dementia, and irritable bowel disease. However, DeepMAge could only be used with blood samples, which limited the range of its use-cases.

The Frontiers publication demonstrates how the same blood-trained model can be repurposed for saliva samples with practically no drop in performance. Originally, DeepMAge could predict human age with 20.9 years of error when used on saliva, but the new adjustment restored its accuracy to 4.7 years. The adjustment makes use of the inherent heterogeneity of saliva samples that consist of variable proportions of epithelial and immune cells. These cell types age at a different speed, and when they are mixed together the organismal pace of aging is obfuscated. Cell-type deconvolution method EpiDISH allows to obtain the composition of a saliva sample with no additional information needed. Combining this method with a blood aging clock salvages its performance.

Now, DeepMAge and other blood-trained aging clocks can be easily applied to saliva, which enables a variety of consumer-friendly applications of the biogerontological models.

About Deep Longevity

Deep Longevity is a wholly owned subsidiary of Endurance Longevity (SEHK:0575.HK), a publicly-traded company. Deep Longevity is developing explainable artificial intelligence systems to track the rate of aging at the molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, system, physiological, and psychological levels. It is also developing systems for the emerging field of longevity medicine enabling physicians to make better decisions on the interventions that may slow down or reverse the aging processes. Deep Longevity developed Longevity as a Service (LaaS)© solution to integrate multiple deep biomarkers of aging dubbed "deep aging clocks" to provide a universal multifactorial measure of human biological age. Originally incubated by Insilico Medicine, Deep Longevity started its independent journey in 2020 after securing a round of funding from the most credible venture capitalists specializing in biotechnology, longevity, and artificial intelligence. ETP Ventures, Human Longevity and Performance Impact Venture Fund, BOLD Capital Partners, Longevity Vision Fund, LongeVC, co-founder of Oculus, Michael Antonov, and other expert AI and biotechnology investors supported the company. Deep Longevity established a research partnership with one of the most prominent longevity organizations, Human Longevity, Inc. to provide a range of aging clocks to the network of advanced physicians and researchers. 

About Endurance Longevity (Stock code: 0575.HK)

Endurance Longevity is a diversified investment group based in Hong Kong, S.A.R., China currently holding various corporate and strategic investments focusing on the healthcare, wellness and life sciences sectors. The Group has a strong track record of investments and has returned approximately US$298 million to shareholders in the 21 years of financial reporting since its initial public offering.