LEXINGTON, Ky. — TruDiagnostic today announced that it is collaborating with Brigham’s Women’s Hospital and Seer Inc. to produce a new biological age tool it has developed using a combination of proteomic, genomic, metabolomic, epigenetic and complete clinical covariates.
Assessment that goes beyond chronological age is a current focus in the study of the aging process with the goal of extended healthspan and reduce aging-related disease burden, especially dementia.
The project represents a joint effort between TruDiagnostic Inc, a health data company based in Lexington, and Brigham’s Women’s Hospital led by Dr. Jessica Lasky-Su, DSc, MS. Brigham’s Women’s has deep database of human samples with which to test, assess and improve TruDiagnostic’s product.
The age predictor will be “trained” on over 15,000 samples selected from the Mass General-Brigham’s Biobank. Subsets of these samples will include robust multiomic measurements including unbiased, deep proteomics from the Seer Proteograph Product Suite, metabolomics, full genome sequencing, epigenetic methylation, and phenotypic medical lab testing covariates from Partner’s biobank samples. Together, this data will represent one of the largest multi-omic datasets in history collected for the purpose of aging analysis.
Multiomics is a new approach where the data sets of different omic groups are integrated during analysis.
“Our partnership with Dr. Lasky-Su’s group is instrumental in developing this multi-omic clock,” says Dr. Varun Dwaraka, head of bioinformatics at TruDiagnostic. “The blend of clinical covariates along with high throughput sequencing of every aspect of molecular biology will provide us the ability to generate a health predictor with insights from many biomarker platforms. This, along with Dr. Su’s expertise in metabolomics and proteomics is a perfect match to our epigenetic and aging background.”
Another key enabler of this project is the utilization of the Seer Proteograph Product Suite, which uses proprietary engineered nanoparticles to identify proteins across the dynamic range of the plasma proteome. This technology offers both a broader scope and more nuanced examination of the proteome at scale, which has been unavailable by previous targeted approaches.
TruDiagnostic’s CLIA certified lab is one of the first CLIA labs to adopt this technology, which offers better resolution of low-abundance peptides and proteins and allows analysis of post-translational modifications.
“Having access to the Seer Proteograph Product Suite enables novel proteomic insights to be generated, especially as it has been shown to improve the detection of hard to quantify proteins,” says Dr. Tavis Mendez, lab director for TruDiagnostic. “However, to now have Seer also provide proteomic support further shows the importance of this work. We are excited to work with them to discover novel association with aging.”
The resulting clock will represent a new generation of age prediction, trained on biological and health information in addition to chronological age. It will provide a more accurate, health-based age prediction compared to those currently available.
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