Britain can become the global leader in longevity science, Lord Lebedev has told Parliament.
He stressed that longevity research could “unlock huge benefits” for the UK as it faces the challenges of an ageing population. “Our country faces a medical crisis,” he said. “As life expectancy has increased, the proportion of time spent in good health is going down. We must urgently develop a new approach to medicine.”
Lord Lebedev, proprietor of the Evening Standard and host of the Standard’s Brave New World podcast, emphasised that this new strategy, treating ageing as a medical condition, had to seek to tackle the root causes of diseases including diabetes, Alzheimer’s and heart conditions.
“The discovery of the 12 hallmarks of ageing, including the loss of stem cells and metabolic dysregulation, are central to our understanding of what drives age-related disease,” the crossbench peer told the Upper House.
“A groundbreaking new theory suggests ageing is driven by the loss of vital regulatory information within our cells, rather than primarily accumulating damage over time. Through epigenetic reprogramming, we could potentially reset our body’s tissues to a more functional state. Scientific studies have already reversed vision loss in mice and human trials are set to begin next year.”
Demographic changes, with an ageing population and fewer people of working age relatively, are relentlessly increasing pressure on the already struggling NHS and social care systems, and the nation’s public finances.
Lord Lebedev stressed during the King’s Speech debate on economic growth, infrastructure and employment that dementia alone costs the UK economy £34.7 billion a year. Just a 20 per cent reduction in six major diseases, he added, would lead to an annual GDP boost of nearly £20 billion, according to Andrew Scott at The Global Institute.
The peer highlighted drugs being developed to reverse aspects of ageing.
“Cutting-edge breakthroughs like these, driven by labs right here in the UK, are informing how we tackle the underlying factors behind ageing, rather than just tackling symptoms,” he added. He stressed further: “We stand at the precipice of a medical revolution, catalysed by medical monitoring devices, genomics, and our understanding of what drives ageing.
“Britain can become the global leader in longevity science, and capturing this beachhead will benefit us both socially and economically.” He emphasised that the science is now “moving as rapidly as the AI revolution and will be similarly, if not more impactful”.
