AgeMeter: Physiological Biomarkers to Determine Functional Age

AgeMeter — Are You Getting Any Younger?
Answering The Need for Improved Functional Age Testing

As laboratories around the world work towards translating experimental anti-aging findings to human treatments, a self administered functional age test to validate interventions that aim to slow or reverse the aging process is greatly needed.

Our goal is to develop a low-cost, modular touch screen device for integrating multiple cognitive & biometric assessment technologies. This can be used to gather, analyze, and compare data in aging research scientific studies, and thereby increase the pace of longevity research.

The AgeMeter^TM device will measure functional biomarkers of participants, estimating the age at which a person physically functions, enabling researchers to validate measurements from genetic and biochemical aging interventions and reliably compare results across subjects, studies and approaches.

Many laboratories have published results indicating the reversal or delay of various biomarkers of aging in model organisms and human cells, including cellular biomarkers such as telomere length, epigenome methylation status, expression of proteins specific to senescent cells and others, as well as morphological and functional tests, such as appearance, gait and balance, memory tests, etc. Thus far, however, there has been no fully integrated approach that can easily collect a variety of different data points from human participants, reliably correlating the output to functional age and comparing this against chronological age.

Being able to easily evaluate the effectiveness of a potential aging treatment in this way will allow longevity research to proceed at a faster rate, because meaningful data in regards to lifespan effect can be gathered in the middle of a study, not just at the end.

For this reason some of the world’s top longevity researchers have shown their support specifically for our project, as evinced by their following quotes:

The AgeMeter^TM will be a modernized successor to the H-SCAN functional age test that was originally developed in 1990 to assess physical biomarkers of aging. Building upon this work, our new AgeMeter device will test the following functional biomarkers, each accompanied by a guided demonstration video enabling users to complete tests without staff supervision:

In the original device these parameters were then statistically correlated with the ages of 2,462 subjects, and based on this accumulated data new users received a report that estimated their functional vs. chronological age:

Screen capture of the original H-SCAN Spirometry report, providing volume-flow and volume-time data for three exhalations from a participant.		Screen capture of H-SCAN test report generated by the original device, showing a participant’s scores and percentiles based on a 2,462 person norm group.

The first iteration of the AgeMeter^TM will be an updated version of this original H-SCAN functional age test, utilizing a touch screen tablet and modernized software. We also plan to research additional functional biomarkers of aging for use in future versions.

We will then create appropriate user interface software for each test, along with software to manage the collection of test result data. The initial breakdown of development costs will be as follows:

Prototype Hardware: 20% To obtain and configure tablet computer, and peripheral test devices such as a spirometer to measure lung air capacity. User Interface: 30% Programming of the tests themselves, and instructions interface for test takers. Initial participant testing: 35% Handling the logistics of sampling initial set of ~2500 users of various ages and backgrounds. Software Functions and Database: 15% Programming the collection and storage of data in a cloud database and associated service costs.

The fulfillment of the above steps will culminate in a functional AgeMeter device suitable for aging research use, which will allow a test to be compared against baseline averages for analysis.

	Stretch Goal 1 — $50,000 User Accounts and Personal Data History – The Quantified SelfReaching this stretch goal will allow us to create software for a user account system for each test participant. This will enable users to store and access multiple test results, and therefore analyze the progression of one’s metrics over time and in response to potential anti-aging interventions.To create this system we will obtain a Production Web Host Cloud subscription and set up a web server to manage user account access. This will include new data visualizations and reports that go beyond those created for the initial goal and that will be tailored to your individual metrics. Users will also be able to download their raw data and a summary report on how they compare to baseline averages. This data could then be contributed to the Personal Genome Project or Open Humans if a user participates in those projects.
	Stretch goal 2 — $80,000: Additional Biomarker DevelopmentReaching this stretch goal will allow us to pursue the development of additional biomarker tests for future versions of the AgeMeter, increasing its ability to collect and analyze data. For example we want to add computer vision analysis to track ability to hold an object steady within a target area and move between various targets fluidly, and measure how this ability alters with age. Another test we’d like to add is fingertip pulse oximeter measurements to detect blood oxygenation, both at baseline and in response to mental and physical exertion. Most ambitiously we also want to integrate Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) (for example McKendrick R, Parasuraman R and Ayaz H (2015), Front. Syst. Neurosci. 9:27) into our data gathering, as a measure of blood flow and oxygenation in the brain. Think of this as a safe and more portable fMRI that bounces a frequency of near infrared light up to approximately 4 centimeters into your brain! The addition of more biomarkers such as these into future versions of the AgeMeter will make the entire suite of tests even more helpful to researchers, and we hope you’ll help us make their inclusion a reality.		An example of fNIRS imaging: McKendrick R, Parasuraman R and Ayaz H (2015), Front. Syst. Neurosci. 9:27

	Elliott Small Founder, Centers for Age ControlElliott holds a B.A. degree in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University. He has been a chemist at General Foods, director of a government funded program: The Technology Commercialization Center in Washington DC, and a computer programmer. He is also the founder of a company that has 2 patents and 2 patents pending for rapid battery charging technologies. Elliott’s lifelong interest in science began at the age of 10, when he started experimenting with photo processing and electronics. From 1999 to 2013, he represented and eventually became sole distributor for the original H-SCAN functional age test used by medical practices and other care providers worldwide, personally selling the H-SCAN devices to customers in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Africa.
	David Bartimus AgeMeter Engineer, Software ArchitectDavid holds a B.S. degree in General Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and is fluent in German.  He earned an E.I.T. license in the State of Illinois, a step towards professional licensure. David has designed industrial machinery, ag components, and worked in the automation industry for over six years. He also has five years of IT experience working at the University of Illinois, as a visiting research programmer. He has coordinated a multi-year, multi-million dollar automotive engineering data project abroad in Germany. His most recent commercial coding project was developing a mobile, web based, aerospace launch control monitoring system for a Fortune 500 company.
	Alexander Hoekstra AgeMeter Consultant, Project Manager for Personal Genome ProjectAlexander Hoekstra holds a BS degree in Genomics and Molecular Genetics from Michigan State University. Alex was one of the principal organizers of the 2015 PGP Conference. He manages the PGP at the laboratory of Dr. George Church, in the Genetics Department of Harvard Medical School. Other affiliations are Michigan State Univ (Microbiology & Molecular Genetics Dept), National Institutes of Health (NIDDK), Wayne State University (Center for Molecular Medicine & Genetics).

Hello friends and supporters! We are pleased to announce that our campaign has been granted a 2 week extension, partly because our project leader Elliot Small had been called in by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help with the disaster relief effort for Hurricane Harvey.

We are also happy to announce the support of two initiatives for matching donations to this campaign. The first is an anonymous donor to match the next $1,000 donated to the campaign, making your contribution count double.

The community at LongeCity has also decided to support the campaign with a matching fundraiser to get an AgeMeter for use in their affiliate labs!

The AgeMeter has been selected as an exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at the Eureka Park new technology area at the Sands Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada on Jan 8-11. The AgeMeter is a functional aging biomarker system that can be used to monitor how someone is aging, and it was successfully funded on Lifespan.io in 2017.

If you happen to be at the CES show, you can check out the AgeMeter in action at booth number 51580 and meet the team behind its creation. If you are interested in learning more about the AgeMeter, you can do so on its official website. The AgeMeter is also featured on page 54 of Innovation and Tech Today Magazine, which is a CES Media Partner.