Urszula Wojda

Symposium Description

Understanding pathology in the context of aging requires defining the physiology of aging. Cell senescence is one of the hallmarks of aging and is associated with changes in multiple aspects of cell biology. That includes alterations of genetic material, transcription, translation, or post-translational modifications, which are reflected in altered proteomic, lipidomic, and metabolomic profiles of cells and tissues. Identification of potential aging biomarkers, that would allow elimination or at least slow the progression of undesirable changes taking place during aging, is one of the priorities of anti-aging research. The symposium “Markers of Aging” collects work on the current research associated with the nervous system aging in physiology and in the pathological state. We propose the discussion about evaluable aspects of monitoring changes associated with nervous system aging and their potential in evaluating the function of living systems at all levels from overall health (e.g. cognition) to the condition of organs and tissues, to single cells at the molecular level. 

Talk: "Circulating microRNAs as early biomarkers in Alzheimer’s and other aging-related diseases"

Circulating miRNAs in blood plasma present significant potential for use as presently unavailable minimally-invasive biomarkers for diagnosis of aging-related diseases, such as cancer or Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Recently we identified a panel of 6 dysregulated miRNAs in blood plasma of patients with early AD (Patent EP3449009). Here we applied RT-qPCR, the most sensitive and inexpensive analysis method of circulating miRNA, for verification studies in a new cohort of 50 AD patients and 50 healthy control subjects. As current methods of identifying optimal normalisers are lacking in their evaluation of the stability of normalizers in aging population, we created a novel, transparent, method for selecting
optimal normalisers in aging population. The obtained data showed significant differences for all tested panel miRNAs in their plasma levels in AD patients, confirming chosen miRNAs as minimally-invasive diagnostic biomarkers for AD. Moreover, we recommend the standard protocol for assessment of plasma miRNA levels in an aging population employing a novel set of normalizers.

Work supported by the Polish National Science Centre grant OPUS 2018/29/B/NZ7/02757 and by the EU Horizon2020 FETOPEN grant no 737390 (ArrestAD).