Predictives markers in public health are needed
The increased burden of ageing is a major societal, economic and public health challenge. Interest in finding clinical biomarkers that can accurately predict the risk of age-related disease is tremendous. Today’s biomarkers are observational rather than predictive and detect changes only at a later stage.
Recently, a number of human diseases such as cancer, brain disorders or metabolic syndromes have been associated with aberrations in epigenetic processes. Epigenetics refers to changes in gene expression and will dramatically change the way we understand life, health, and medicine.
Genknowme aims to individualize prevention. Our technology has the power to personalize the impact of lifestyle and environment on genes, in order to take preventive actions to improve overall health and longevity. Our comprehensive and predictive health assessment encompassing will be a strong support to promote healthy lifestyle changes.
While together with biological age, genknowme already measures the impact of physical activity, nutrition, alcohol and tobacco consumption; in this project we aim to expand genknowme’s test to customers from different ethnicities; to enlarge our scope with assessment of chronic stress levels and sleep quality and to consolidate our current product by demonstrating the dynamic of epigenetic variation after smoking cessation.
Sharing knowledge to advance science
The Department of Epidemiology and health systems at Unisanté (DESS) covers different expertise in public health, such as epidemiology and chronic disease prevention, population ageing, health system organization or quantitative methods in medicine and public health.
The expertise and knowledge of the scientific team managed by Professor Murielle Bochud head of the DESS will be of major importance in the successful completion of this innovation project.
Starting in the beginning of 2021, the received funding will allow the hiring by Unisanté of a postdoctoral fellow for two-years.