Silver Age : Curing tomorrow – with science and innovation

Curing tomorrow – tackling critical diseases through science and innovation

As life expectancy increases, so too are certain critical diseases that are often very debilitating for the elderly - cardiovascular, chronic, neurodegenerative diseases… Scientists and doctors face a major challenge: how can innovation foster better aging ?

Exploring and innovating through transdisciplinarity

What if transversality held one of the keys to innovation? The exponential advances in science and technology today will undoubtedly change the understanding of these diseases and erase the boundaries between science and medicine. The AXA Research Fund supports projects at the interface of several disciplines, which focus on both fundamental research and technological innovation, and which combine the expertise of biologists, doctors, physicists, engineers... With a common goal: to provide innovative responses to new health issues related to aging. Whether related to the creation of new approaches to care, or to the design of new medical tools that are ever more precise and efficient.

Through the “Silver Age: Aging Better” guide, the AXA Research Fund presents the work of three researchers :

• Professor Luisa De Cola, holder of the AXA Supramolecular Chemistry Chair at the University of Strasbourg. Prof Da Cola is working on the design of new materials – especially using nanoparticles – that help to better understand, and thus cure, diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s or other neurological conditions;

• Professor of Mechanics and Biology, Abdul Barakat, Director of Research at CNRS and holder of the AXA Chair in Cardiovascular Cellular Engineering at the École Polytechnique. Prof Barakat is putting his engineering expertise into practice designing innovative devices to optimize the administration of treatments (more effective stents, designing artificial arteries…);

• Professor Mickaël Tanter, Director of Research at INSERM and Director of the Physics for Medicine Laboratory of the Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution, Paris, holder of the AXA Chair in Physics for Medicine and Biology. Using innovative technologies invented by physicists, Prof. Tanter is developing cutting-edge medical imaging concepts, smart sensors and new therapeutic approaches to cancer, cardiovascular disease and neuroscience.

All this research will help deliver renewed innovation perspectives for a more personalized, precise, targeted, connected and scalable medicine.