Leader of the Brain & Ageing Laboratory at the , Dr Nady Braidy, was a sponsored presenter and panel member at the Healthy Ageing Summit and the APAC Summit in Singapore on 9-11 July 2019.
The conference, designed to bring together industry professionals across the globe to discuss pertinent issues impacting healthy ageing included expert speakers on emerging food and nutrition solutions for today’s older consumers, and the potential for reformulation and fortification. It also covered new innovations to improve the diets of the wider population in order to enjoy a healthier older age.
Currently, the Asia-Pacific region contains about 60% of the world’s aged population; those people 60 years of age or older. It is expected that the number of elderly persons in the region to double from 547 million in 2016 to about 1.3 billion by 2050. This will lead to increased demand for improved nutrition and food products for the growing elderly population and highlights the need to address nutrition and health choices of today’s society, as these will ultimately affect the quality of life of people in older age.
At the Healthy Ageing Summit, Dr Braidy – who was sponsored by FoodNavigator-Asia and NutraIngredients Asia – presented his research which shows how boosting NAD+ levels using the NAD+ precursor nicotinamide riboside can balance energy needs with supply.
“This research showcases how boosting NAD+ levels can profoundly reduce oxidative cellular damage and counter age-associated pathologies,” said Dr Braidy.
“It also promotes ‘healthy’ ageing in preclinical models. The hope is that this research will eventually be translated to humans.”
In previous research, Dr Braidy has shown that intracellular levels of a molecular known as NAD+ declines with age in catabolic tissue in ‘physiologically’ aged rats. His group went on to show that NAD+ levels are depleted in response to oxidative stress in humans and this may play a significant role in the ageing process by compromising energy production, DNA repair, and genomic surveillance.
“My team has recently developed a reliable, robust and sensitive method to quantify the NAD+ metabolome in various biological samples,” said Dr Braidy.
CHeBA’s Brain & Ageing Research Laboratory is using this orthogonal tool to gauge the therapeutic significance of NAD+ in brain ageing.
Dr Braidy was also part of a panel discussion which included Professor Brian Kennedy (Dept Biochem and Phys, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ University of Singapore), Professor Peter Howe (University of Newcastle and University of Southern Queensland) and Frank Jaksch (Co-founder and Executive chairman, ChromaDex). The panel drilled down into the most promising and emerging areas for healthy ageing research and how latest findings are making their way into product developments to meet Asia’s societal needs.
