Revolutionizing Precision Health Among Older Adults
Researchers at Technion, Weizmann and U-M are combining their joint strengths in data science, immunology and infectious diseases to increase understanding in two major areas related to the health of older adults:
Common, recurring infections — including urinary tract infections, respiratory viral infections and pneumonia — which decrease quality and quantity of life and, because of increasing drug resistance, are challenging to treat.
The aging trajectories of the immune system.
RESEARCH TEAM
Betsy Foxman, Lona Mody and Jenna Wiens University of Michigan
Roy Kishony, Shai Sshen -Orr and Naama Geva-Zatorsky Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
Amos Tanay, Ido Amit, Roi Avraham and Liran Shlush Weizmann Institute of Science
PROJECT GOALS
Explore novel technologies for collecting new types of data in older adults, focusing specifically on the blood, the microbiome and the genomes of infecting pathogens.
Follow a cohort of elderly individuals in a nursing facility and use novel technologies to identify factors associated with the acquisition of upper respiratory infections.
Develop novel machine learning tools for modeling immune and microbiome trajectories of healthy aging.
Create a large, de-identified, comprehensive, longitudinal dataset pertaining to older adults that can be securely shared across institutions for studying aging populations (a combination of retrospective and prospective data).