The biology of ageing, mapped.
AION is a longevity research system that generates structured hypotheses about ageing and cancer on the evidence engine. The hallmark and drug repurposing engines are running, and access is by request.
Ageing and cancer share their roots.
Researchers have named 12 hallmarks of ageing and 10 hallmarks of cancer. Many interventions touch several at once, and the connections are hard to see one study at a time.
What it reads.
- Literature
- PubMed and Semantic Scholar.
- Trials and targets
- ClinicalTrials.gov and Open Targets.
- A language model
- GPT-4o reads the sources into structured hypotheses, which the engine then scores.
How it works.
- Map
- Any intervention is scored against the 12 hallmarks of ageing (López-Otín and colleagues, Cell, 2023) and the 10 hallmarks of cancer (Hanahan, Cancer Discovery, 2022).
- Score
- Each hypothesis gets a confidence and a novelty score.
- Publish
- An open commons takes submitted hypotheses, evaluates them and publishes them under CC BY 4.0.
Twelve pillars.
Each pillar is its own hypothesis module on HGE.
- Hallmark engine
- Hypotheses across the hallmarks of ageing and cancer for any intervention. Running.
- Drug repurposing
- Longevity and cancer hypotheses for approved drugs. Running.
- Stem cells and reprogramming
- Partial reprogramming, iPSC and stem cell exhaustion, with the Yamanaka factors.
- Epigenetic clocks
- The effect of an intervention on Horvath, GrimAge and DunedinPACE.
- Senolytics
- Compounds against senescent cell types, with safety profiles.
- Ageing and cancer
- Shared pathways, synergies and paradoxes.
- Pathway network
- mTOR, AMPK, IGF-1 and sirtuins, with interventions laid over them.
- Other species
- Mechanisms from the naked mole rat, the Greenland shark and Hydra, translated to humans.
- Trial gaps
- Experiments that have not yet been run.
- Combinations
- Synergy, conflict and safety for stacks of interventions.
- Biomarkers
- Markers of biological age and of response to an intervention.
- Open commons
- Hypotheses from anyone, evaluated and published openly.
In figures.
- 12 + 10
- Hallmarks of ageing and cancer mapped
Early research, with two engines running.
AION is a research system, not a clinical tool. The hallmark engine and the drug repurposing engine run on the live HGE Core through the adapter aion-longevity-v1. The other pillars are in development. Hypotheses are published under CC BY 4.0.
Who it serves.
Research groups in ageing biology and oncology can ask for access.
Write to us- Research groups in ageing biology and oncology.
