Exploring Healthspan Opportunities and Challenges in Lithuania with Prof Richard Barker
Image: Baltic Longevity Association
It was my first time in the country, thanks to invitations from colleagues and healthspan enthusiasts, Amit Goldman and Marta Kobzevaite (both co-founders of Longevity Alliance Baltics). Two packed days saw me speaking at events in both Vilnius and Kaunas and visiting the clinic where Dr Marta works, one that was established 25 years ago and still runs with energy and vision adding the latest medically tested longevity offerings. For my presentation to the Kaunas conference, please click here.
What were the main takeaways? Firstly, there is strong interest both in the clinical community and key influencers on the potential of healthy longevity. Secondly, the country is well down the European league in cardiovascular health and so would benefit enormously from the kind of ‘precision prevention’ I talk about. Thirdly, well-established clinics that have flourished with the tools we have had in the past are an ideal setting for trialling new technologies, whether diagnostic or therapeutic, with the right kind of training.
On an individual patient basis, responsible doctors and their patients in such clinics can play a major role in assessing the impact of novel therapies, both in extending healthy lifespan and in dealing with the diseases of aging. As long as the right clinicians are in charge and the right safeguards are in place, we do not have to wait 15+ years for therapies to go through randomised controlled clinical trials (RCTs) and lengthy regulatory approvals before we have some evidence of efficacy in small patient populations. Finding accelerated routes for new medicines has been a personal passion for some time – I was the original author of the adaptive development concept. As I debated with Alex Zhavarankov at the recent Copenhagen ARDD meeting, we will then need some sympathetic regulators to become ‘critical partners’ in speeding healthy longevity technology to wider use. I’d love to hear your views on where we might find them!
Back to my Lithuania conversations. The breadth of interest among leading figures in the academic and business communities struck me forcibly - and we will need to extend this conversation both in the cities and countries in which it is already underway and take it to new places around the globe. Ultimately, we need, as I have stressed elsewhere, a global network of participants able and willing to share their protocols and insights – and even de-identified outcome data – so that the whole field can advance. That was the intent behind the meetings just held at California’s Buck Institute that will be described in another newsletter: watch out for that.
Finally, we are seeing unprecedented growth in the healthspan clinic sector, boththroughy the creation of new facilities and the upgrading of existing private clinics. I intend to devote more time in 2024 to laying out the different formulae for success and working with some clinics to test the thinking.
