Original from: Genomeweb

Norwegian life sciences company Age Labs on Wednesday announced a partnership with Bay Area biotech BioAge Labs to harness data from a longitudinal Norwegian health study to develop new diagnostics and drugs.

Oslo, Norway-based Age Labs said the collaboration will see both firms tap into the Trøndelag Health Study's biobank of samples collected from more than 100,000 volunteers over a period of more than 25 years. Age Labs intends to discover and commercialize biomarkers for applications in diagnostics and clinical trials, while Richmond, California-based BioAge aims to identify and develop drug targets for aging-related conditions.

Financial terms were not discussed.

Age Labs CEO Karl Trygve Kalleberg said the deal validates the "attractiveness" of its Epiphany machine-learning-based biomarker discovery platform as well as its database. The company has previously used its platform to develop tests for SARS-CoV-2 and aging.

The work will pair Age Labs' resources with BioAge's own platform, which the company uses to discover proteins and metabolites linked to healthy longevity and age-related pathologies, as well as to flag targets in pathways to treat associated diseases.

BioAge in 2017 announced that it was working with another Northern European biobank in Estonia to access long-lived individuals as part of an effort to develop therapies that could extend a person's lifespan.

Source: Age Labs, BioAge to Target Aging-Related Diseases in New Partnership