The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as simple and cost-effective model to test human healthspan

Demographic changes in the industrialized world lead to an increased occurrence of medical conditions, for which biological age is the major risk factor. In addition to arising complications and onset of multimorbidity due to decreased resilience, frailty severely limits the quality of life at advanced age. Thus, a better understanding of biological ageing processes will promote the design of interventions, which target biological ageing and thereby increase fitness, decrease frailty and improve resilience at advanced age. However, simple and cost-effective models of human healthspan are still missing. Thus, we will establish standardized and reproducible tests for evaluating mobility, memory and electrophysiology of ageing nematodes. With these methods we will evaluate if known interventions extending lifespan also improve physiology at advanced age.