The new demographic balance in developed countries places the Life Sciences at the center of this century’s social, economic and healthcare dynamics. Its technological and practical applications offer a solution to a series of structural changes and needs of the most advanced economies: an aging working population, rising comorbidities, and the resulting sustainability of public and private welfare systems and of economic development.

The Life Science sector and its technological translation into Longevity Science are making an extraordinary scientific, technological and innovative contribution, with over 50,000 companies identified worldwide and hundreds of research centers.

It is an effort that cuts across, and will transform, several essential sectors: health, mobility and transport, manufacturing, and finance and insurance; yet to date it has found only partial practical application in the daily lives of citizens and healthcare professionals.

Since the mapping of the human genome in 2002, Life Science has emerged as one of the medical and scientific sectors with the highest rate of discovery and innovation in diagnostic and therapeutic technologies and methodologies, and in new service models dedicated to promoting healthy longevity (“Healthy Longevity”).

Aging and its related diseases are the result of a set of molecular and cellular alterations that develop over time without any symptoms, gradually leading to the loss of normal cellular physiology and tissue function and, eventually, to the frailty typical of older people.

Experimental data show that early interventions on these alterations can delay the onset of the chronic degenerative diseases associated with aging and improve not only life expectancy but also, and above all, quality of life in later years.

The “omics” sciences (genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, etc.), developed over the last 20 years, have enabled a precise classification of the molecular alterations underlying aging, generating new knowledge and analytical techniques that reveal well in advance a person’s predisposition to certain diseases and/or functional deficits, their relative risk of developing those diseases and their likely response to corrective interventions.

However, transferring this knowledge into clinical practice faces objective difficulties linked to a number of factors, including (1) the lack of specific professional training, (2) the difficulties of interpreting and managing data, and (3) the very high rate of technological innovation, which requires healthcare professionals to update their skills constantly.

The sector’s rate of scientific discovery, its level of technological innovation and the breadth of scientific expertise needed to understand and apply them therefore make it essential to support the dissemination and assessment of these components, to encourage their everyday adoption on both the user and the provider side.