Looking at frailty and intrinsic capacity through a geroscience lens: the ICFSR & Geroscience Task Force

Abstract

On 22 March 2023, the Geroscience Translational Research & International Conference on Frailty and Sarcopenia Research (ICFSR) Task Force met in Toulouse, France to discuss avenues to foster the development of intrinsic capacity and frailty clinical trials under a geroscience perspective. A synthesis of these discussions and a set of recommendations are presented in this Meeting Report.

Fig. 1 |. Role of resilience in aging studies, from molecular or cellular mechanisms to overt clinical conditions.

Resilience is of central importance for organism homeostasis during aging. Resilience crosses several layers, from the cellular level to physiology and then to overt clinical phenotypes. At the molecular or cellular level, resilience represents the capacity to maintain the integrity of cellular functions during or after high-level damaging stress (such as heat, radiation or chemotherapy). At the physiological and phenotypic levels, resilience represents the capacity to maintain optimal function even in the presence of advanced pathophysiological processes (such as keeping normal cognition even in the presence of brain atrophy and amyloid positivity). Impairment in the resilience capacity determined by molecular or cellular alterations accelerates biological aging and ultimately leads to the onset and increased severity of interrelated clinical conditions such as diseases, functional decline and geriatric syndromes, and dependency.