MicroAge project shortlisted for Bionow Project of the Year Award
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The University's MicroAge project has been shortlisted for Project of the Year at the Bionow 2022 awards.
The University of Liverpool is a member of Bionow, which supports business growth in the biomedical and life sciences sectors by providing a platform and community.
The annual Bionow Awards celebrate the success and achievements of individuals, projects and companies across the north of England's biomedical and life sciences sector.
The MicroAge project is using space to understand what happens to human muscles as we age. It is led by researchers from the Institute of Life Course and Medical Sciences and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, including Professor Malcolm Jackson, Professor Anne McArdle and Dr Samantha Jones, and is a collaboration with the UK Space Agency and Kayser Space Ltd, who develop technology to support scientific research in microgravity.
Physical frailty in older people is a major cause of loss of independence and poor quality of life, and as it is estimated that 23% of the UK population will be over 65 years of age by 2034, so understanding age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass and function is key.
Astronauts experience a similar loss of skeletal muscle mass, and so the team are studying muscle contractions in microgravity in order to understand how skeletal muscles lose loss of function.
In December 2021, the MicroAge experiment was launched to the International Space Station where experiments in muscle cells were conducted and then returned to Earth for further analysis.
The winners will be announced at the Bionow awards dinner on 16 March, 2023.
The application was supported by the University's Research, Partnerships and Innovation Directorate.