Comprehensive phenotyping of aging in personalized medicine

We propose a comprehensive phenotyping of aging—a multidimensional characterization of the age-associated phenotype, integrating molecular, cellular, and systemic parameters that reflect the biological age (Bio-Age) of the patient. This approach acknowledges aging as a complex, personalized process that not only influences disease onset and progression but also affects treatment responses and outcomes. Aging, characterized by senescence and declining immune function, contributes significantly to chronic and oncologic diseases. While aging affects all patients, it is an individualized process and biological age often diverges from chronological age. Understanding Bio-Age is crucial for predicting individual risks such as impaired wound healing, infections, post-surgical frailty, and poor treatment outcomes. Currently, Bio-Age is largely ignored in clinical workflows due to the lack of robust and accessible tools to identify “fast-agers” at high risk. To address this unmet need, Bio-Age should be assessed prior to treatment using multimodal biomarkers—such as epigenetic clocks, immune profiling, proteomics, and microbiome composition—and incorporated into clinical decision-making. The Centre of Personalized Medicine (ZPM) in Tübingen is ideally positioned to tackle this task. With its translational infrastructure and its participation in the German Network of Personalized Medicine (DNPM), in collaboration with 26 university hospitals, the University Hospital Tübingen (UKT) contributes data to the DNPM:dip digital platform. This platform integrates structured patient data, enabling machine learning algorithms to generate predictive models that surpass traditional clinical assessments. The ZPM will function as an interdisciplinary hub that links deep clinical phenotyping with cutting-edge research in aging biomarkers. This will accelerate translational research, yielding novel diagnostics and therapies targeting key aging-related mechanisms—such as immune and mitochondrial dysfunction—that impact healing and therapy response. Together with the M3 Research Center, existing expertise in microbiome-metabolome interactions will support tailored interventions. Promising biomarkers will empower biotech companies and startups to develop new prognostic and diagnostic tools, thereby strengthening the competitiveness of Germany and the EU in global healthcare. Ultimately, this initiative aims to convert aging-related data into actionable insights to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs across Europe within 3 years of project duration.