Jones Seminar: Decoding the Aging Immune System—Multi-omic insights and the promise of precision medicine

Optional ZOOM LINK
Meeting ID: 963 3025 4065
Passcode: 956285

Precision medicine is transforming our ability to understand and intervene in complex diseases, particularly by harnessing insights from dense molecular data captured through multi-omics. These data types offer powerful and complementary windows into human physiology and aging. Yet the translation of multi-omic findings into actionable clinical tools remains a significant challenge.

This talk explores a translational framework grounded in the distinct strengths of each omic layer, with biological aging as a unifying phenotype. We highlight how DNA methylation captures stable, mechanism-linked aging signals that can be measured non-invasively. We show how the metabolome, composed largely of small molecules already used in clinical diagnostics, provides high translational potential. Critically, we turn attention to antibody profiling—a rapidly emerging approach to uncovering the immune system's long-term memory. By mapping autoantibody responses across thousands of antigens, our work reveals how chronic autoimmune activity may shape aging trajectories, drive multimorbidity, and reflect molecular mimicry following infections. Drawing from our team's large-scale, longitudinal multi-omic studies, we present new findings and translational opportunities at the intersection of immunology, metabolism, epigenetics, and proteomics. The presentation will emphasize strategies for clinical translation, including biomarker development, at-home sampling, and personalized aging risk models—laying a path toward more predictive, preventive, and participatory healthcare.

Hosted by Professor Ron Lasky

About the Speaker(s)

Jessica Lasky-Su
Associate Professor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Lasky-Su has been a leader in applying genetics, epigenetics, metabolomics, and antibody profiling to epidemiologic research, covering a wide range of chronic diseases across the entire life course. Much of her work has focused on chronic disease and longevity through the lens of integrative metabolomics—the integration of multiple omics, using a metabolomics-centric perspective to study complex diseases and aging. As integrative multiomics continues to emerge as a field, Lasky-Su's scholarship has made broad contributions, with nearly 300 peer-reviewed publications spanning diverse disease and aging-related outcomes (e.g., biological age, cancer, respiratory, ocular, infectious, metabolic, and neurodevelopmental/mental health disorders) and exposures (e.g., air pollutants, PFAS, nutrition, and exercise) that influence health across the life course.

Contact

For more information, contact Amos Johnson at amos.l.johnson@dartmouth.edu.