“The challenge is no longer just to extend lifespan—the real goal is to extend healthy life expectancy,” said Dr. Mouchirou, co-founder and CSO of Nagi Bioscience. “What the field needs today is a fast in vivo system that allows researchers to screen and prioritize interventions early in the discovery pipeline.”
Research has shown that there remains a 10-year gap between lifespan and healthspan (the number of years lived in good health), and with life expectancy increasing globally, interest in the gut microbiome as a driver of health and longevity is continuing to gain momentum.
Nagi B-Age platform uses AI to track biological age
Dr. Mouchirou presented the biological health (BH) assay, Nagi B-Age—an automated, AI-driven platform that monitors Caenorhabditis elegans throughout their lifespan.
The system combines microfluidic culture devices, robotics and AI-based image analysis to calculate biological age based on dozens of physiological traits, including movement, reproduction and posture.
“The goal is not only to know how long organisms live, but how healthy they remain during that time,” Mouchirou said.
In the latest version of the platform, intestinal health has been added as a key indicator of biological age, which can help test gut-targeted treatments like probiotics.
“The biological age we measure reflects the intestinal structure and how this intestine remodels during aging, and we’ve developed an AI algorithm to segment the intestine,” Mouchirou explained, “The worm is transparent, so we can look at this organ and compute parameters related to the size and width of the intestine and track this over time.
“With the evolution of the BH assay, integrating now intestinal health as a vital trait, we have expanded the capabilities of what we like to call a Swiss-knife approach for aging research, more adapted to the study of dysbiosis and interventions that impact gut function.”
Probiotic slows biological aging in worm model
As a proof of concept, the researchers tested the widely studied probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG in the worm model, reporting that the bacterium “robustly slowed down the biological aging process.”
“If we look at day 10 of age, which corresponds to mid-life, worms fed with rhamnosus appear almost five days younger,” Mouchirou said.
Improvements were particularly evident in measures of intestinal integrity and motility, reflecting better neuromuscular function in the supplemented population.
“This creates a very powerful discovery pipeline,” Mouchirou added.
Saccharomyces boulardii extends lifespan in preclinical models
Following Mouchirou, Karl Alex Hedin, co-founder and CSO at the biotech startup 1stBiome, turned attention to Saccharomyces boulardii, a probiotic yeast already widely used to treat certain gastrointestinal disorders.
He presented preclinical mouse studies that showed that S.boulardii supplementation reduced food intake, limited weight gain and increased energy expenditure, particularly during the animals’ active periods. Multi-omics analysis also revealed that the yeast modulated microbial metabolic pathways reshaped colonic gene expression and lowered markers of inflammation, which Hedin noted suggested a broad impact on gut and systemic physiology.
Findings were then applied to the Nagi Bioscience automated, AI-driven platform, supplementing C. elegans with S.boulardii. The results of the as-yet unpublished study showed dose-dependent lifespan extension and reductions in biological age, with marked improvements in motility, reproduction and intestinal integrity.
“With the lab platform, we can see that it’s not just lifespan, but also a decrease in biological age, meaning the worms are healthier,” Hedin said. “These results indicate the yeast may influence aging through multiple physiological mechanisms, including intestinal health.”
While the findings remain early and largely limited to preclinical models, Hedin noted that such automated systems and microbiome-based approaches could accelerate the search for interventions that promote healthy aging.
“Doing aging studies in humans is not feasible or is very long, so testing in worms is a first step to de-risk projects and identify interventions worth advancing to larger animal studies,” he said.
“Both the platform and these microbiome-focused approaches allow us to study multiple layers of biology quickly, helping accelerate the search for interventions that promote healthy aging.
“The ultimate objective is to identify the most promising candidates earlier in the discovery pipeline before moving to more complex models.”
