Faster Biological Aging Linked to Early-Onset Cancer — SkimNews
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- WashU Medicine researchers led a study published in Nature Medicine analyzing 154,000+ UK Biobank participants and 10,000+ U.S. All of Us participants, finding that more recent birth cohorts showed significantly faster biological aging than earlier cohorts at the same chronological age.
- U.S. participants born 1990–1999 had systemic biological aging 92% of one standard deviation higher than those born 1965–1969, while UK participants born 1965–1974 aged 23% of one standard deviation faster than those born 1950–1954.
- Greater systemic biological aging was linked to an 8% increased risk of early-onset solid cancers overall, with the most aged group showing a 15% increased risk compared to the least aged — associations that held even after controlling for inherited genetic cancer risk.
- Organ-specific aging patterns mapped to particular cancers: advanced immune system aging correlated with early-onset lung cancer, while advanced adipose (fat) tissue aging correlated with early-onset colorectal cancer.
- Yin Cao, associate professor of surgery and medicine at WashU and co-lead of Cancer Grand Challenges Team PROSPECT, said the ultimate goal is identifying high-risk younger people before disease develops and tailoring prevention to individual biology.
- The research team used established measures including PhenoAge, the Klemera-Doubal Method, metabolomic age scores, and blood proteomic data to estimate biological age across whole-body and organ-specific systems.
- Cancer Grand Challenges, co-founded by the National Cancer Institute and Cancer Research UK, is funding the international effort to decode why early-onset cancers are rising globally — a question David Scott, the initiative's director, said remains unanswered but is being pieced together through cross-disciplinary studies.
Why it matters: If validated, biological age measurements could shift cancer screening from age-based cutoffs (currently 55) toward risk-based identification of younger adults who appear to be aging faster than their years — potentially catching tumors decades earlier in people who don't yet fit traditional screening guidelines. The 92% standard-deviation gap between Americans born just 25 years apart suggests a recent environmental or lifestyle shift is leaving biological marks on a population scale.
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