In this episode of Longevity Roadmap, host Buck Joffrey interviews Dr. David Furman, a leading expert in immune aging and AI-driven longevity research. The discussion dives into how chronic inflammation—termed inflammaging—acts as a key driver of biological aging, and how recent tools and interventions are offering ways to measure and possibly reverse it. 

Key Points:

Dr. Furman shares insights on the “inflammatory clock,” the limits of epigenetic clocks, and the promise of interventions like therapeutic plasma exchange and nutraceuticals in lowering the biological age. 

• The Immune System as an Aging Sensor: Dr. Furman describes the immune system as a dynamic sensory system that reflects cumulative environmental damage. Inflammaging—chronic low-grade inflammation—is a major driver of aging and age-related diseases. Unlike acute inflammation, inflammaging is subtle, systemic, and often goes unnoticed.
• IAGE: A Better Biological Age Clock?: The inflammatory age (iAge) clock, developed using AI on massive immune proteomics data, measures the burden of inflammation rather than chronological age. It’s predictive of frailty, multimorbidity, cardiovascular aging, and longevity. iAge scores highlight specific inflammatory proteins like CCL11 and CXL9—potential causal contributors to aging.
• Therapeutic Interventions Show Promise: Furman discusses studies using therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE) and nutraceuticals (like avenanthramide-rich oat extracts) to reduce biological age scores. These interventions lowered inflammation markers and suggest potential for reversing immune aging safely, even before pharmaceutical options are ready.
• AI, Personalization & The Healthy Selfie: AI is accelerating biomarker discovery, pathway mapping, and aging diagnostics. Furman envisions a future of personalized longevity treatments and democratized diagnostics—including “Healthy Selfie,” a facial recognition tool to estimate inflammatory and biological aging from images.