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About Avan
Avan Aihie Sayer is the William Leech Professor of Geriatric Medicine in the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Newcastle University. She holds the position of NIHR Senior Investigator and serves as Co-Chair of the Multiple Long-Term Conditions Cross-NIHR Collaboration. As immediate past Director of the NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre—a partnership between Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cumbria Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, and Newcastle University—she led the centre to secure £16.2 million in 2017 and £25.4 million in 2022, establishing it as the only Biomedical Research Centre in the UK prioritising research relevant to older people. This has built translational ageing research capacity from discovery science to clinical trials and patient benefits. Sayer founded the interdisciplinary AGE Research Group in 2016, promoting a life course approach to translate findings into advances in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of ill health in later life. She was a founder member of the HALCyon network of UK birth and ageing cohorts and a founder steering group member of the Global Leadership Initiative in Sarcopenia (GLIS) in 2022, contributing to international consensus guidelines on diagnosis.
Her research specialises in ageing, sarcopenia, and multiple long-term conditions (multimorbidity), exploring life course causes, consequences, and treatments of skeletal muscle loss, associations with low birth weight, mid-life multimorbidity, and data-driven analyses using routine health data. Sayer has international recognition in geriatrics and gerontology, ranked among the top global experts in sarcopenia. She delivered the Royal College of Physicians London 2024 Harveian Oration titled ‘From bench to bedside and beyond: new horizons for translational ageing research’. Key publications include ‘Sarcopenia’ in Nature Reviews Disease Primers (2024), ‘Harveian Oration 2024: From bench to bedside and beyond - new horizons for translational ageing research’ in Clinical Medicine (2025), and ‘Ageing of human myofibres in the Vastus Lateralis muscle: a narrative review’ in Ageing Research Reviews (2026). She has held roles such as member of the NIHR Multimorbidity Oversight Group (2020), NIHR MLTC Strategy Group, Deputy Chair of the BRC Directors Forum, NIHR Strategy Board, MRC Population and Systems Medicine Board (2020–2022), Co-Chair of the British Geriatrics Society Group on Sarcopenia and Frailty Research, and member of the European Geriatric Medicine Society Academic Board for eight years. Sayer champions team science, capacity building, and research inclusion across leadership roles.
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