An Interview With Leonard Guarente

Fight Aging!

Do you want to live a longer life in good health? Simple practices can make some difference, such as exercise or calorie restriction. But over the long haul all that really matters is progress in medicine: building new classes of therapy to repair and reverse the known root causes of aging. The sooner these treatments arrive, the more lives will be saved. Find out how to help »

The MIT Technology Review has an interview with researcher Leonard Guarente, who "has spent much of the last two decades patiently chipping away at the genetic and biochemical underpinnings of the aging process, an area of research often plagued by extreme hyperbole and extravagant claims. ... I hope in 10 years that we are way down the road of drug discovery in finding compounds that will deliver at least some of the benefits of calorie restriction. And I think SIR2 is going to be one of the important targets that we want to go after with drugs. ... We definitely think it is involved in the aging process. In particular, it seems to be involved in sensing caloric intake and asserting effects on cells to adjust life span. We think calorie restriction is a tremendous opportunity for us to intervene pharmacologically and have a positive impact on human health."

Link: http://www.technologyreview.com/BioTech/wtr_16008,312,p1.html