Fight Aging!

A couple of items of interest caught my eye today, starting with a review of "Time" - another example of just how far mainstream attitudes towards radical life extension have come.

A Science Channel program was aired this week, with little fanfare or publicity, but which nonetheless brought the idea of radical life-extension into the mainstream of public consciousness. It was profoundly moving to me for many reasons which I will explain in a bit. The program was titled very simply, "Time."

When I first saw the listing and decided to record it to my DVR, I anticipated a physics-based analysis of the "fourth dimension," which might have been interesting. What I saw, however, was something I did not expect: an analysis of human aging that culminated with the realistic hope of overcoming it within the lifetimes of those now living.

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The program continued as I was fervently hoping it would, with a brief interview with none other than the bearded one, Aubrey de Grey himself, who explained his confidence that we will be able to repair enough of this damage to delay death long enough for rejuvenation therapies to improve, so that more damage can be repaired, thus buying enough time for further improvements, et cetera. He explained that, while biblical-style immortality would not be achieved using rejuvenation therapies (since humans could still be killed by other means besides aging), living for 1,000 to 2,000 years was definitely possible.

Meanwhile the folk at Advanced Nanotechnology are perusing the abstracts for the forthcoming SENS 3 conference organized by Aubrey de Grey. The gathering will be attended by the best and brightest minds from many fields of scientific endeavor relevant to the prevention or repair of age-related degeneration. You should take a look yourself; it's quite the large range of science from those who support the fight to defeat aging and age-related disease.

This presentation will describe steps for deciphering the molecular mechanisms by which age-specific inhibitory culprits of tissue repair exert their negative influence on stem cells. Additionally, we provide evidence that embryonic stem cell-derived factors indirectly enhance and rejuvenate the regenerative potential of satellite cells endogenous to old skeletal muscle, thus, delineating new promising venues for enhancing the regenerative outcome of cell replacement therapies in the old.

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Considering the reversibility of cell potency and aged-phenotype, the next logical step toward the goal of organismal rejuvenation is to test the possibility of inducing the pluripotent state in somatic cells in vivo. Such an approach will not only provide enough autologous stem cells to replace old cells as in standard replacement therapy, but may also have the additional beneficial effects of (i) reversing the possible aged-phenotype of iPS and (ii) rejuvenating non- or slow-turnover tissues that otherwise would benefit less from standard replacement therapy.

Lastly, I notice that the Future Salon is hosting a Q & A session in the Bay Area on July 20th, featuring Aubrey de Grey and William Hurlbut, the latter being one of those deathists we keep hearing about.

To live forever is an age old dream of humankind. Aubrey de Grey thinks it is within our reach and we should go full steam ahead with the research to make death obsolete. Peter Thiel gives Aubrey's research more umpf by pledging up to $3.5 million for it. That is serious money.

Not so fast, says Stanford Neuroscience Professor William B. Hurlbut. Besides the biology that Aubrey de Grey is a bit too optimistic about, there are several ethical issues that should be thought through as we head into longevity research: The relationship between the generations, the meaning of embodiment in the pace and purpose of our lives, and perhaps questions related to ongoing adaptive evolution of our species.

Technorati tags: life extension, SENS