Longevity Science at the Methuselah Foundation
Future Current provides a transcript and video for a February presentation by Aubrey de Grey on new longevity science at the Methuselah Foundation: "will be able to initiate at least three, and perhaps even more, projects this year ... There are [problems caused] by cells that are actually not dividing, but they are not dying either, and they are accumulating slowly as a result. They get in the way and cause various problems just by being there. Probably the most serious example of this is the immune system. ... there is a good chance that we are going to be able to fund a project starting this year that will get a good deal further towards the goal in mice of [eliminating] clonal expansions of what are called anergic - essentially broken - CD8 cells. The hope certainly is that this will play a large role in rejuvenating the immune system. There is one other thing that we want to do that is also required for rejuvenating the immune system, and that is to restore the size of a very important organ in the immune system called the thymus, [which] shrinks throughout life [down] to 10 or 15% the size that it was in early life. It is believed that this has also a rather large role to play in the increasing dysfunction of the immune system. We want to regrow the thymus as well."