December's Rejuvenation Research
The latest edition of Rejuvenation Research has been up and I've been forgetting to mention the fact. One paper in particular caught my eye, and I think you'll find it interesting.
A new consensus of gerontologists proposes that delay of biological senescence is the most potent public health measure for preventing chronic disease in late life. At the most fundamental level, cellular aging is characterized by a decline in repair and homeostatic systems. Thus, interventions that protect or rejuvenate these cellular systems hold significant promise for preventing or delaying the onset of age-related diseases.The most likely candidates for delaying senescence are the longevity-linked transcription factors DAF16 and HSF1. If one were to engineer negligible senescence, a key target would be the heat shock protein axis regulated by HSF1. This pathway is the preferred pathway to prevent protein damage or aggregation, whereas DAF-16/FOXO is a backup pathway activated during stress. Reduced HSF1 activity appears to accelerate tissue aging and shortens life span. Conversely, over-expression of HSF1 increases life span and decreases amyloid toxicity in animal models.
This paper describes enhancement of the HSR/HSF1 pathway engineered by repeated electromagnetic field shock (REMFS). In a recent study, we demonstrated that REMFS therapy upregulates the HSR/HSF1 pathway, delays cellular senescence in young cells, and transiently reverses it in senescent cells, thus altering cellular mortality. The technology of applying certain beneficial EMF energy to the human body to stimulate the natural stress response and activate the repair and maintenance systems is a new strategy for engineered negligible senescence. We discuss the exciting clinical implications of REMFS therapy in human aging and disease.
A different approach indeed, leaving aside the standard objections to merely slowing aging by manipulating pathways versus reversing aging by repairing damage. I can see that electromagnetic fields could be thought of as broadly similar to drugs: a tool that can be used to interfere in a particular biochemical reaction while trying to avoid interfering in others. Any such body of work is far behind the drug industry of course, largely due to the past history of technology and available tools, I would imagine. Yet the established radiology and MRI technology base could be starting point for a future branch of medicine that employs careful and extremely precise manipulation of electromagnetic fields. This is not implausible.