Can ageing be delayed, stopped or even reversed? BBC News

Please, the parish believes it has a deadly disease but is trying to develop its own cure for the aging disease. I have a mission. I am on a mission to help people live full, healthy lives free from the diseases of aging and complex disorders. And le's the only person on a mission, a growing number of respected scientists think that we definitely can and should fight aging. My opinion is that anyone who tells you that aging is beautiful and that there is something to accept is being dishonest with you or themselves. I don't see beauty if you love someone and watch them age and if you feel like you might lose them, you want them to be eternally healthy and happy, but not only are there scientists excited about this idea, there are a growing number of true believers who think we could live hundreds of years. years.

This is more than keeping us healthy and on our feet at all ages with a good diet and exercise. This is the pursuit of a much longer and healthier life using science and genetics to achieve it. And who hasn't done it? She dreamed of staying young, but how far will she be willing to go to achieve that dream? Lise Parrish believes she has found a way to defy aging, but she is not a scientist, she is an entrepreneur who in 2013 turned to the Internet after her son was diagnosed with diabetes. type 1 what I did was I started searching online for deeper treatments for the disease and I came across genetics and to me this seems to be the cure not only for childhood illnesses but for all the things that Ellis thinks he has found as a method .

That can reverse aging, so the idea is not to make people age longer, but to help them be as young as possible for a long period of time. To achieve this, two years ago Lise performed an experiment on herself that she had never tried on humans before. She took a therapy only previously tested on Mars designed to lengthen the telomeres of her chromosomes, one of the building blocks of our DNA. We can save it. Some of the cells in my body by telomere length are up to 20 years younger and how? you feel good, I feel great, I mean, I wish my whole system was marked when I was 20, but we still have a long way to go, we haven't solved the problem yet.

I do not believe that aging is a disease, it is the cause of diseases, so I see that the most important thing than being a disease is actually the origin of the disease and that is why I am interested in understanding Aging to try to know more about it. Lisa's project. I have come here to Madrid to meet with María Blasco, director of the Spanish Department. National Cancer Research Center, although they are not known, Liz Parish's self-experiment was inspired by the results of Maria's work, so you know that here we are made of cells, so it still has a nucleus and inside the nucleus are these things called chromosomes so the chromosomes have all the genetic information of what we are and at the end of the chromosomes at each of the ends are the Timmers and an interesting scene of these telomeres is that they shorten as we age and where the telomeres They shorten critically, so these result in the death of the other cell.

This is one of the basic mechanisms of aging. The question is, can we lengthen the telomeres? Can we slow down the aging process? In 2008, María Blasco tried to discover it and set out to lengthen the telomeres. in mice using a specially developed enzyme called telomerase the results were striking the mice lived on average 40 percent longer than their usual lifespan of course what an incredible feeling because we realized that we had actually manipulated one of the basic mechanisms of why we age. and this could lead to important applications in the future, but there was a problem: the therapy would almost certainly have increased cancer rates in the mice if the animals had not been genetically modified to be resistant to cancer, something that cannot be done in humans, so Maria and her team perfected the process and in 2012 they carried out a second experiment so that they could actually live twenty percent longer and the cancer was also

delayed

, thus proving that it was possible to delay aging and pathologies associated with aging, including cancer, with telomerase.

Just because it's a one-off experiment on mice doesn't mean it will work on humans, but that hasn't deterred Lise Parrish, who created her own biotech company at Aviva to replicate the experiment herself if we're looking for a cure for biological aging in diseases. complex, it would actually be a crime against humanity not to move forward and find out that someone needs to step up to do this and show the world that it's safe and that, come on, we should probably get involved in this technology and start eradicating it. the diseases that plague us now Lisa's blood tests show that some of her telomeres have lengthened, but she is here to independently verify the results;

In fact, her experiment is far from a proper clinical trial and taking an unproven gene therapy is potentially dangerous, it's not. It is going to be very, very useful and it is risky because if you want to try some new therapy, this has to be done through the regulatory agencies so that you can check if it is toxic but it has all the effects and you can also see if it is toxic. useful or not, it has been really effective if I could afford to extend my younger years. I don't know, I'm still very young so I guess this is more for older people.

Reply younger forever would be pretty good, yes, still young. because as an immortal like a vampire, of course, yeah, who wouldn't want to do that? Where is also being the first to sign up? Are you ready. My name is James Stroh. I'm the director of the Coalition for Radical Life Extension and co-founder of people unlimited I'm Brenna Dean and co-founder of people unlimited, so we were the creators of rad Fest, which is the

even

t we're at right now rad Fest revolution against aging and death, the largest gathering of longevity enthusiasts on the planet being physically mortal is in my blood this annual festival in California offers a mind-blowing array of clean anti-aging treatments my team developed the theraph eye device essentially, you can Cool it like a human battery charger.

Every cell in the body needs a certain voltage frequency to be healthy, so I'm not sure that if you put fruit here and came back in two years, that fruit would still be very, very healthy. We are doing thermal imaging analyzing the skin. and how the skin correlates with each muscle organ and gland by addressing inflammation, lymphatic congestion, disease precursors will help you live longer. We do medical engineering to optimize vitality and, for Giovani, that way you can become the best version of yourself. I'd like to say you perfected it. Radi Fest is a special opportunity because there are people who are already very interested in statistically stopping biological aging.

In developed countries, people already live almost twice as long as they did a century ago, but these people don't want to. stop there and there's money in it. Investors are starting to come to these types of conferences because they are excited about this technology. I think that business will soon begin to emerge at this type of conference, but there is a lot of difference between starting a conversation with an investor and ending an

even

t, these festivals, this disease, the largest number of awards has not been seen, but in reality it is es, and if aging is cured, there will be a domino effect that will cure most other age-related diseases in the future.

Whether it happens despite optimism, attracting the promise of eternal youth remains a fantasy, but on the West Coast the idea of ​​prolonging life is being taken very seriously. Scientists are looking at many possible ways to slow down aging, not just telomeres, if you love someone and see. how they age and if you feel like you might lose them, you want them to be eternally healthy and happy. Health and fitness fanatic Steve Horvath is a professor of human genetics and biostatistics. Here things were still on the cusp of understanding the causes of aging. I think there is a passivity, it actually measures the state of yourselves, it doesn't cause things to deteriorate, it just keeps track of a mechanism that actually intersects, so there is some mechanism that we just don't understand yet, I call it a Of the fundamental causes of aging, if we are ever going to reverse aging, he argues that we must first understand this mechanism called the epigenetic clock.

It all starts with the DNA molecule, as you know, most cells in the human body contain a DNA molecule that encodes different letters a C T. and G now in this model the yellow stones correspond to the letter C. If you look Carefully look at the molecule, you will see that there are some dots that are black. These are modifications of the letter C. Epigenetic modifications of the letter C by counting the number of black dots. In certain places we will be able to estimate the passage of time that occurred in a cell. It is these epigenetic modifications that Steve believes are a strong candidate to be the fundamental cause of aging.

The good

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about these age-related epigenetic changes is that they are reversible, you know, so in principle a treatment can be devised, perhaps a drug that can reverse these epigenetic changes to restore the cells and therefore , tissues and organs to a more youthful state. If epigenetic changes are important, does Steve think telomeres? We also play a role, we must recognize that the telomere interpretation of aging has disappointed many people in the anti-aging field who are enamored with the idea that if we overexpress telomerase, for example, which would lengthen our telomeres, you know it would be a viable anti-aging. -aging therapy, you know, but the depressing

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is that if you overexpress telomerase and end up with longer telomeres, you actually increase your risk of cancer, you know, then there is this paradoxical finding: if your telomeres are too long, in You actually have a higher risk of developing cancer. but are you biased because your area of ​​expertise is epigenetics and therefore you think that's the answer?

No, I wouldn't interpret it that way. You know, because my purpose in life is to defeat aging. I would do whatever it took to get there just to be. Sure, I think they contribute significantly to aging, but don't consider it the Fountain of Youth, you know, although there is still no consensus on the causes of aging on the San Francisco coast, billions of dollars are being invested Biotech startups looking for an answer to aging have so far been a roughly eight billion dollar industry of things that don't work, but if you could actually produce things that prevent multiple related diseases, then you could take about ten billion dollars that people are spending. spend on a particular disease like Alzheimer's and multiply it by whatever amount you want.

Veteran skating enthusiasts like Rock is a scientist and entrepreneur who has raised millions of dollars from venture capitalists like PayPal founder Peter Thiel believes the answer is A longer life lies in the prevention of age-related diseases. He is also the founder of Health Extension, a community that brings together scientists and entrepreneurs to create new companies in the aging industry. How much money has he raised for his companies? I think I can say it's you know at the end of 30 million, oh yeah, in the middle, I guess so, about 14 million, but I can't tell for our particular fun, but our companies and our total heart rate are on the order of a couple of hundred million between them.

Wow, where are these investors? a trend that I'm really excited about in Silicon Valley, where a lot of people with money in tech are getting interested in biology and not just biology but also aging well, especially where biology intersects with technology and robotics is used. They are using machine learning, correct me if I'm wrong, but they seem to be more and more interested in this industry. You know, I was in a couple of labs and I was very surprised that investors didn't come to us every day knocking on the door and saying, what do you have?

You know, we just sat there with great science and then no one would do it. appeared and it was like what's wrong here, you know, I think the fascinating things have been the ones that have really changed in the last few years, it's been like, you know, if people are now very actively coming out and saying what's happening and getting older , I want to invest in an old company, let's invest in that, yeah, I think science is pretty exciting now. I think there are things that we have discovered in the last ten years that arenew, we have drugs and we have genetic mutations that can make mice live a long time. more and if they translated directly to humans then we could basically add ten to twenty years of healthy human life, suddenly in the last few years people have found some things that actually extend the lifespan of mammals and now you can say which is correct. we're on the precipice, it's time to bring them into people, but that's a very challenging process, so what is it about animal studies, mammals in particular, that has investors and scientists excited?

One thing that is interesting is that small horses tend to live longer than large ones. horses, well, it turns out that the hormones that we discovered affect lifespan, they also affect size and if you lower these hormones throughout life, the animal will be small and live a long time, if you simply lower them in adulthood, they will not be little ones. but, as far as we know, they will continue to live a long time because each species has been tested rejecting this hormonal system extends lifespan Cynthia is not just any horse lover, she is the director of calico at Google, one of the best biotechnology companies funded in the United States calico is also very secretive.

We were granted a rare interview, but we were not allowed to ask detailed questions about what we are working on in calicos. The idea is to have a better understanding of aging in all its forms and perhaps a better understanding of how you can intervene in animals and increase life expectancy in a healthy way and at the same time try to come up with interventions for people. You know, calico is kind of a little microcosm of the broader field of aging. Cynthia made her name with pioneering research on a type of worm known as C elegans in the early 1990s by partially knocking out a single gene called Lucas for Cynthia's team. managed to double the life expectancy of these animals, so in one fell swoop the whole animal lives twice as long and the age is much slower than normal, so it was really surprising because it's not supposed to happen because then people He says: Oh my God, yes you can! do it with these little worms, maybe you can do it with other animals and sure enough you can do it, other people later showed that you can do it with fruit flies, you can do it with mice and maybe with people, we don't know if this is something Calico is looking at, we can only assume they say they want to have a better understanding of how and why we age to intervene and increase people's healthy life expectancy so that most diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, type 2 diabetes, happen to older people mainly because they are age-related and it turns out that when aging slows down in these animals, these diseases are also postponed and when they occur they are milder, so the same machinery molecular that could keep us young could also keep us free of age-related diseases for in other words, if you could achieve the goal of aging, perhaps you would have a drug that in a single pill could have effects on many diseases at once.

Google clearly believes this is a science worth investing in, but how close is it? I really think we are far from slowing aging in humans if people are like animals in the sense that if they are aging the machinery is still susceptible to intervention like animals are, it could be very close, it could be very very close, but if we are different in some way or if we have already reached the maximum then it may take a long time. I think we can do it. I really do. Getting older is a very good thing for me.

I am currently in good health. I take care of myself. and life is beautiful as you get older life experiences I think I don't want to live forever because you wouldn't appreciate life and the little things so much and you wouldn't have so much urgency to go and do the things you want I don't look super old just because I feel like they have more problems more health problems and I don't want to become a burden to anyone if I get sick or need someone to take care of me oh it's horrible, yes, no, I think it would be much better if we didn't need along with the calico, the other Silicon Valley company with a lot of money is Unity Biotechnology, it was founded by billionaire Nathaniel David, who is motivated by more than just the opportunity to do. money I watched my stepfather die of Alzheimer's there was nothing dignified or beautiful about it and you know he forgot who he was he forgot who we were and my opinion is that anyone who tells you that growing older is beautiful and that there is something to embrace is being dishonest with you or dishonest with themselves, yes, I see no beauty, their work focuses on a specific type of cell that, in unity, while we believe in its multiple aging mechanisms, we choose to focus on a particular mechanism that we believe is the only one capable to make medicines that impact.

This mechanism is called cellular senescence and it works like this at the moment of conception, you are a single cell, you are you and throughout your life this cell will divide up to 50 times and as the cell approaches 50 cell divisions , You will encounter some type of cellular stress and you will hit an emergency brake and stop dividing forever. These non-dividing cells are called senescence cells and they play an important role in preventing cancer, but they also drive the characteristics of aging, so the unit was able to eliminate them. cells in lab mice to see what would happen and we did this, something amazing happened these mice had a profoundly prolonged period of something called a turn of health this is the period of time that these animals live free of chronic diseases of aging they had increased heart function they had increased bone deposition they had reduced arthritis they had reduced cataract formation they even behaved like younger animals until an older age oh and as a side effect they did live longer but we think that's the boring part, the really interesting part is the fact That a lot of these things that you think are unavoidable aspects of aging that didn't happen to develop this treatment, they first had to find molecules that could selectively eliminate senescent cells in specific age-related diseases, but the unit says that in the Next 12 to 18 months they are planning to conduct their first clinical trial in osteoarthritis patients, our animal and modeling suggests that removing senescent cells will relieve pain and also allow cartilage that no longer heals in osteoarthritis patients to heal again. , then how wonderful that would be!

It would be if you could go to an elderly person who is on a cane and inject it and three days later it doesn't hurt and then three months later they have actually generated new cartilage; The United States spends approximately $2.3 trillion a year on age. related diseases it is easy to see the economic potential if it were possible to slow aging think about this most biotech products treat a disease you have never heard of someone you don't know suffers from everyone you know suffers from aging everyone The approach of Unity is just one of the many possible causes of aging that are being investigated Nathaniel David compares the various theories of aging to a tree, no one yet knows whether its particular specialties are the roots, the trunk, the branch or the leaves of that tree, the question is which of the competing theories underpins everything else, when I think about the tree, I think cellular senescence, if we're really lucky, is probably a nice branch.

I don't think it's drunk and I certainly don't think it's roots, if I were to speculate on what might inhabit it. the trunk or roots could be a peach, you know, the clock. I think it's potentially powerful and I think in the next five to ten years we'll learn whether or not you can make some major alteration to the epigenome and have an animal age at half the rate how wonderful that would be please in the meantime it's betting on telomeres, says it has raised millions in investments and plans to begin offering clinical trials next year, we will start with a gene that is within reach. that has already happened in humans and in all animal models that are acceptable to show data and then we will move on to stronger genetic therapies such as the telomerase inducer to lengthen telomeres, although it is a trial that patients will have to pay for if they want. participate well initially they will be very expensive therapies they will be hundreds of thousands some of the therapies will exceed a million but we come up with strategic ideas on how to treat localized areas of the body and then move towards full body treatments Lise will have to do hair tests outside the US To date in the state there have been no human clinical trials of drugs to slow aging, that is because the regulatory body, the FDA, only allows testing drugs that will combat diseases and aging.

It is not classified as a disease, but that is about to change. There is a lot of excitement around aging right now. I mean, we've been studying this process for 25 to 30 years in the lab and we've learned a lot about the aging process. and why aging causes diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, various types of cancer, etc. Gordon let go of the Buck Institute for Aging Research in California has been working in this field for over 25 years, so right now we're at a point where we're seriously talking about The first time and I've been doing this, you said for a long time, although we are talking for the first time about clinical trials with drugs that could slow down the aging process as something incredibly exciting and that I really did not expect.

To see in my life, the drug in question is metformin, which has been used for more than 20 years to treat diabetes. Researchers have noted that patients taking metformin tend to outlive diabetics taking other medications, but surprisingly they also appear to be less likely to suffer with age. -Related diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's and dementia. The plan is to recruit 3,000 patients over the age of 80 for a trial to test whether the drug slows the aging process and delays age-related diseases. However, the road will be long and the results will take at least five years and even if successful, no one expects a miracle cure.

I don't imagine we're going to have a magic solution that dramatically slows aging in humans. I think we don't really know how to do it. Complex aging is in humans, we have a lot more work to do before we can really say whether this is one process or another process. Metformin has been safely prescribed to patients for years, but Lisa's telomere experiment has not undergone the usual clinical trials. I wanted to know how I could justify the risk of AfriNIC to the public? When we bring in patients, we have a responsibility, we have a responsibility to them and to the world, to ensure that what we are doing is safe.

We don't want to give a bad impression. reputation to gene therapy, so it's a very serious time, as much as we're excited, you know where we're definitely thinking about all the extremes on the other side, you as CEO of bio lives, where are you from that risk and that responsibility ? If something goes wrong, it will be my wrist's ability in many ways as the CEO of the company and I will have that conversation. We have analyzed the research. We have analyzed animal data. We have analyzed data from human cells. I've taken the therapies myself, so that's less, meaning more than the average biotech could do to ensure a drug is safe before giving it to patients.

There are many more competing theories about what causes the aid, so after all that has happened. We learned after talking to scientists and experimenters. I can say two things, one is that there is a real conviction that we can slow down the aging process and the other is that a lot of money is being invested in that idea. My prediction is that people could improve their median. Life expectancy will probably be like if you were a white American male instead of being 79, it could be a hundred and three and a lot of people you know, instead of dying at 83, are demented catheterized in their bed and muttering to themselves who would die at the age of 106 on the tennis court. while we win or are killed by a jealous lover in 113 I certainly believe that it is something that is going to happen that not only are we going to live longer that we are already living longer but we will live longer without diseases and this is the objective as interesting as the The science it seems no one really knows when or if this research will produce results in humans, but in the meantime, Gordo let go has some good advice,The most amazing anti-aging medicine we know of right now is exercise, exercise is truly amazing, we will be a long time before we come up with a medication or any other intervention as good as exercise, nutrition is important too, we know that at less in the laboratory, if you reduce the number of calories, you prolong lifespan and also suppress the pathology of the disease, so those options Exercise and diet are really important today.

This is something we can do today. Lee says he doesn't have time to exercise, but he's happy to trust the experiment he's proposed. He is a very expensive human guinea pig and I can say that with complete certainty. I wear my jewelry inside. I'm an expensive test subject. This is what you're going to do until you die. Well, actually I intend to solve this problem, but now let's say this is my life's mission and if I die doing it. this would be a happy person you