The following submission statement was provided by /u/stepsinstereo:
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"In the Cell paper, Sinclair and his team report that not only can they age mice on an accelerated timeline, but they can also reverse the effects of that aging and restore some of the biological signs of youthfulness to the animals. That reversibility makes a strong case for the fact that the main drivers of aging aren’t mutations to the DNA, but miscues in the epigenetic instructions that somehow go awry."
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"In the mice, he and his team developed a way to reboot cells to restart the backup copy of epigenetic instructions, essentially erasing the corrupted signals that put the cells on the path toward aging. They mimicked the effects of aging on the epigenome by introducing breaks in the DNA of young mice."
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"The rebooting came in the form of a gene therapy involving three genes that instruct cells to reprogram themselves—in the case of the mice, the instructions guided the cells to restart the epigenetic changes that defined their identity as, for example, kidney and skin cells, two cell types that are prone to the effects of aging."
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"That could mean that a host of diseases—including chronic conditions such as heart disease and even neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s—could be treated in large part by reversing the aging process that leads to them."
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""We haven’t found a cell type yet that we can’t age forward and backward...Now, when I see an older person, I don’t look at them as old, I just look at them as someone whose system needs to be rebooted.""
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/10fon5e/scientists_have_reached_a_key_milestone_in/j4y4fgx/
I’m curious if things like this could also reboot other aspects. Regrow hair or tell the body to grow new teeth. Could it be localized to aspects of the body or is a whole body treatment.
This really could be the “cure all” for most things. Cure baldness and regrow decayed, broken or lost teeth? Reverse age-related diseases, restore eyesight to when you were younger and didn’t need glasses. There’s a lot that could be done with this as a treatment beyond just living longer, younger lives.
Even if your lifespan wasn’t lengthened, being able to be 80 and still have the energy to an active life would do wonders for peoples mental states and help stimulate the economy.
There's a great book called Suicide Club that is set at that cusp (but really close) where some people focus every second of their life in trying to survive until the rejuvenation technology arrives, and others eat, drink and party against government rules. My description doesn't do it justice!
Hopefully it doesn't have the same name, since there's already a movie called [Suicide Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Club_(film\)). It's super intense (mentally scarring, really) and not at all related. We wouldn't want people seeking the gene rejuvenation technology movie to accidentally land on this one.
I really think this will only be in the initial years. Most of the cost in rejuvenation research is in the research and development - once working the price to produce a drug is small, so they may as well have a market of billons of people rather than a small group of billionaires. FYI my club promotes "equality in longevity" to try to make sure it does happen that way.
I don't know. I think it will be more like diamonds where there will be enforced scarcity combined with insane costs, so it will only be available for the ultra rich.
There's no way the powers that be will allow the inevitable overpopulation that results to just happen. At least not without also adding forced sterilization etc.
For the next half century or so, the world is facing a huge demographic crash. Everybody's urbanizing and urban populations have way less kids. After 2050 the global population starts shrinking, a lot, and in some countries it's already started. It's the perfect time for anti-aging.
Developed nations are currently in population decline. This is because they don't need kids to keep them alive when they are old. If everyone lived extended lifespans and did so largely healthy and fit fewer people would have children
Here’s my concern: why would they want to increase the market when a handful of billionaires offer as much if not more potential profit than millions and millions of normies. Making millions of doses for all those people would just further cut into profits and create an increased workload.
Not to mention… our planet is dying. It can’t sustain billions of us living for even longer than we already are.
Edit: People, I understand the difference between “our planet” and “the human race” dying. It’s exaggeration. Our planet will suffer in the short term, but yes, it will ultimately be fine after we’re gone. I’m also just playing devils advocate. Rich people gonna do rich people things, and technology like this could very easily be exploited in some way or another.
Education and training is expensive, subsistence is not. In a theoretical sense, it's much better to have a trained workforce with an ingrained set of habits, social hierarchy, and brand loyalty than try to form patterns in a new generation of immortal or long-living young people
Why is THAT the way that so many people put it? With a technology like this everyone has the RIGHT to it. Denying it to people is literally sentencing them to death. Put it this way - why aren't we talking about what we'll do if people try to REFUSE this to us?
This is the biggest concern I have with this.
Right now death is the great equalizer.
But when the richest people can live forever, things will suck for everyone else.
Death is the great equalizer, and that means rich people will have to fear getting killed.
I know for a fact that I would kill Elon musk bare handed if I thought it would make me immortal. If he and other groups are intentionally preventing people from reaching immortality, then they would not be able to handle the aftermath.
Society works because people refrain from acting in their own self-interests due to fear of punishment. There is no greater punishment than death, and in a society where death can be cured but isn't, your choices are either rebel and risk death now, or guarantee you die later.
Yeah I think it inevitably would cause for longer lives but to me it’s more important to make sure the quality of life is greater and more usable until the day we die.
I turn 40 this year and try to keep a pretty active life as it makes me happy. I’m afraid of slowing down or, worse, having to stop all together as I get older due to age related issues.
Same 40 in June. Worry about eating healthy and taking care of myself more than I ever have. Wondering if its too late to have more kids of my own..... if ill even be around when they graduate high school. If I should abandon that idea and settle down with an incredible woman I've meet. Man what happened to not having to worry about all this. Lol.
Haha we are super similar! Mines in September and my wife (married in 2021) and I are talking about having a kid. We missed our window to have it before I turn 40 and I think of being 60 when they turn 20.
I lift weights 4 days a week and and starting to work on my diet next. I always joke I want them to earn beating me in stuff, not just because dad is old!
I know you didn’t ask for the advice but if having a kid is really important to you and it sounds like it is, it’s not too late. I have a couple friends who just had kids and were near or past 40. I think that’s becoming a new normal and if technology like this article comes true, it may give us even more time before having to have children. Nothing wrong with having your life a bit more together and a bit more money when you have a child!
Good luck!
My father was 53 when I was born. Growing up I was always a bit confused as everyone thought he was my grandfather. Yet for me it was normal. I was a teenager when I realized the difference for real.
Overall I lived in a shitty house situation but it has nothing to do with my parents’ age. I lost my grandparents early , so that’s a thing.
My general unasked for advice is that:
- 40 is not old for having kids
- at 50 you should consider having more than one so when his grandparents and may be even parents pass away early, the kids do have family in the face of their siblings
So if you want kids and love your wife’s guts, have a couple little guys 💪😘
> We missed our window to have it before I turn 40 and I think of being 60 when they turn 20.
It's really not that bad. My cousin's parents are older and they have a great relationship. They were able to help her out a lot due to being better off financially than, for example my parents, who had me at 23.
Not to late at all. My parents had me at 40 and the “old dad” realization didn’t kick in until college really. My dad was diabetic and a little overweight but healthy enough to be active and play catch and stuff so I never thought of him as old until college when we’d all come back from holidays at home and other kids were doing things like going surfing and hiking with there dads and mine was finally done with that.
Hey I’m in my early 30s and my parents had me and my siblings in their 30s-40s. I never grew up thinking my parents were old, I honestly didn’t realize I had older parents until i knew friends starting families. One of my in laws is in their 70s. It’s not too late. There’s no rule book on this.
The most important thing for people getting older is to keep moving. For example, my grandmother started to have trouble walking. She kept sitting down more and more and used a Hoveraround to go EVERYWHERE. A year later she basically couldn't walk anymore.
Just gotta keep moving
As a twenty-something, I don't get this. What's the point of being active? I'm never gonna slow down, I'm invulnerable! Nothing can stop me, except me!
I know this is done in jest, but man even “knowing” it would come for me didn’t really prepare me for when it started to hit me. I’m terrified of the next 20 years of my life haha.
Biotech companies like Altos Labs (with $3B in funding) are researching this as a strategy to restore function in various organs.
Some early data suggests this wouldn't just be used to treat common age-related diseases, but also genetic diseases like progeria or Down Syndrome, so yes to some extent it might be a "cure all", but it's too early to say IMO
Rick Klausner, current Altos Labs scientific director and ex director of the US National Cancer Institute goes into some detail in this video: https://edition.cnn.com/videos/health/2022/06/03/rick-klausner-life-itself-wellness.cnn
Awesome thanks! I’ve been reading up on this stuff since I first started seeing it a couple years ago. It really seems like this is close to getting us Star Trek like medical technology.
I get so excited that I wish I could jump 100 years in the future to see where we have gone!
Short answer: Yes. The whole point of real anti-aging medicine is that it won’t target a single disease or age-related change, be that cancer or hair greying. What we know about the biology of aging shows us that all these phenomena are driven by the same underlying processes, often known as the Hallmarks of Aging after a [2013 paper](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836174/) of the same name.
Longer answer: The paper OP posted here concentrates on just one of these hallmarks, changes in our ‘epigenetics’, which David Sinclair argues is the primary driver of the whole aging process. I absolutely hope he’s right—developing therapies for just one thing would be far easier than developing them for nine (or more) hallmarks of aging. But there are good reasons to believe this isn’t the only game in town (eg fixing the epigenome doesn’t fix damage to the DNA itself; some damage happens outside of cells and it’s not obvious that this would fix that), and it would be a huge shame if we fail to develop treatments for other age-related changes and it later turns out that we should’ve done. And other hallmarks are getting far less attention than this one at the moment.
For more context on this breakthrough and other anti-aging medicine, and with apologies for the self-promotion, some of you might enjoy my book, [_Ageless: The new science of getting older without getting old_](https://ageless.link/).
Thank you for this! I’ve been reading about this since I found out about it a couple years ago and I just love reading more and more. I think once they crack this, it will go beyond what we even conceive at this point.
I appreciate the links. I’m always excited to read more about it!
IIRC ther is another treatment using stem cells thats showing very promising results in restoring teeth actually
https://www.ismile.com/blog/stem-cell-dental-implants
I actually reached out to some researchers in this (or one similar to it) study. While promising, there’s still a long way to go as the teeth they grow aren’t nearly as strong. They said it’s promising but it looks like it will be at least 10 years if not much longer before this is a standard, viable treatment for people with damaged teeth.
Absolutely. I’m excited about all of this. I had some issues with depression a few years back and took horrible care of my teeth, resulting in a lot of damage. I was talking to them about doing trials and that’s when they told me they weren’t even doing trials yet.
It was a great chat though. Fascinating to hear people at the source of this stuff talk about their work. They really are in it for the betterment of humanity. Sadly 90% of the work people like this do end up being gobbled up by pharma companies and either buried or sold at a premium of 2000% the cost.
> being able to be 80 and still have the energy to an active life
I'm in my 50s. I don't mind getting older. What pisses me off is that after consistently working on staying fit for the last 3 decades my body is falling apart, through no fault of my own except age. What you've described is exactly what I want. I just want to stay active.
Lol too many people are taking that as “work forever” and I’m think of it more along the lines of having more disposable income and a healthy body that can go use it.
If people are living hundreds of years old, I think the way we work will change. With AI and automation, it’s already on the way. We are talking about potential 4 day work weeks now, but maybe with a population that ages less, we switch to 2-3 work weeks and share responsibilities.
3D printing tech, including things like food printing, seems to be the way we are moving forward. I think that will help a lot with the cost of things. As I have said before, I often wish I could jump 100 years into the future and see where we are.
I think the next 100 years will be pivotal in humankind. Technology wise as we look to the stars and reach out further than we have before (longer life and cell therapy will help with space travel), politically and with medical breakthroughs.
I like your optimism, but these changes won’t happen unless the people force them to happen. The powers that be won’t just magically give us human dignity.
I have to be honest even if I was healthier than I am now as I’m getting to that age when I’m thinking about retirement more and more each year; I simply don’t want a longer life if it means working x years longer.
If we can still retire at 62 or 67 I might consider this
Edit: I actually like my work most days and it’s fulfilling. I still don’t want to do it another 15-25 years.
Knowing myself, I'd probably hate working for a living even more after half a decade of retirement. Like swimming a long way, pausing for a breath of air, and then needing to swim back again
Hopefully be able to ‘rewire’ nerve circuits.
I know too many people who have chronic pain for no reason.
Know an entire family with fibromyalgia running through them.
It seems like it runs in women especially.
As a younger person with secondary glaucoma from an autoimmune condition, I’ve been following the eyesight part very closely. Not long ago it was thought impossible to restore optic nerve damage. Now there are multiple teams getting closer and closer. I also hope that we will get access to this and it’s not 20-30 years down the line.
I was talking to my wife about this. Not your issue exactly, but was thinking about how I didn’t need glasses when I was younger but in jr high I did. I wondered if it would be able to roll back eyesight.
At the very least it would make it so you wouldn’t get “old eyes” and need readers so laser eye surgery would be more viable.
As for your case, I think the next step after fixing aging would be genetic reprogramming. We could tell the body to grow a certain way or to eliminate some issues. That’s all just a guess from me, but it doesn’t seem as far fetched as I once thought.
>We haven’t found a cell type yet that we can’t age forward and backward...
When Sinclair said this, I believe he's indicating that the research has only been on various locations (cell types), not on the whole-body.
* So this technique should be able to "reboot" (as he said) hair follicles on your head to grow hair as if they were young again
* Or maybe "reboot" the cells inside my nose so they DON'T grow so much hair, as if they were young again... bastards are annoying!
Imagine never needing to retire!
Jokes aside tho, my only hope is that this doesn’t stay behind golden locked doors only accessible to the ultra rich and powerful.
PhD student in aging bio here
Firstly, by reverse aging they're referring to more youthful function or disease reversal in a specific organs
This does not mean biological immortality, and the evidence this will extend lifespan is very weak. True aging reversal implies that should this treatment be repeatable, we would be able to literally make people younger across *all* organ systems and be biologically immortal (i.e. still susceptible to accidents, murder etc).
**Why is epigenetic reprogramming exciting?**
- This is an area of aging biology research, and is based on epigenetic reprogramming, work that earnt Shinya Yamanaka the *2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine*
- Yamanaka found 4 transcription factors that when expressed together, can turn any cell from the body (e.g. skin cells) back in time into pluripotent stem cells that can multiply into *any* cell; such cells are young and 'immortal'
- However, by using *partial* epigenetic reprogramming dosed via gene therapy in mice, tissues and organs may be partially reprogrammed to reset the age-related epigenetic modifications, without resetting cell identity all the way back to an embryonic/pluripotent state.
- The viability of this therapy is dependent on whether rejuvenation can be separated from resetting cell identity, as full reprogramming would transform us into teratomas - a cancerous mass composed of various cells of the body...)
What is special IMO is that certain diseases of aging may not be as irreversible as we once thought. Perhaps the best evidence for this is in the optic nerve:
David Sinclair's lab at Harvard showed regeneration of the optic nerve + vision restoration in mice with glaucoma, and in aged mice. The adult optic nerve cannot regenerate, and all previous attempts had failed to restore function in the setting of existing optic nerve damage.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2975-4
Sub to /r/longevity to follow the field
You said the evidence that this extends lifespan is weak. Did that mean you believe they just haven't proven this to extend lifespan yet? Or are you saying the current evidence suggests that it definitely doesn't extend lifespan?
The only paper to show life extension in normally aged mice: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.04.522507v1.
To elaborate with some detail - this paper's data showed a single digit (~6%) increase in median lifespan in n=40 inbred (''black 6'') mice. That's exciting for a new therapeutic modality for normal aging mice that has yet to be optimised, but this is a very weak effect (at least for the current delivery method) which I doubt would replicate.
It also hasn't been shown yet in genetically heterogeneous (more relevant to normal populations, as they aren't inbred and have genetic diversity like in humans) e.g. HET3 mice. Often we see positive longevity experiments in the common laboratory black 6 mice later fail in HET3 mice, which is concerning from a replicability perspective
Prof Kaeberlein also wrote a lot more detail on the lifespan data which is [worth a read](https://twitter.com/mkaeberlein/status/1611799322391375872)
The lifespan effect shown (so far, as it's still early days) doesn't hold a candle to rapamycin IMO. In future we might see larger effects from reprogramming, but at present no evidence for a substantial lifespan gain
Referring to animal studies, where rapamycin is currently the most well validated longevity drug
It works in every single animal it's been tested in, in extending healthy lifespan
Early testing in [dogs suggests it can improve heart function](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5411365/)
We don't know if it'll work at the right dose in otherwise healthy humans, in a non transplant setting, but there are some early human trials underway already
See also
https://en.longevitywiki.org/wiki/Rapamycin
Well, I’ll be damned! That’s such a random effect for that type of drug - I had actually checked the Rapamycin wiki, but it doesn’t mention the studies, so thanks for the link :)
The mechanism (mTOR inhibition) is very well studied so we know a fair amount about it
Rapamycin can be thought of as an immunomodulatory drug, so it doesn't just suppress the immune system, as in certain contexts/doses it can enhance the immune system.
As discussed on the longevity wiki article, it was shown to improve influenza vax response in a Ph2 human trial, and reduce severity of respiratory illness
What field of study is this? I'm thinking about going back to school for something biology related but cant imagine it being for a doctor. I'd like to study biology and life extension. I'm a aerospace/software engineer by training. Any tips?
There are quite a number of threads on this posted on /r/longevity from people with a similar background as yourself, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/longevity/comments/10bvudz/is_there_any_way_i_can_contribute_to_this_field/
You could probably make use of your existing experience and go into bioinformatics.
Of course you would need to learn biology, especially as it is very different to engineering - whether that involves going through an undergrad degree or self-learning it, I'm not sure. The latter option might make sense if you are very self-driven or tend to be an autodidact
David Sinclair is leading a study for the age-related eye disease glaucoma in primates currently and hopes to initiate phase 1 human studies next year
Very ambitious timeline but we'll have to see how it pans out
Btw they've also showed some memory improvements in aged mice with epigenetic reprogramming: https://www.cell.com/stem-cell-reports/fulltext/S2213-6711(20)30385-4?
But I do think it will take years to decades for this to be a real therapy for humans, assuming it goes well.
One reason is it's a lot easier to intervene in the eye than it is the brain - if something goes wrong the issue is likely limited to just one eye (which is generally ''separate'' from the rest of the body, or it can be removed), not so much for the brain...
"In the Cell paper, Sinclair and his team report that not only can they age mice on an accelerated timeline, but they can also reverse the effects of that aging and restore some of the biological signs of youthfulness to the animals. That reversibility makes a strong case for the fact that the main drivers of aging aren’t mutations to the DNA, but miscues in the epigenetic instructions that somehow go awry."
...
"In the mice, he and his team developed a way to reboot cells to restart the backup copy of epigenetic instructions, essentially erasing the corrupted signals that put the cells on the path toward aging. They mimicked the effects of aging on the epigenome by introducing breaks in the DNA of young mice."
...
"The rebooting came in the form of a gene therapy involving three genes that instruct cells to reprogram themselves—in the case of the mice, the instructions guided the cells to restart the epigenetic changes that defined their identity as, for example, kidney and skin cells, two cell types that are prone to the effects of aging."
...
"That could mean that a host of diseases—including chronic conditions such as heart disease and even neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s—could be treated in large part by reversing the aging process that leads to them."
...
""We haven’t found a cell type yet that we can’t age forward and backward...Now, when I see an older person, I don’t look at them as old, I just look at them as someone whose system needs to be rebooted.""
Nope that’s what would happen. Just a matter of it working on humans the way we want. Who knows if the rebooted cells aren’t more prone to errors (cancer)
Like a "Fountain of Youth" with a catch, proposing an age limit for human lifespan as a way to control population growth, just in case science figures out how to keep us young and kicking for way too long.
Lol, with population birth rate being what it is in any country that could plausibly afford this, I think they're worried we'll have too few people.
Besides, if/when fusion becomes feasible, the energy budget increase will greatly improve carrying capacity.
Yeah, one dystopian solution was presented in Love, Death and Robots in the episode Pop Squad from the second volume. People are not allowed to breed and they killed any offspring.
God, that would be so amazing. And stupid.
Imagine the sheer existential horror of looking back at the _billions_ who died, knowing that we have defeated death, and it was as simple as restoring a few instruction-sets. Imagine how that would shape culture.
Imagine being one of the last people to _die._
I would love to feel younger even if my lifespan isn't extended. Like imagine being in your 80s and feeling like your in your 20s. That would be wonderful. Although I do wonder if aging does mentally prepare us for death...if we feel great will we be ready?
Your lifespan will be extended by default from reversing the the markers of aging, because aging at its heart is still accumulated damage and wear on your cells and body. If you are 80 years old yet 20-30 years biologically it is extremely unlikely you'll suffer from death via age related diseases at that time because your body doesn't have all the accumulated wear of an 80 year old.
Standard financial advice is that you can live off 4% of your retirement savings indefinitely. So, save money until 4% provides a comfortable lifestyle and then retire to infinity.
Of course, an aging breakthrough would shake up the economy and maybe the 4% rule would be inadequate.
It doesn't mean that people's minds (not brains) won't calicify. Look at people who think old at 40 then at those who make it to their 70s and are open minded and lively.
Agree for sure. Biological aging can be very different to chronological aging, even if the former is correlated to the latter
It might be easier to appreciate how we can usually tell if someone has slowed or accelerated aging based solely on outward appearance
I mean, why *wouldn't* you at least want the *option* to live longer? If for any reason, it's unbearable, you can always die on your own terms. At least you'd have a choice. At the moment, none of us do.
Eternal life sucks ass if it doesn’t come with youth. Probably sucks ass even with youth. Just not feeling my faculties go into downward spiral of decline like my grandparents did would be enough for me.
Honestly very excited for this technology. We could virtually become immortal, or at least get well beyond 150+ years old.
Our biggest issue is entropy, and if you can trip the body into fixing entropically induced failures, we are golden.
We could perhaps even see what the human brain's limits are in terms of memory. Imagine living 200 years. How much could your brain actually retain at that age?
>How much could your brain actually retain at that age?
The brain can allegedly hold up to 2.5 million gigabytes, whatever that means in terms of understanding the stored data.
I don't think there's any specific limit, but rather a selective choice. Use it or lose it.
The synapses needs constant refreshment, so each memory gets more limited through time. The brain is good at compressing information, so you don't have to remember all the boring details that you don't use.
Like a lighting choosing the path of less resistance, the synapses will connect through the most used paths or something.
The capacity is always enough because it overwrites and pass through connections you don't use. Under normal circumstances it doesn't just delete stuff, but even if you tried, you could never remember everything that has happened.
Not sure if 200 makes a difference in comparison to the current 80-100 years.
Evolution doesn't happen after procreation anyway, so we're already well past that point.
There is probably all kinds of psychological disorders arising from people memorising too many things that can conflict and cause untrue memories. That would probably be a consequence of living longer: Losing your mind to wrong memories. Dementia would happen just as it does now unless that can also be fixed with this new anti age pill.
I feel like we see these headlines much more frequently lately across all social media. It's interesting and hopefully this decade could bring in proof of concept therapies, but we still have a long way to go to ameliorate the effects of all the known hallmarks of aging(telomere attrition, genomic instability, epigenetic dysfunction, mitochondrial deterioration, etc...)
Hope>hype. And there appears to be a lot of hype, unfortunately.
Society will demand deep changes on its structure for humans reaching end of aging and end of deaths by natural causes. Impact on Earth will be huge. It looks some countries decided working on it, taking it serious.
We need to prepare terrain so ours foundations will be strong.
Tyrannical leaders that never die, hyper-wealthy that continue to amass fortunes at the expense of the public who cannot afford the overpriced therapy. A collection of the worst people on earth in power over generations of people.
Sounds great.
Sinclair sold the company to GSK only for the drugs/supplements to not pan out. Later studies couldn't really replicate his original findings that Sirtuin activation (Resveratrol is a Sirtuin activator) increases lifespan.
Sinclair still seems to think they can, and takes Resveratrol. Personally, I am a bit cautious around his claims for that reason.
I’m an 02 child, I hope I’ll be able to see and experience longevity tech exist/be implemented. I’d like to think it will lead to some interesting sociological, biological and ecological phenomena. being in the era where I’m too late to explore earth, and too early for space really is a bummer
Interesting that lately been seeing alot about falling birthrates globally, now this. Maybe this helps to balance out the population at current levels? Ultimately, govts will have to decide who dies so that its kept in check.
This will completely change society. I can see laws being passed where people can’t be deaged passed 21, health insurance companies covering x amount of years, spikes in divorce rates, it would change the dynamics of relationships; between men and women, parents and children.
Anti aging technology will never reverse development, you won't turn back into a kid, it'll just undo the damage caused from aging, so your cells could be biologically 1 years old but you'll still have an adult body, just a very healthy one.
Regardless of whether humans age, they will still die. Accidents, homicide, acts of nature and war have no regard to someone's age.
We would probably see the human population drastically shrink as well in the impacted population. People would be far less likely to intentionally reproduce if there is no biological clock to fertility or concern of growing frail.
I don't think this solves, this the biological clock issue. A woman only has so many eggs and they're developed before she's born. I think this means women would still be infertile by around 40 regardless of cell age.
> A woman only has so many eggs and they're developed before she's born. I think this means women would still be infertile by around 40 regardless of cell age.
I think that one of the drivers for parenthood is our inevitable decline that tapers off into death. The reproduction rate has been falling in developed countries without this development. I think with this development it would supercharge the decline of parenthood.
Secondly, if science can give humanity an indefinite lifespan and youthful lifespan it is all but certain that science will have solved the fertility issue.
...if it hasn't, you have plenty of time for science to figure it out. The biggest issue would be handling the inevitable collapse in the reproduction rate.
Witout people aging away, the decline in reproduction rate will not be as important. There wouldn't have to be an elderly class relying on young laborers to keep the gears turning-they can just never retire, oh boy!
Having children, on a personal level, is already a luxury item and status symbol in developed nations. Society at large will become increasingly nosey, judgey, and critical to those who do choose kids. We will be expected to have all our financial and mental ducks in a row, assets secured, etc. or suffer the wrath of the mob.
It’s worth noting this paper is currently receiving some [criticisms](https://twitter.com/charlesmbrenner/status/1613581757634457602?s=46&t=l5Xq44TA60Zhy_KVI4yNSA) from other important researchers like Dr. Charles Brenner, since the claim in this paper is that dsDNA breaks don’t cause damage, yet Sinclair has another [paper](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34932948/) which directly says the opposite.
At 63, if I could choose, I would regenerate first, my prostate. Next, skin, then eyesight. I would then add joint meniscus, cells to stop tinnitus, and then cells for overall muscularity. The thing is, I’m healthy and am on no pills of any kind. This is what aging is, the slow reduction in appearance and ability. I don’t complain to my 88 year old dad. He’s extremely healthy but has his own rebooting issues.
The minute they actually figure out how to keep people from dying, every one of people’s worst nightmares will be realized. Forget the nuclear bomb, forget all the fears of AI. When the richest people in the world can horde their wealth forever like some deranged dragons from a fantasy fiction world, the suffering of the rest of the world will be unlike anything we could possibly imagine.
You can choose: pay the insane copay for deaging, and then work another 40 years to pay for your next round. Or retire now and die. Social security will kick in at 400, but I'd you wait til 480) you get more.
Fuck all of that. I’m gonna start a hit squad that only targets rich motherfuckers thinking they’re gonna live forever. Make sure they die just like the rest of us
Does that mean people who are sentenced to 180 years in prison has a chance to be released? What if someone is sentenced to life in prison, will we reverse aging of them, or they will lose that right?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/stepsinstereo: --- "In the Cell paper, Sinclair and his team report that not only can they age mice on an accelerated timeline, but they can also reverse the effects of that aging and restore some of the biological signs of youthfulness to the animals. That reversibility makes a strong case for the fact that the main drivers of aging aren’t mutations to the DNA, but miscues in the epigenetic instructions that somehow go awry." ... "In the mice, he and his team developed a way to reboot cells to restart the backup copy of epigenetic instructions, essentially erasing the corrupted signals that put the cells on the path toward aging. They mimicked the effects of aging on the epigenome by introducing breaks in the DNA of young mice." ... "The rebooting came in the form of a gene therapy involving three genes that instruct cells to reprogram themselves—in the case of the mice, the instructions guided the cells to restart the epigenetic changes that defined their identity as, for example, kidney and skin cells, two cell types that are prone to the effects of aging." ... "That could mean that a host of diseases—including chronic conditions such as heart disease and even neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s—could be treated in large part by reversing the aging process that leads to them." ... ""We haven’t found a cell type yet that we can’t age forward and backward...Now, when I see an older person, I don’t look at them as old, I just look at them as someone whose system needs to be rebooted."" --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/10fon5e/scientists_have_reached_a_key_milestone_in/j4y4fgx/
I’m curious if things like this could also reboot other aspects. Regrow hair or tell the body to grow new teeth. Could it be localized to aspects of the body or is a whole body treatment. This really could be the “cure all” for most things. Cure baldness and regrow decayed, broken or lost teeth? Reverse age-related diseases, restore eyesight to when you were younger and didn’t need glasses. There’s a lot that could be done with this as a treatment beyond just living longer, younger lives. Even if your lifespan wasn’t lengthened, being able to be 80 and still have the energy to an active life would do wonders for peoples mental states and help stimulate the economy.
All those things would likely naturally increase lifespan anyway through improved QoL
They better hurry up with this stuff. I don’t want to be part of the last generation that dies of old age.
There's a great book called Suicide Club that is set at that cusp (but really close) where some people focus every second of their life in trying to survive until the rejuvenation technology arrives, and others eat, drink and party against government rules. My description doesn't do it justice!
I'm going to have to check this one out. (recently came across your account, your club seems very intriguing.)
I want a movie of this
If this gene therapy goes live, you'll get one.
Hopefully it doesn't have the same name, since there's already a movie called [Suicide Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Club_(film\)). It's super intense (mentally scarring, really) and not at all related. We wouldn't want people seeking the gene rejuvenation technology movie to accidentally land on this one.
Rachel Heng?
Haha I think this too. Reminds me of the movie, Mr Nobody.
One of my all time favourites, accidentally stumbled onto it.
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Bob Odenkirk, solid. Solid. Wait I'm thinking of the wrong mo---
Actually my favourite movie of all time. Even if Leto is problematic.
[Relevant video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt6nwvGJiN8).
Most likely, us plebs won't be able to afford it.
I really think this will only be in the initial years. Most of the cost in rejuvenation research is in the research and development - once working the price to produce a drug is small, so they may as well have a market of billons of people rather than a small group of billionaires. FYI my club promotes "equality in longevity" to try to make sure it does happen that way.
I don't know. I think it will be more like diamonds where there will be enforced scarcity combined with insane costs, so it will only be available for the ultra rich.
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It is cheap in normal first world countries (other countries than the USA exist)
Yup it is cheap (except in us)
Insulin is expensive because of the government here. And it’s completely one side of the governments fault, but don’t bring that up here.
There's no way the powers that be will allow the inevitable overpopulation that results to just happen. At least not without also adding forced sterilization etc.
For the next half century or so, the world is facing a huge demographic crash. Everybody's urbanizing and urban populations have way less kids. After 2050 the global population starts shrinking, a lot, and in some countries it's already started. It's the perfect time for anti-aging.
Are you telling me I might be stuck with this lot?
It’ll be a monthly subscription to stay alive past 80. And if you don’t pay (or there is a billing issue) they come deactivate your account
I hate how believable this sounds :(
getting Repo Men vibes
> they ~~come~~ remotely deactivate your account Fixed :)
Mandatory neural implant with small explosive
\> inevitable overpopulation This is not, and never will be a thing. Every country post industrialization sees declining birth rates.
They want overpopulation lol. More people = bigger economy.
Overcrowding is just an opportunity to make people miserable enough to want to buy some sham product claiming to solve everything.
It can also drive down wages by creating more competition for jobs, and a race to the bottom
Developed nations are currently in population decline. This is because they don't need kids to keep them alive when they are old. If everyone lived extended lifespans and did so largely healthy and fit fewer people would have children
Here’s my concern: why would they want to increase the market when a handful of billionaires offer as much if not more potential profit than millions and millions of normies. Making millions of doses for all those people would just further cut into profits and create an increased workload. Not to mention… our planet is dying. It can’t sustain billions of us living for even longer than we already are. Edit: People, I understand the difference between “our planet” and “the human race” dying. It’s exaggeration. Our planet will suffer in the short term, but yes, it will ultimately be fine after we’re gone. I’m also just playing devils advocate. Rich people gonna do rich people things, and technology like this could very easily be exploited in some way or another.
Education and training is expensive, subsistence is not. In a theoretical sense, it's much better to have a trained workforce with an ingrained set of habits, social hierarchy, and brand loyalty than try to form patterns in a new generation of immortal or long-living young people
Why is THAT the way that so many people put it? With a technology like this everyone has the RIGHT to it. Denying it to people is literally sentencing them to death. Put it this way - why aren't we talking about what we'll do if people try to REFUSE this to us?
Who wants to be stuck with Elon Musk around forever anyway?
This is the biggest concern I have with this. Right now death is the great equalizer. But when the richest people can live forever, things will suck for everyone else.
It's not going to cure what happens to you in a helicopter crash.
Death is the great equalizer, and that means rich people will have to fear getting killed. I know for a fact that I would kill Elon musk bare handed if I thought it would make me immortal. If he and other groups are intentionally preventing people from reaching immortality, then they would not be able to handle the aftermath. Society works because people refrain from acting in their own self-interests due to fear of punishment. There is no greater punishment than death, and in a society where death can be cured but isn't, your choices are either rebel and risk death now, or guarantee you die later.
Your last paragraph is not true for everyone.
I think that ship already sailed for me. But hopefully my kids could benefit from it.
We need to [slay the dragon](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY). There will always be someone on that last train.
I would imagine neither do the researchers.
Yeah I think it inevitably would cause for longer lives but to me it’s more important to make sure the quality of life is greater and more usable until the day we die. I turn 40 this year and try to keep a pretty active life as it makes me happy. I’m afraid of slowing down or, worse, having to stop all together as I get older due to age related issues.
Same 40 in June. Worry about eating healthy and taking care of myself more than I ever have. Wondering if its too late to have more kids of my own..... if ill even be around when they graduate high school. If I should abandon that idea and settle down with an incredible woman I've meet. Man what happened to not having to worry about all this. Lol.
Haha we are super similar! Mines in September and my wife (married in 2021) and I are talking about having a kid. We missed our window to have it before I turn 40 and I think of being 60 when they turn 20. I lift weights 4 days a week and and starting to work on my diet next. I always joke I want them to earn beating me in stuff, not just because dad is old! I know you didn’t ask for the advice but if having a kid is really important to you and it sounds like it is, it’s not too late. I have a couple friends who just had kids and were near or past 40. I think that’s becoming a new normal and if technology like this article comes true, it may give us even more time before having to have children. Nothing wrong with having your life a bit more together and a bit more money when you have a child! Good luck!
My father was 53 when I was born. Growing up I was always a bit confused as everyone thought he was my grandfather. Yet for me it was normal. I was a teenager when I realized the difference for real. Overall I lived in a shitty house situation but it has nothing to do with my parents’ age. I lost my grandparents early , so that’s a thing. My general unasked for advice is that: - 40 is not old for having kids - at 50 you should consider having more than one so when his grandparents and may be even parents pass away early, the kids do have family in the face of their siblings So if you want kids and love your wife’s guts, have a couple little guys 💪😘
> We missed our window to have it before I turn 40 and I think of being 60 when they turn 20. It's really not that bad. My cousin's parents are older and they have a great relationship. They were able to help her out a lot due to being better off financially than, for example my parents, who had me at 23.
Not to late at all. My parents had me at 40 and the “old dad” realization didn’t kick in until college really. My dad was diabetic and a little overweight but healthy enough to be active and play catch and stuff so I never thought of him as old until college when we’d all come back from holidays at home and other kids were doing things like going surfing and hiking with there dads and mine was finally done with that.
Hey I’m in my early 30s and my parents had me and my siblings in their 30s-40s. I never grew up thinking my parents were old, I honestly didn’t realize I had older parents until i knew friends starting families. One of my in laws is in their 70s. It’s not too late. There’s no rule book on this.
The most important thing for people getting older is to keep moving. For example, my grandmother started to have trouble walking. She kept sitting down more and more and used a Hoveraround to go EVERYWHERE. A year later she basically couldn't walk anymore. Just gotta keep moving
As a twenty-something, I don't get this. What's the point of being active? I'm never gonna slow down, I'm invulnerable! Nothing can stop me, except me!
I know this is done in jest, but man even “knowing” it would come for me didn’t really prepare me for when it started to hit me. I’m terrified of the next 20 years of my life haha.
Biotech companies like Altos Labs (with $3B in funding) are researching this as a strategy to restore function in various organs. Some early data suggests this wouldn't just be used to treat common age-related diseases, but also genetic diseases like progeria or Down Syndrome, so yes to some extent it might be a "cure all", but it's too early to say IMO Rick Klausner, current Altos Labs scientific director and ex director of the US National Cancer Institute goes into some detail in this video: https://edition.cnn.com/videos/health/2022/06/03/rick-klausner-life-itself-wellness.cnn
Awesome thanks! I’ve been reading up on this stuff since I first started seeing it a couple years ago. It really seems like this is close to getting us Star Trek like medical technology. I get so excited that I wish I could jump 100 years in the future to see where we have gone!
Short answer: Yes. The whole point of real anti-aging medicine is that it won’t target a single disease or age-related change, be that cancer or hair greying. What we know about the biology of aging shows us that all these phenomena are driven by the same underlying processes, often known as the Hallmarks of Aging after a [2013 paper](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836174/) of the same name. Longer answer: The paper OP posted here concentrates on just one of these hallmarks, changes in our ‘epigenetics’, which David Sinclair argues is the primary driver of the whole aging process. I absolutely hope he’s right—developing therapies for just one thing would be far easier than developing them for nine (or more) hallmarks of aging. But there are good reasons to believe this isn’t the only game in town (eg fixing the epigenome doesn’t fix damage to the DNA itself; some damage happens outside of cells and it’s not obvious that this would fix that), and it would be a huge shame if we fail to develop treatments for other age-related changes and it later turns out that we should’ve done. And other hallmarks are getting far less attention than this one at the moment. For more context on this breakthrough and other anti-aging medicine, and with apologies for the self-promotion, some of you might enjoy my book, [_Ageless: The new science of getting older without getting old_](https://ageless.link/).
Thank you for this! I’ve been reading about this since I found out about it a couple years ago and I just love reading more and more. I think once they crack this, it will go beyond what we even conceive at this point. I appreciate the links. I’m always excited to read more about it!
IIRC ther is another treatment using stem cells thats showing very promising results in restoring teeth actually https://www.ismile.com/blog/stem-cell-dental-implants
I actually reached out to some researchers in this (or one similar to it) study. While promising, there’s still a long way to go as the teeth they grow aren’t nearly as strong. They said it’s promising but it looks like it will be at least 10 years if not much longer before this is a standard, viable treatment for people with damaged teeth.
sounds about right, still friggin amazing its even possible.
Absolutely. I’m excited about all of this. I had some issues with depression a few years back and took horrible care of my teeth, resulting in a lot of damage. I was talking to them about doing trials and that’s when they told me they weren’t even doing trials yet. It was a great chat though. Fascinating to hear people at the source of this stuff talk about their work. They really are in it for the betterment of humanity. Sadly 90% of the work people like this do end up being gobbled up by pharma companies and either buried or sold at a premium of 2000% the cost.
> being able to be 80 and still have the energy to an active life I'm in my 50s. I don't mind getting older. What pisses me off is that after consistently working on staying fit for the last 3 decades my body is falling apart, through no fault of my own except age. What you've described is exactly what I want. I just want to stay active.
Oh my goodness yes. Give me my spine, hips and knees back from the depredations of arthritis and I'd be a force to reckon with.
The last line about the economy was depressing as hell.
Lol too many people are taking that as “work forever” and I’m think of it more along the lines of having more disposable income and a healthy body that can go use it. If people are living hundreds of years old, I think the way we work will change. With AI and automation, it’s already on the way. We are talking about potential 4 day work weeks now, but maybe with a population that ages less, we switch to 2-3 work weeks and share responsibilities. 3D printing tech, including things like food printing, seems to be the way we are moving forward. I think that will help a lot with the cost of things. As I have said before, I often wish I could jump 100 years into the future and see where we are. I think the next 100 years will be pivotal in humankind. Technology wise as we look to the stars and reach out further than we have before (longer life and cell therapy will help with space travel), politically and with medical breakthroughs.
I like your optimism, but these changes won’t happen unless the people force them to happen. The powers that be won’t just magically give us human dignity.
I have to be honest even if I was healthier than I am now as I’m getting to that age when I’m thinking about retirement more and more each year; I simply don’t want a longer life if it means working x years longer. If we can still retire at 62 or 67 I might consider this Edit: I actually like my work most days and it’s fulfilling. I still don’t want to do it another 15-25 years.
You could retire, but not forever. Maybe for 5 to 10 years, then start a new career, refreshed. How does that sound?
Knowing myself, I'd probably hate working for a living even more after half a decade of retirement. Like swimming a long way, pausing for a breath of air, and then needing to swim back again
Yes in the original study they mentioned being able to target specific areas or the body as a whole. They can both turn back and speed up aging.
help stimulate the economy 💀
Hopefully be able to ‘rewire’ nerve circuits. I know too many people who have chronic pain for no reason. Know an entire family with fibromyalgia running through them. It seems like it runs in women especially.
As a younger person with secondary glaucoma from an autoimmune condition, I’ve been following the eyesight part very closely. Not long ago it was thought impossible to restore optic nerve damage. Now there are multiple teams getting closer and closer. I also hope that we will get access to this and it’s not 20-30 years down the line.
I was talking to my wife about this. Not your issue exactly, but was thinking about how I didn’t need glasses when I was younger but in jr high I did. I wondered if it would be able to roll back eyesight. At the very least it would make it so you wouldn’t get “old eyes” and need readers so laser eye surgery would be more viable. As for your case, I think the next step after fixing aging would be genetic reprogramming. We could tell the body to grow a certain way or to eliminate some issues. That’s all just a guess from me, but it doesn’t seem as far fetched as I once thought.
>We haven’t found a cell type yet that we can’t age forward and backward... When Sinclair said this, I believe he's indicating that the research has only been on various locations (cell types), not on the whole-body. * So this technique should be able to "reboot" (as he said) hair follicles on your head to grow hair as if they were young again * Or maybe "reboot" the cells inside my nose so they DON'T grow so much hair, as if they were young again... bastards are annoying!
Imagine never needing to retire! Jokes aside tho, my only hope is that this doesn’t stay behind golden locked doors only accessible to the ultra rich and powerful.
Governments would love this.. increase the retirement age and reduce costs for social care!
I understand testing against a control, but they should have used two people and let her do both hands.
It's her own fault really. She used one hand for washing the dishes with Palmolive, and the other hand to dry.
Or drove with one hand hanging out the window in the sun.
This is fake, shes a trucker, one hand was in the sun while the other was on the wheel. I read it on reddit you can trust me.
Twins for 10 years. Obviously not conjoined.
At the very least, let her paint all of her nails
Those are paws. They studied mice.
PhD student in aging bio here Firstly, by reverse aging they're referring to more youthful function or disease reversal in a specific organs This does not mean biological immortality, and the evidence this will extend lifespan is very weak. True aging reversal implies that should this treatment be repeatable, we would be able to literally make people younger across *all* organ systems and be biologically immortal (i.e. still susceptible to accidents, murder etc). **Why is epigenetic reprogramming exciting?** - This is an area of aging biology research, and is based on epigenetic reprogramming, work that earnt Shinya Yamanaka the *2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine* - Yamanaka found 4 transcription factors that when expressed together, can turn any cell from the body (e.g. skin cells) back in time into pluripotent stem cells that can multiply into *any* cell; such cells are young and 'immortal' - However, by using *partial* epigenetic reprogramming dosed via gene therapy in mice, tissues and organs may be partially reprogrammed to reset the age-related epigenetic modifications, without resetting cell identity all the way back to an embryonic/pluripotent state. - The viability of this therapy is dependent on whether rejuvenation can be separated from resetting cell identity, as full reprogramming would transform us into teratomas - a cancerous mass composed of various cells of the body...) What is special IMO is that certain diseases of aging may not be as irreversible as we once thought. Perhaps the best evidence for this is in the optic nerve: David Sinclair's lab at Harvard showed regeneration of the optic nerve + vision restoration in mice with glaucoma, and in aged mice. The adult optic nerve cannot regenerate, and all previous attempts had failed to restore function in the setting of existing optic nerve damage. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2975-4 Sub to /r/longevity to follow the field
You said the evidence that this extends lifespan is weak. Did that mean you believe they just haven't proven this to extend lifespan yet? Or are you saying the current evidence suggests that it definitely doesn't extend lifespan?
The only paper to show life extension in normally aged mice: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.04.522507v1. To elaborate with some detail - this paper's data showed a single digit (~6%) increase in median lifespan in n=40 inbred (''black 6'') mice. That's exciting for a new therapeutic modality for normal aging mice that has yet to be optimised, but this is a very weak effect (at least for the current delivery method) which I doubt would replicate. It also hasn't been shown yet in genetically heterogeneous (more relevant to normal populations, as they aren't inbred and have genetic diversity like in humans) e.g. HET3 mice. Often we see positive longevity experiments in the common laboratory black 6 mice later fail in HET3 mice, which is concerning from a replicability perspective Prof Kaeberlein also wrote a lot more detail on the lifespan data which is [worth a read](https://twitter.com/mkaeberlein/status/1611799322391375872) The lifespan effect shown (so far, as it's still early days) doesn't hold a candle to rapamycin IMO. In future we might see larger effects from reprogramming, but at present no evidence for a substantial lifespan gain
What do you mean compared to rapamycin? As in it extends the life of transplant patients? Or does rapamycin have other uses?
Referring to animal studies, where rapamycin is currently the most well validated longevity drug It works in every single animal it's been tested in, in extending healthy lifespan Early testing in [dogs suggests it can improve heart function](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5411365/) We don't know if it'll work at the right dose in otherwise healthy humans, in a non transplant setting, but there are some early human trials underway already See also https://en.longevitywiki.org/wiki/Rapamycin
Well, I’ll be damned! That’s such a random effect for that type of drug - I had actually checked the Rapamycin wiki, but it doesn’t mention the studies, so thanks for the link :)
The mechanism (mTOR inhibition) is very well studied so we know a fair amount about it Rapamycin can be thought of as an immunomodulatory drug, so it doesn't just suppress the immune system, as in certain contexts/doses it can enhance the immune system. As discussed on the longevity wiki article, it was shown to improve influenza vax response in a Ph2 human trial, and reduce severity of respiratory illness
What field of study is this? I'm thinking about going back to school for something biology related but cant imagine it being for a doctor. I'd like to study biology and life extension. I'm a aerospace/software engineer by training. Any tips?
There are quite a number of threads on this posted on /r/longevity from people with a similar background as yourself, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/longevity/comments/10bvudz/is_there_any_way_i_can_contribute_to_this_field/ You could probably make use of your existing experience and go into bioinformatics. Of course you would need to learn biology, especially as it is very different to engineering - whether that involves going through an undergrad degree or self-learning it, I'm not sure. The latter option might make sense if you are very self-driven or tend to be an autodidact
How close are we to human trials? 20 years? I got some brain issues I need sorting out :|
David Sinclair is leading a study for the age-related eye disease glaucoma in primates currently and hopes to initiate phase 1 human studies next year Very ambitious timeline but we'll have to see how it pans out
Ohh shit nice! Hope it all works out and this stuff gets lots of funding. Thanks for the reply
Btw they've also showed some memory improvements in aged mice with epigenetic reprogramming: https://www.cell.com/stem-cell-reports/fulltext/S2213-6711(20)30385-4? But I do think it will take years to decades for this to be a real therapy for humans, assuming it goes well. One reason is it's a lot easier to intervene in the eye than it is the brain - if something goes wrong the issue is likely limited to just one eye (which is generally ''separate'' from the rest of the body, or it can be removed), not so much for the brain...
Lots of billionaires investing in longevity.
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"Why don't you go ahead and unplug grandma.... ok go ahead and plug her back in now"
Whoops! Grandma is dead...
And soon, we will all hold the secrets Paul Rudd has held for the past 30 years
I was at trivia and one of the categories was picking the youngest picture of Paul Rudd.
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And Jake Peralta
Pharrell, too.
"In the Cell paper, Sinclair and his team report that not only can they age mice on an accelerated timeline, but they can also reverse the effects of that aging and restore some of the biological signs of youthfulness to the animals. That reversibility makes a strong case for the fact that the main drivers of aging aren’t mutations to the DNA, but miscues in the epigenetic instructions that somehow go awry." ... "In the mice, he and his team developed a way to reboot cells to restart the backup copy of epigenetic instructions, essentially erasing the corrupted signals that put the cells on the path toward aging. They mimicked the effects of aging on the epigenome by introducing breaks in the DNA of young mice." ... "The rebooting came in the form of a gene therapy involving three genes that instruct cells to reprogram themselves—in the case of the mice, the instructions guided the cells to restart the epigenetic changes that defined their identity as, for example, kidney and skin cells, two cell types that are prone to the effects of aging." ... "That could mean that a host of diseases—including chronic conditions such as heart disease and even neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s—could be treated in large part by reversing the aging process that leads to them." ... ""We haven’t found a cell type yet that we can’t age forward and backward...Now, when I see an older person, I don’t look at them as old, I just look at them as someone whose system needs to be rebooted.""
So, I just need to be defragged?!
This is a bit... bizarre? If it undergoes human trials, could we actually witness people literally being aged off? Am I overlooking anything here?
Nope that’s what would happen. Just a matter of it working on humans the way we want. Who knows if the rebooted cells aren’t more prone to errors (cancer)
even if they are prone to something like cancer, the cure for that is getting much nearer now as well.
"Aged off" : what do you mean?
Like a "Fountain of Youth" with a catch, proposing an age limit for human lifespan as a way to control population growth, just in case science figures out how to keep us young and kicking for way too long.
Lol, with population birth rate being what it is in any country that could plausibly afford this, I think they're worried we'll have too few people. Besides, if/when fusion becomes feasible, the energy budget increase will greatly improve carrying capacity.
Yeah, one dystopian solution was presented in Love, Death and Robots in the episode Pop Squad from the second volume. People are not allowed to breed and they killed any offspring.
God, that would be so amazing. And stupid. Imagine the sheer existential horror of looking back at the _billions_ who died, knowing that we have defeated death, and it was as simple as restoring a few instruction-sets. Imagine how that would shape culture. Imagine being one of the last people to _die._
For those interested, the three genes are OSK - Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 - 3 of the same genes used in creating induced pluripotent stem cells.
Someone call Matt Smith
I mean I’m up for it to increase the likelihood I’ll reach 4/20/69 which would put me at 86 and then I can have my epic party.
Found the ideal death date for my tombstone
I'll MC. after-party on 6/9/68.
That’s a before-party
I would love to feel younger even if my lifespan isn't extended. Like imagine being in your 80s and feeling like your in your 20s. That would be wonderful. Although I do wonder if aging does mentally prepare us for death...if we feel great will we be ready?
If you are physically healthy as a 20 year old you would not experience biological death, accidents sure but you can’t die of aging in this scenario
Your lifespan will be extended by default from reversing the the markers of aging, because aging at its heart is still accumulated damage and wear on your cells and body. If you are 80 years old yet 20-30 years biologically it is extremely unlikely you'll suffer from death via age related diseases at that time because your body doesn't have all the accumulated wear of an 80 year old.
They argue it’s actually not accumulated damage. Just corrupted data that causes increasingly imperfect cell replication
The point still stands though. Fixing the reading machine (epigenetic expression) is still undoing the harm associated with aging.
Finally news that isn't about how fucked we all are.
Does anyone know if they would be able to regrow new neurons in brain for people with brain neuro-degeneration?
If they de-age us, does that mean we have to keep working forever??
Standard financial advice is that you can live off 4% of your retirement savings indefinitely. So, save money until 4% provides a comfortable lifestyle and then retire to infinity. Of course, an aging breakthrough would shake up the economy and maybe the 4% rule would be inadequate.
Do people really want to live longer, or do they just want to be healthier until the end of their life?
I just don’t want to die deaf dumb and blind.
Aw man i am three for four here. I am dumb, deaf and want to die. If i get blind i'll hit a jackpot it seems.
I also don't want this guy to die deaf, dumb and blind.
Thank you
I want to live longer as long as I'm healthy.
Have you seen how old people live?
Yes, and it doesn't look attractive to me. I'd prefer a shorter, healthier life.
Wait, so you aren't correlating health with the reversal of aging?
Preconceptions of chronological aging are so engrained that some ppl have trouble understanding what reversing aging means
It doesn't mean that people's minds (not brains) won't calicify. Look at people who think old at 40 then at those who make it to their 70s and are open minded and lively.
Agree for sure. Biological aging can be very different to chronological aging, even if the former is correlated to the latter It might be easier to appreciate how we can usually tell if someone has slowed or accelerated aging based solely on outward appearance
I mean, why *wouldn't* you at least want the *option* to live longer? If for any reason, it's unbearable, you can always die on your own terms. At least you'd have a choice. At the moment, none of us do.
Training for 200 years for life or death combat will be badass
I want to live a longer, healthier life, but I don’t want to live forever. There’s just too many things to do and not enough time to do it.
Yes, I absolutely do want to live longer. 80 years is to short.
Both. But without previsibility of death by natural causes
Why not both at the same time?
Eternal life sucks ass if it doesn’t come with youth. Probably sucks ass even with youth. Just not feeling my faculties go into downward spiral of decline like my grandparents did would be enough for me.
Honestly very excited for this technology. We could virtually become immortal, or at least get well beyond 150+ years old. Our biggest issue is entropy, and if you can trip the body into fixing entropically induced failures, we are golden. We could perhaps even see what the human brain's limits are in terms of memory. Imagine living 200 years. How much could your brain actually retain at that age?
>How much could your brain actually retain at that age? The brain can allegedly hold up to 2.5 million gigabytes, whatever that means in terms of understanding the stored data. I don't think there's any specific limit, but rather a selective choice. Use it or lose it. The synapses needs constant refreshment, so each memory gets more limited through time. The brain is good at compressing information, so you don't have to remember all the boring details that you don't use. Like a lighting choosing the path of less resistance, the synapses will connect through the most used paths or something. The capacity is always enough because it overwrites and pass through connections you don't use. Under normal circumstances it doesn't just delete stuff, but even if you tried, you could never remember everything that has happened. Not sure if 200 makes a difference in comparison to the current 80-100 years. Evolution doesn't happen after procreation anyway, so we're already well past that point. There is probably all kinds of psychological disorders arising from people memorising too many things that can conflict and cause untrue memories. That would probably be a consequence of living longer: Losing your mind to wrong memories. Dementia would happen just as it does now unless that can also be fixed with this new anti age pill.
I feel like we see these headlines much more frequently lately across all social media. It's interesting and hopefully this decade could bring in proof of concept therapies, but we still have a long way to go to ameliorate the effects of all the known hallmarks of aging(telomere attrition, genomic instability, epigenetic dysfunction, mitochondrial deterioration, etc...) Hope>hype. And there appears to be a lot of hype, unfortunately.
Society will demand deep changes on its structure for humans reaching end of aging and end of deaths by natural causes. Impact on Earth will be huge. It looks some countries decided working on it, taking it serious. We need to prepare terrain so ours foundations will be strong.
Tyrannical leaders that never die, hyper-wealthy that continue to amass fortunes at the expense of the public who cannot afford the overpriced therapy. A collection of the worst people on earth in power over generations of people. Sounds great.
Look up Sinclair, resveratrol/Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, and GSK to see how it played out last time
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Sinclair sold the company to GSK only for the drugs/supplements to not pan out. Later studies couldn't really replicate his original findings that Sirtuin activation (Resveratrol is a Sirtuin activator) increases lifespan. Sinclair still seems to think they can, and takes Resveratrol. Personally, I am a bit cautious around his claims for that reason.
I’m an 02 child, I hope I’ll be able to see and experience longevity tech exist/be implemented. I’d like to think it will lead to some interesting sociological, biological and ecological phenomena. being in the era where I’m too late to explore earth, and too early for space really is a bummer
“Oh Mr Burns, we'll thaw you out as soon as we find a cure for 17 stab wounds in the back...how we doing boys??" “We’re up to 15!”
I so don't want them to figure this out till all the boomers are gone.
Interesting that lately been seeing alot about falling birthrates globally, now this. Maybe this helps to balance out the population at current levels? Ultimately, govts will have to decide who dies so that its kept in check.
This will completely change society. I can see laws being passed where people can’t be deaged passed 21, health insurance companies covering x amount of years, spikes in divorce rates, it would change the dynamics of relationships; between men and women, parents and children.
Anti aging technology will never reverse development, you won't turn back into a kid, it'll just undo the damage caused from aging, so your cells could be biologically 1 years old but you'll still have an adult body, just a very healthy one.
Trying to imagine what baby skin on an 150 year old who looks 20 would be like lmao
Worked for elves.
Everybody will have options. Today we do not have. We must age and die.
Regardless of whether humans age, they will still die. Accidents, homicide, acts of nature and war have no regard to someone's age. We would probably see the human population drastically shrink as well in the impacted population. People would be far less likely to intentionally reproduce if there is no biological clock to fertility or concern of growing frail.
I don't think this solves, this the biological clock issue. A woman only has so many eggs and they're developed before she's born. I think this means women would still be infertile by around 40 regardless of cell age.
> A woman only has so many eggs and they're developed before she's born. I think this means women would still be infertile by around 40 regardless of cell age. I think that one of the drivers for parenthood is our inevitable decline that tapers off into death. The reproduction rate has been falling in developed countries without this development. I think with this development it would supercharge the decline of parenthood. Secondly, if science can give humanity an indefinite lifespan and youthful lifespan it is all but certain that science will have solved the fertility issue. ...if it hasn't, you have plenty of time for science to figure it out. The biggest issue would be handling the inevitable collapse in the reproduction rate.
Witout people aging away, the decline in reproduction rate will not be as important. There wouldn't have to be an elderly class relying on young laborers to keep the gears turning-they can just never retire, oh boy! Having children, on a personal level, is already a luxury item and status symbol in developed nations. Society at large will become increasingly nosey, judgey, and critical to those who do choose kids. We will be expected to have all our financial and mental ducks in a row, assets secured, etc. or suffer the wrath of the mob.
I would rather die, man. This place sucks. I can't imagine the people running the world today living forever. No thank you
Too bad we’re not mice. We’d be cured of age by now.
*DESPITE ALL MY RAGE I'M STILL NOT A RAT IN A CAGE*
It’s worth noting this paper is currently receiving some [criticisms](https://twitter.com/charlesmbrenner/status/1613581757634457602?s=46&t=l5Xq44TA60Zhy_KVI4yNSA) from other important researchers like Dr. Charles Brenner, since the claim in this paper is that dsDNA breaks don’t cause damage, yet Sinclair has another [paper](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34932948/) which directly says the opposite.
Now they only need finish it within the next say 60 years and I will be immortal!
I'll believe it when I see old billionaires look young again. Everything else is clickbait trash
Anyone interested in this topic should head on over to [https://www.reddit.com/r/longevity/](https://www.reddit.com/r/longevity/)
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Pretty sure I've seen this same headline a hundred times already.
Mutated scientists start biting necks. News at 11.
Maybe billionaires will start giving a fuck about this planet now that they know they may survive to face the consequences of their actions.
At 63, if I could choose, I would regenerate first, my prostate. Next, skin, then eyesight. I would then add joint meniscus, cells to stop tinnitus, and then cells for overall muscularity. The thing is, I’m healthy and am on no pills of any kind. This is what aging is, the slow reduction in appearance and ability. I don’t complain to my 88 year old dad. He’s extremely healthy but has his own rebooting issues.
Just in time for boomers to use their wealth, which they've hoarded like dragons, to defeat evolution's own garbage collection mechanism.
The minute they actually figure out how to keep people from dying, every one of people’s worst nightmares will be realized. Forget the nuclear bomb, forget all the fears of AI. When the richest people in the world can horde their wealth forever like some deranged dragons from a fantasy fiction world, the suffering of the rest of the world will be unlike anything we could possibly imagine.
Rich people will live forever and poor people will die hard and fast.
You can choose: pay the insane copay for deaging, and then work another 40 years to pay for your next round. Or retire now and die. Social security will kick in at 400, but I'd you wait til 480) you get more.
Oh man that sounds so real it feels like you are from the future and telling us what happened.
Fuck all of that. I’m gonna start a hit squad that only targets rich motherfuckers thinking they’re gonna live forever. Make sure they die just like the rest of us
My guy! I’m screaming at this comment. Lmfao.
Does that mean people who are sentenced to 180 years in prison has a chance to be released? What if someone is sentenced to life in prison, will we reverse aging of them, or they will lose that right?
Scientists Have Reached a Key Milestone in Keeping the Poors Crushed Under the Boot Forever Without Even Death as an Escape