26 ms·

Age Reduction Breakthrough?

364 points by James_Henry 6y ago

garyclarke27 6y ago
Seems very exciting - I have huge respect for the author of this blog Josh Mitteldorf (he’s a genius) - so fingers crossed - they may be onto something real. Plasma from young donars is already proven to be beneficial to elderly recipients - this appears to be an extension of such research.
mkchoi212 6y ago
Very promising results! But I would love to see what happens when this is approved for human subject testing. Let’s see if the magic number of injections needed - 4 - is still the case.
- ctack 6y ago
  I read that as four per rejuvenation with no word about how often a rejuvenation would be needed.
peter_l_downs 6y ago
As someone entirely outside this field, can someone with more inside knowledge give any insight into where this lies on the crank/hoax spectrum? A biorxv paper and a well-written blogpost don't really point either way.
- throw1234651234 6y ago
  Ask Thiel.
- op03 6y ago
  It's not targeting you. It targeted at dumbasses with cash who are scared of dying.
  - throw1234651234 6y ago
    What's wrong with not wanting to die?
    - strofcon 6y ago
      It's a pretty mentally unhealthy way to live, mostly.
      - RunawayGalaxy 6y ago
        Even if it's possible?
        strofcon 6y ago
        I mean, "won't die of old age quite as soon" doesn't equate to "immortal", yea? To be fair though, my comment was way too broad. I should have clarified that I mean a constant, overbearing dread of the prospect of death is super unhealthy. Make life suck, and effectively shortens it in the experience of the scared one. (source: did that for a long time, got healthy, stopped being scared. Sample size of 1. :-D )
      - modzu 6y ago
        said with the entire world cooped up scared in their homes...
        strofcon 6y ago
        Yup, current situation sucks massively. Doesn't change the fact that a disproportionate fear of death is exceedingly unhealthy and robs folks of some of the joy of being alive.
        aea12 6y ago
        Except nobody said, or even suggested, a fear of dying. Only you did. There's a significant difference between wanting more time to do things and sitting around terrified, and conflating the two is problematic. Reading your siblings, you're projecting your own feelings onto a completely reasonable feeling that most people have: with another hundred years of experience, what's possible?
- amluto 6y ago
  When the author says things like: > But Katcher has no research grants or university lab or venture capital funding, no team of grad students mining databases and screening chemicals in the back room. > One thing Katcher has going for him is the correct theory. I start to suspect the author’s opinion is stronger than their evidence.
  - EndXA 6y ago
    I'm not taking a stance on the topic, but I think that if you quote the part that you did, then you should also quote the part right before it, for full context: > In the race to effect substantial, system-wide rejuvenation, Harold Katcher is a dark horse. He has the right academic credentials and a solid history of research. In fact, in earlier life he was part of a team that discovered the breast cancer gene, brca1. I asked Harold for a biographical sketch, and have printed it in a box at the end of this posting. And here's the bio sketch itself: > So, you might consider me a late bloomer. While I have thousands of citations in the literature, with publications ranging from the discovery of the human ‘breast cancer gene’, to protein structure, bacteriology, biotechnology, bioinformatics, and biochemistry, there was no center or direction to my work as I had given up my personal goal of solving/curing aging when I learned that ‘wear and tear’ was the cause of it. Yet something happened in year 1985 when I was in California working with Michael Waterman and Temple Smith (fathers of bioinformatics) that is inexplicable: I found myself in Intensive Care with a tube inserted into my trachea and the knowledge that I might not live. And then I had a dream: I dreamed that somehow in the far future (and on another world), I was being feted for ‘bringing immortality to mankind’. Clearly, I survived that incident (started with an infected tooth). I lived a wonderful life – becoming a computer programmer (which I loved), leaving that for the University of Maryland’s Asian division, becoming a full professor and then the Academic Director for the Sciences, in Tokyo, Japan. By the time I left Japan in 2004, (my daughter Sasha was a fourth-grader, (yonensei), in the Japanese school system), I was teaching for U of M online – somewhat retired, and looking forwards to writing computer programs for fun and profit. Yet I never ever forgot that dream. It was clearly impossible; I had no lab – and really, there was no way to repair all damaged cells – it’d be like sweeping back the ocean. And then, in 2009, I read an old paper from 2005, a paper written by the Conboys, (Michael and Irina), Tom Rando and others, coming from Irv Weisman’s lab, that completely changed my life; that showed me that everything I believed about aging was wrong – that aging occurred at the organismic level, not at the cellular level and could be reversed. Well, the rest of the story is about persistence and the blessed intervention of Akshay Sanghvi who too saw there was another way and provided the structural, monetary, and emotional support (and some good ideas) that had me start a new career at age 72 in Mumbai, India. I feel twenty years younger than I did three years ago, I guess that’s another hint about aging. Now the ‘mystical’ dream? It wouldn’t be the first time in history that that happened – take that as a datum.
- lnanek2 6y ago
  There's been a lot of nasty news articles about rich white people getting pumped with young people's blood. It's something easy to manufacture outrage against. There are callouts in the article that try to calm down that viewpoint at least like: " Katcher thinks that the molecules involved will not be difficult to manufacture, so that when a product is eventually commercialized, it will not require extraction from the blood of live subjects, rodent or human. "
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    > It's something easy to manufacture outrage against Perhaps for a good reason
- WhompingWindows 6y ago
  1) It's only rat tissues and human tissues; any research published in only tissues only or in ratsonly , and not a large RCT in actual humans, needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt. 2) The research in the blog post is not fully summarized. You know it's a weak blog post when they post results WITHOUT SAMPLE SIZE. This is a GLARING omission and highly unscientific. The actual paper shows n=593 rat tissues and n=850 human tissues, which is fine but the blog post should report on these details. 3) It's not that new to suggest that younger individuals' blood plasma might have a rejuvenating effect. 4) They look at certain tissue types, which wouldn't result in changes to all tissue types, like skin, hair, brain, etc. 5) This is very early stages, again, we need actual trials in humans, and then those trials probably need to be followed up for years and years, since aging is a long-run phenomenon. This is more like a cohort study where we enroll a huge number into a cohort of aging-treatments and controls who have some other placebo-treatment.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    This sounds to me like a very strong pilot study: something that's very likely to attract additional grant funding, but may or may not pan out in the real world.
  - tropheusduboisi 6y ago
    Some of the figures are based on N=6 treated old rats.
- chemeng 6y ago
  It's within the realm of possibility. Parabiosis as a rejuvenation method has been slowly gaining attention since the 1970s and increasing credibility in the last two decades. Research seems to indicate that the introduction of blood parts from the young->old reduces markers of aging in the old. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5662775/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5662775/ for a reasonable quick overview.
- entee 6y ago
  There’s a host of evidence that parabiosis (blood transfer from young to old) works well in mice/rats for a variety of aging issues. Some of the more concrete claims that it will transfer to humans are not as well supported to my knowledge, but that doesn’t mean impossible, just not known yet. I would also question some of the strong claims about the hypothalamus as a centrally controlled aging clock, and that DNA methylation is a driver (rather than a marker) of aging. These are big claims, the article supports them poorly. DNA methylation is an on/off signal for genes in the cell and is a subject of active research. As you can imagine it’s been implicated in a large number of biological processes including cancer. I’d be careful messing around with it in a global way. I know of one at least one company (Spring Discovery) that is following some of this work up to find some driver molecules that could have the same effect as parabiosis. If interested in the topic I’d look at the work from the labs mentioned in the article as well as Saul Villeda (former grad student of Wyss-Coray, full disclosure I know him socially) at UCSF. TLDR: This article is a breathless take on active research, clearly the author is excited. There’s reason to keep investigating, but the conclusions in the article are stronger than what the research can say conclusively at the moment. Very early days.
- cs02rm0 6y ago
  Sadly, I'd revert to the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
- tropheusduboisi 6y ago
  I'm a grad student in the aging bio field. Steve Horvath is well known and well regarded, but I'm pretty sure he just did the regressions. Other characters on the paper are more unusual including a former Investment Banker from India. I think the mainstream aging community view would be "wow these results too good to be true and I wish they presented more methodical details and individual data points". If it's true, it's quite exciting. In my own work, I've seen the rejuvenating effects of young blood.
  - tanzbaer 6y ago
    That took a dark turn there at the end.
eternauta3k 6y ago
I'm dimly aware that issues with rat models for aging were pointed out by Bret Weinstein. Any comments on that?
- spacephysics 6y ago
  I recall it had to do with telomere length in mice, and how longer telomeres were involuntarily selected for when breeding lab mice [0] [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11909679/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11909679/
fredley 6y ago
Do we really want to live in a world where the billionaires live forever?
- Exuma 6y ago
  Let's make everything about "billionaires" and completely ignore any good news.
  - fredley 6y ago
    To be clear: I do not see this as good news. The only way new life and new ideas arise is in the wake of the deceased. Death is neccessary for life. If those at the top can further cement and accumulate their wealth and power due to living longer lives, this is bad for everyone else.
    - commandlinefan 6y ago
      Maybe not: the only way we're actually going to realistically colonize space as a species is if people live so long that a few hundred years in a spaceship is a reasonable sacrifice. I would imagine that the same people who were willing to spend fortunes on rejuvenation would also be willing to spend fortunes exploring new galaxies.
      - ComputerGuru 6y ago
        Many science fiction writers who envisioned generations born and passing away on spaceships making their intergalactic journey to their new home world would disagree.
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      Why even invest in the health system at all then?
  - strofcon 6y ago
    I'm missing the "good news" part...?
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
I'm uneasy - this reads exactly like a snake-oil pitch. What next? Spas that supply plasma injections?
Invictus0 6y ago
Does this lend credence to the idea that blood transfusions from young people could make one healthier or extend one's life?
- logfromblammo 6y ago
  Yes, it does. The hypothesis is that "clock molecules" in the bloodstream provide a global age-clock for about five other tissue-specific age-clocks in the body. Spoofing the global clock signal for a long enough period tricks the subsystem clocks into thinking they are younger than they really are, including the native global age-clock mechanism. Completely replacing your own blood with a young person's blood, repeating if necessary, would also accomplish the same trick, more expensively. The real question is whether old tissues can function like young tissues when tricked into trying.
babesh 6y ago
Was told by my wife years ago that there is a Hong Kong tycoon who has been doing this for years. Supposedly hires young people to do nothing but to stay healthy and then has transfusions of their blood. Just checked and he is still alive at 91. But this echoes vampire. This reminds me of plasma treatment for covid-19 which is actually proven. Perhaps someone will create a market for that.
- Nuzzerino 6y ago
  This was parodied in Silicon Valley - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBA0AH-LSbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBA0AH-LSbo
- moneywoes 6y ago
  What's his name?
  - babesh 6y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ka-shing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ka-shing
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- Ididntdothis 6y ago
  90 is not that old these days. Both of my parents have reached their 90s without doing anything like this. Let’s take a look at that guy in 20 years and see how he is doing.
  - saiya-jin 6y ago
    Both of my grandparents from dad's side are 93 and still doing relatively well - self-sufficient, nothing horrible looming that we are aware of. Genes, good eating habits and healthy dose of exercise (rather low/medium effort that lasts long like gardening or foraging mushrooms in their case), coupled with obvious things like no addictions... and voila. They both had very good work ethics, on a level I can only envy (thanks to communists that didn't get them far professionally but that's another story and it didn't bother them). Bad part is, all of their friends and colleagues are dead by now. They can only meet their kids' generation.
rootsudo 6y ago
This is really interesting, thank you for posting. :)
curiousgal 6y ago
Age reduction. Enammel reconstruction. Batteries. The three pillars of perpetual breakthroughs.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  Since 1990 the energy density if lithium ion has has increased by a factor of about 4, and the cost had reduced by a factor off about 6. While keeping in mind that consumer lithium ion itself was quite a breakthrough in terms of energy density in the first place. Both of these metrics are still improving too.
  - JoshuaDavid 6y ago
    I dunno about enamel reconstruction (though I was under the impression that materials used to _replace_ tooth enamel have gotten enormously better in the last few decades to the point where your fillings will wear down slower than your teeth), but life expectancy has also been slowly increasing over the past few decades, and a significant fraction of that comes from people staying relatively healthy for longer.
- Axsuul 6y ago
  Interested to hear more about Enamel reconstruction!
  - zo1 6y ago
    We all do. Here we are in 2020 and we still can't properly fix teeth.
- all_blue_chucks 6y ago
  Add cold fusion to the list. That said, breakthroughs that would be phenomenally beneficial and aren't prohibited by physics are worth throwing money at decade after decade due to the risk/reward ratio. It's like playing the lottery where the odds are a million to one against you, but he payout if you win is a billion times your ticket cost. You probably won't win but you would be stupid not to try.
ryanmarsh 6y ago
Crucially, plasma treatment of the old rats [109 weeks] reduced the epigenetic ages of blood, liver and heart by a very large and significant margin, to levels that are comparable with the young rats Since I spend a lot of money on this kind of stuff I figured I'd share. The use of platelet rich plasma (PRP) is rapidly growing in the beauty industry. My wife has had PRP used in various procedures that have indeed created a more youthful appearance (by like 10 years). Basically they can inject it anywhere through hundreds of tiny needles. Most often this is done to the face but you can even do this to the vagina (you'd be surprised how many women over 40 do this). That is, if you want hundreds of needles entering the labia and (horror of horrors) the clitorous too. There's even a process for men where you can have PRP injected in your shaft and the results (I'm to terrified of needles in my dick to try it) are quite good (firmness, sensation, youthfullness) from what I hear. The PRP procedures my wife has had, although expensive, have had impressive results.
- yeetman21 6y ago
  how much does this cost on average?
- zarkov99 6y ago
  I hope you are not just trolling. I am not sure if I enjoy more the news that there are effective treatments against aging or the rage you are going to induce with this post.
  - ryanmarsh 6y ago
    Google "vampire facial" and I can tell you from personal experience the results are impressive beyond anything else I've paid for my wife (laser facials, botox, fillers, lip injections, etc...). I don't understand what the "rage" would come from, or why it's "pot". This is available today, and many people pay for it. The results speak for themselves. People who pay for this stuff don't make a habit of talking about it. I'm going to guess by your comment that you're not as beauty focused as some other people. For beauty focused individuals this is serious business. Ever wonder why your favorite actress over 50 "hasn't aged" past 35? It's not just plastic surgery or makeup. This is how many people make a living in industries where looking old is not rewarded.
ve55 6y ago
As much as these things are very speculative, that is the necessary direction that we have to go in in order to maximize the chance of actually finding and then using these breakthroughs. The only way to actually make significant progress in an area this difficult is to constantly be looking for answers everywhere we can.
andy_ppp 6y ago
Vampires have been doing this for millennia right? Seriously though, does putting Tom Hanks’ blood plasma into a young coronavirus nurse age them a little bit? Does the effect work in reverse? (Just to explain the above Tom Hanks had Covid and gave plasma in a convalescent serum).
floatrock 6y ago
> Most of the explosion in aging research (and virtually all the venture capital startups) are looking to treat aging at the cellular level.... The truth, as Katcher understands it, is that, to a large extent, aging is coordinated system-wide via signal molecules in the blood. So the SV execs with their fit young blood-bois were right all along?
- henearkr 6y ago
  Also, telomeres shortening is a real thing. So... so much for a signal-only mechanics!
- andreygrehov 6y ago
  I had the exact same thought. I wonder where those execs get the information from and more importantly, how the information is filtered, because they are clearly a few years ahead of what's being posted on, say, HN.
  - maxwell 6y ago
    It was widely reported years ago. The future is already here it's just not affordable. I remember talking about recent news that a few of us had heard about promising "young blood rejuvenation" with a bunch of random hicks in the woods of central Maine in the spring of 2014.
- Medicalidiot 6y ago
  Signaling within the body is a cascade-like phenomenon where every step gets progressively more enhanced. It makes more sense to target upstream events since one can use less to have a stronger response. A classic example of this is nasal steroids for seasonal allergies versus histamine blockers. Steroids will actually cause the genes that code for histamine/inflammatory proteins that are released by the cells to be downregulated. Whereas antihistamines bind to the histamine receptor at the penultimate step in the process. Steroids have a much stronger effect and are the current first line treatment for allergic rhinitis.
meiraleal 6y ago
The laziness of believing that we are going to have a rejuvenation pill in the future is a big scam/joke. Just like pills to recover from baldness. Most people are running on 10, 20% of their full healthy, no pills are never going to change that. Not even a weight reduction pill will help the ones who wants to still be able to eat junk food and drink soda.
troughway 6y ago
I wonder if HN would have a viscerally negative knee jerk reaction if this was about a cancer treatment breakthrough, that could have saved someone they know or love if it was discovered in due time. This whole “fuck the billionaires” attitude on a website that is supposed to uphold some kind of techno-progressiveness is just so tiresome. We get it, you don’t like people with money and you consider them vampires because they want to avoid dying for as long as possible. Go and be insufferable elsewhere.
- mdszy 6y ago
  Maybe if they weren't leeches on society it'd be easier to want technology like this to exist. But as it stands, there's no reason to believe it won't just be used as a way to make the rich even richer by letting them live forever.
  - smegma2 6y ago
    What do rich people leech and from who?
    - mdszy 6y ago
      If you think someone can become worth tens or hundreds of billions of dollars without exploiting anyone then boy howdy do I have news for you.
      - google234123 6y ago
        You do know that it is possible to create value? For example, let's say I invent a pill that increases the average life span of a human by 5 years. It costs 1$ to make and I sell it to every person on earth for 4$ each. Who is exploited in this example?
        AuryGlenz 6y ago
        Clearly you should be selling that drug for $1 you capitalist pig.
maxander 6y ago
Since it seems like the upshot of all of this is that Katcher is claiming to have discovered a set of signalling molecules which, when injected, rejuvenate tissue and presumably lengthen life, it runs into one of the most fundamental objections that can be leveled at theory of aging (or cure thereof): of the billions of humans that have existed, how is it that none of them have possessed a mutation which (in this case) endogenously produced the signalling molecules which Katcher is proposing as treatment? In the case of this proposal this sort of objection is particularly strong, since (though the blog post is silent as to what the treatment is) it's given that they are fractions from blood, so they're substances which the body produces in some quantity anyway, and which are sufficiently non-dose-specific that Katcher, with limited resources, could devise a reasonably effective regimen. Parabiosis is one of the most striking (and just weird) phenomena in aging research, so efforts to understand what's going on with it are liable to bear interesting fruit. I'm just pointing out that there's good reason to doubt that this particular "breakthrough" is the "cure."
- putlake 6y ago
  People who had this mutation could have died of causes other than aging.
  - commandlinefan 6y ago
    My first thought too - maybe it's just wishful thinking, but the bible does talk about people who lived for thousands of years. We're prone to dismiss this as hyperbole from uneducated ancients, but maybe they actually did exist and this sort of thing was why.
    - jjoonathan 6y ago
      "Someone slipped up the distinction between years and generations and a legend was born" still seems enormously more probable than anomalous longevity existing but somehow never making it into the wider gene pool.
      - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
henearkr 6y ago
I'm very curious about how this mere signaling solves all off once: - natural as well as stress-induced telomeres shortening - oxidative molecular stress - accumulative viral damage on body's DNA - natural atrophy of thymus (thymic involution) etc I'm curious about the proposed mechanisms, if any.
im3w1l 6y ago
So, do you become chimeric by doing this? Beating death Ship of Theseus style?
Gatsky 6y ago
Hmm. Well the epigenetic aging clock effects are hard to interpret, but they also show recovery of cognitive performance in aged rats treated with their magic plasma fraction. That is kind of exciting. Nevertheless, there are significant conflicts of interest going on, so confirmatory studies by independent bodies in animal models are required. Then there are the human studies. They obviously want to use the epigenetic clock as a surrogate endpoint in humans, so the trial can be completed in a short time frame. Not sure about that, this is a fairly complicated surrogate endpoint we are talking about. Some more relevant biomarkers of aging in humans which incorporate functional readouts would be required at the very least. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.082917v1.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.082917v1....
Koshkin 6y ago
But as always, there must be a katch.
Koshkin 6y ago
But aging, followed by death, is important. And not just for the biological evolution, but also for social progress. Besides, lifespan is measured not in years or the total length of the spaghetti consumed but in memories and accomplishments. So, I am not sure what exactly is the point of trying to extend human biological lifespan. There were people that in 30 years had accomplished more than other would not be able to in however many years would have been given to them.
- frenchie4111 6y ago
  It seems important to our current society because it is a pillar, or a given, to how society runs today. It is almost impossible to imagine a society without aging. If/when that day arrives, I am sure it will seem a lot less important.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- pmiller2 6y ago
  I don't see a single benefit we could get as a species from the combination of aging + death that we couldn't get from death alone, provided the viable reproductive period weren't dramatically extended. Even then, we do a pretty good job of moderating the number of children we have, if we're confident they'll live, as other comments have said.
lawrenceyan 6y ago
It's impossible for an old cell to become young again, at least with our current level of technology, because that would require you to reverse all the mutations that have built up over time in that cell. If your argument is that our bodies have many different repair mechanisms, and that as long as we can figure out how to activate them properly, we can then reverse aging, I would caution you that while you're correct in that repair mechanisms do exist, it's important to remember that these mechanisms are themselves composed from the same components as the rest of your body, i.e. they too will age and begin to fail over time. The only way to actually cure aging would be to develop sophisticated enough outside mechanisms that would be able to intervene and replace these biological mechanisms as they fail. Macro level replacements won't cut it either. Replacing an organ might give you a few years here or there, but it doesn't address the issue that aging fundamentally happens at a molecular / atomic level.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  > It's impossible for an old cell to become young again, at least with our current level of technology.... Depending what you mean by "become young again," that's not true. See https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/old-human-cells-rejuvenated-with-stem-cell-technology.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/old-human-cel... The problem here is scaling this up beyond tissue cultures.
  - lawrenceyan 6y ago
    Again, I emphasize this point: > I would caution you that while you're correct in that repair mechanisms do exist, it's important to remember that these mechanisms are themselves composed from the same components as the rest of your body, i.e. they too will age and begin to fail over time. The process of nuclear reprogramming to induced pluripotent stem cells, which is the subject of your referenced paper, is something that I believe to be a great scientific breakthrough, but nevertheless fails to address the accumulated mutations that build up over time in your cells. All those mutations don't just magically disappear.
    - 6y ago
rantwasp 6y ago
Improving longevity is what the people at https://www.lifespan.io/ https://www.lifespan.io/ have been trying to do for ages. The research is being done, there are tons of new promising things - with the catch that they are experimental / not tested on humans. Before you get too excited and wonder where you can buy these magic pills, remember that there are things you can do right now to improve both your longevity and your quality of life: 1) sleep properly 2) eat properly 3) exercise 4) reduce stress That being said I think that the next 20-30 years are going to be really interesting in this space, and if we indeed have any sort of proven breakthrough this will force us to rethink how we think about our society and our mortality.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  I believe the most impactful thing you can do is drastically reduce caloric intake - like by 50%. Experiments have show large increases in lifespan, across mammals.
  - zemvpferreira 6y ago
    It's weird to me to say so but this intervention is one of the few things that, even if it were to demonstrably increase my lifespan from ~80 to ~120 years, I probably wouldn't do. I don't know if that's because I enjoy food and bodily activity too much to value a longer life without them or because I'm addicted to food. I've wondered. What wouldn't you be willing to give up for a much longer life?
    - rantwasp 6y ago
      there is a huge difference between enjoying food and being a slave to food. the best example I have in this bucket is sugar. If you depend on sugar you're basically a drug addict (i know, i know, but just because it's socially acceptable does not make it okay. there is research out there that show sugar is as bad as cocaine when it comes to how addictive it is and on the health effect). if you could pick just one intervention you could do quitting sugar is what you want (maybe if you're smoking, quitting smoking, but after that sugar is the nastiest thing you can put into your system)
nil-sec 6y ago
Are there no people who have to receive regular blood donations? Would you not notice such an effect in these people? I guess the donors are probably not all younger than the receiver but on average this is probably true. Does anyone know of a subpopulation that might qualify?
fallingfrog 6y ago
Aw, I was hoping for something a bit more substantial here. I think the sens foundation is on the right track but this is a highly implausible approach (though I am not a biologist).
rlucas130 6y ago
There was a great sci-fi book (imho) by Robert J. Sawyer that posits the use of nano-tech to enable age reduction called Rollback (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollback_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollback_(novel)). This just made me think of that book.
virajgite 6y ago
Here's an excellent video on the same topic that discusses David Sinclair's research https://youtu.be/XlFl0jDg0Jg https://youtu.be/XlFl0jDg0Jg
- Rury 6y ago
  I like his interview here: https://youtu.be/IEz1P4i1P7s https://youtu.be/IEz1P4i1P7s Granted I'm not completely sold on the supplements quite yet.
  - tim333 6y ago
    I was impressed by that interview and am thinking of trying the supplements a bit to see if they do anything. This article was jolly also https://www.bostonmagazine.com/health/2019/10/29/david-sinclair/ https://www.bostonmagazine.com/health/2019/10/29/david-sincl...
snvzz 6y ago
It's worth remembering there's an engineering-approach to undoing aging damage, and a foundation[0] dedicated to advancing this approach. [0]: https://www.sens.org/ https://www.sens.org/
dntbnmpls 6y ago
We could also look into whether holocaust survivors share a genetic, pyschological, etc predisposition which allows them to live longer than native born israelis. Certainly there must be a will to live/survive but also a genetic/biological aspect which helped them survive starvation, disease, deprivation and thrive afterwards. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-holocaust-survivors-live-longer-than-native-born-israelis-1.6822053 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-holocaust-survi...
busyant 6y ago
I thought one of the main purposes of research publications was to allow others to reproduce/verify or refute your work. If you look at the methods section, here is what you get for a description of the magic plasma: 'We used a unique plasma fraction "Elixir" developed by Nugenics Research.' This seems to run counter to the philosophy of reproducibility. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.082917v1.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.082917v1....
- lwansbrough 6y ago
  To be fair, this would be a contender for the most epic discovery in human history. Would you simply give the solution away?
  - busyant 6y ago
    If that's my primary concern, I wouldn't publish until I had the patents nailed down.
tim333 6y ago
Some details: >18 rats were divided into three groups. 6 young rats (30 weeks old), 6 old rats (109 weeks old) & 6 old rats (also 109 weeks old) treated with plasma fractions from the young rats. >Plasma fraction treatment consists of two series of IV injections, four times on alternate days for 8 days. A 2nd series of injections were given 95 days later. In its entirety, the experiment lasted 155 days. >Blood was drawn at regular intervals for analyses to monitor the impact and cognitive functions were assessed 4 times. DNA methylation profiles of several organs were generated and age was calculated using six epigenetic clocks. >Using the final versions of their epigenetic clocks the reversal was: liver 75%, blood 66%, heart 57%, hypothalamus 19%. Average rejuvenation across four tissues was 54.2%. Source some David Sinclair tweets (more in there) https://twitter.com/davidasinclair/status/1259912928695857152 https://twitter.com/davidasinclair/status/125991292869585715...
greyhair 6y ago
You may be able to slow aging, but you are still going to deal with wear and tear. Until they actually find a way to promote well regulated regrowth of tissue, that is going to be a problem. I am young for my age, having been born into a family the generally lives to be old. My parents both lived to be 90, my maternal grandfather lived to be 95, and my maternal grandmother was one of three in here family that lived to 100+. On my father's side, his mother died at 88. For someone born in 1890 that was a feat. His father committed suicide during the great depression, but two of his father's sisters lived to 98 and 101. You get the drift. Dinosaurs. But wear and tear still took their toll. My father's hearing was week, and he was losing his eyesight before he died. My grandmother was completely blind before she died. My mom succumbed to a cancer that had recurred. Wear and tear. I worked outdoor physical labor through high school, and I have the moles and other skin issues related to excessive sun exposure. I also have several joints that were injured then that have caused problems my whole life. I lost much of my hearing to childhood illness before I was twelve (an misdiagnosed issue that would have been malpractice in today's environment) that I followed up with too much live music, operating heavy machinery, and shooting trap. Wear and tear. So maybe we can extend the healthy life of our organs, but that isn't going to magically make injuries go away. And I am not suggesting that young people should ever listen to people in their sixties, I certainly never did, but if you can avoid damaging your skin, hearing, and joints while you are young, you will live to appreciate that.

364 points by James_Henry 6y ago

Seems very exciting - I have huge respect for the author of this blog Josh Mitteldorf (he’s a genius) - so fingers crossed - they may be onto something real. Plasma from young donars is already proven to be beneficial to elderly recipients - this appears to be an extension of such research.

mkchoi212 6y ago

Very promising results! But I would love to see what happens when this is approved for human subject testing. Let’s see if the magic number of injections needed - 4 - is still the case.

ctack 6y ago
I read that as four per rejuvenation with no word about how often a rejuvenation would be needed.

peter_l_downs 6y ago

As someone entirely outside this field, can someone with more inside knowledge give any insight into where this lies on the crank/hoax spectrum? A biorxv paper and a well-written blogpost don't really point either way.

throw1234651234 6y ago
Ask Thiel.
op03 6y ago
It's not targeting you. It targeted at dumbasses with cash who are scared of dying.
- throw1234651234 6y ago
  What's wrong with not wanting to die?
  - strofcon 6y ago
    It's a pretty mentally unhealthy way to live, mostly.
    - RunawayGalaxy 6y ago
      Even if it's possible?
      - strofcon 6y ago
        I mean, "won't die of old age quite as soon" doesn't equate to "immortal", yea? To be fair though, my comment was way too broad. I should have clarified that I mean a constant, overbearing dread of the prospect of death is super unhealthy. Make life suck, and effectively shortens it in the experience of the scared one. (source: did that for a long time, got healthy, stopped being scared. Sample size of 1. :-D )
    - modzu 6y ago
      said with the entire world cooped up scared in their homes...
      - strofcon 6y ago
        Yup, current situation sucks massively. Doesn't change the fact that a disproportionate fear of death is exceedingly unhealthy and robs folks of some of the joy of being alive.
        aea12 6y ago
        Except nobody said, or even suggested, a fear of dying. Only you did. There's a significant difference between wanting more time to do things and sitting around terrified, and conflating the two is problematic. Reading your siblings, you're projecting your own feelings onto a completely reasonable feeling that most people have: with another hundred years of experience, what's possible?
amluto 6y ago
When the author says things like: > But Katcher has no research grants or university lab or venture capital funding, no team of grad students mining databases and screening chemicals in the back room. > One thing Katcher has going for him is the correct theory. I start to suspect the author’s opinion is stronger than their evidence.
- EndXA 6y ago
  I'm not taking a stance on the topic, but I think that if you quote the part that you did, then you should also quote the part right before it, for full context: > In the race to effect substantial, system-wide rejuvenation, Harold Katcher is a dark horse. He has the right academic credentials and a solid history of research. In fact, in earlier life he was part of a team that discovered the breast cancer gene, brca1. I asked Harold for a biographical sketch, and have printed it in a box at the end of this posting. And here's the bio sketch itself: > So, you might consider me a late bloomer. While I have thousands of citations in the literature, with publications ranging from the discovery of the human ‘breast cancer gene’, to protein structure, bacteriology, biotechnology, bioinformatics, and biochemistry, there was no center or direction to my work as I had given up my personal goal of solving/curing aging when I learned that ‘wear and tear’ was the cause of it. Yet something happened in year 1985 when I was in California working with Michael Waterman and Temple Smith (fathers of bioinformatics) that is inexplicable: I found myself in Intensive Care with a tube inserted into my trachea and the knowledge that I might not live. And then I had a dream: I dreamed that somehow in the far future (and on another world), I was being feted for ‘bringing immortality to mankind’. Clearly, I survived that incident (started with an infected tooth). I lived a wonderful life – becoming a computer programmer (which I loved), leaving that for the University of Maryland’s Asian division, becoming a full professor and then the Academic Director for the Sciences, in Tokyo, Japan. By the time I left Japan in 2004, (my daughter Sasha was a fourth-grader, (yonensei), in the Japanese school system), I was teaching for U of M online – somewhat retired, and looking forwards to writing computer programs for fun and profit. Yet I never ever forgot that dream. It was clearly impossible; I had no lab – and really, there was no way to repair all damaged cells – it’d be like sweeping back the ocean. And then, in 2009, I read an old paper from 2005, a paper written by the Conboys, (Michael and Irina), Tom Rando and others, coming from Irv Weisman’s lab, that completely changed my life; that showed me that everything I believed about aging was wrong – that aging occurred at the organismic level, not at the cellular level and could be reversed. Well, the rest of the story is about persistence and the blessed intervention of Akshay Sanghvi who too saw there was another way and provided the structural, monetary, and emotional support (and some good ideas) that had me start a new career at age 72 in Mumbai, India. I feel twenty years younger than I did three years ago, I guess that’s another hint about aging. Now the ‘mystical’ dream? It wouldn’t be the first time in history that that happened – take that as a datum.
lnanek2 6y ago
There's been a lot of nasty news articles about rich white people getting pumped with young people's blood. It's something easy to manufacture outrage against. There are callouts in the article that try to calm down that viewpoint at least like: " Katcher thinks that the molecules involved will not be difficult to manufacture, so that when a product is eventually commercialized, it will not require extraction from the blood of live subjects, rodent or human. "
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  > It's something easy to manufacture outrage against Perhaps for a good reason
WhompingWindows 6y ago
1) It's only rat tissues and human tissues; any research published in only tissues only or in ratsonly , and not a large RCT in actual humans, needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt. 2) The research in the blog post is not fully summarized. You know it's a weak blog post when they post results WITHOUT SAMPLE SIZE. This is a GLARING omission and highly unscientific. The actual paper shows n=593 rat tissues and n=850 human tissues, which is fine but the blog post should report on these details. 3) It's not that new to suggest that younger individuals' blood plasma might have a rejuvenating effect. 4) They look at certain tissue types, which wouldn't result in changes to all tissue types, like skin, hair, brain, etc. 5) This is very early stages, again, we need actual trials in humans, and then those trials probably need to be followed up for years and years, since aging is a long-run phenomenon. This is more like a cohort study where we enroll a huge number into a cohort of aging-treatments and controls who have some other placebo-treatment.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  This sounds to me like a very strong pilot study: something that's very likely to attract additional grant funding, but may or may not pan out in the real world.
- tropheusduboisi 6y ago
  Some of the figures are based on N=6 treated old rats.
chemeng 6y ago
It's within the realm of possibility. Parabiosis as a rejuvenation method has been slowly gaining attention since the 1970s and increasing credibility in the last two decades. Research seems to indicate that the introduction of blood parts from the young->old reduces markers of aging in the old. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5662775/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5662775/ for a reasonable quick overview.
entee 6y ago
There’s a host of evidence that parabiosis (blood transfer from young to old) works well in mice/rats for a variety of aging issues. Some of the more concrete claims that it will transfer to humans are not as well supported to my knowledge, but that doesn’t mean impossible, just not known yet. I would also question some of the strong claims about the hypothalamus as a centrally controlled aging clock, and that DNA methylation is a driver (rather than a marker) of aging. These are big claims, the article supports them poorly. DNA methylation is an on/off signal for genes in the cell and is a subject of active research. As you can imagine it’s been implicated in a large number of biological processes including cancer. I’d be careful messing around with it in a global way. I know of one at least one company (Spring Discovery) that is following some of this work up to find some driver molecules that could have the same effect as parabiosis. If interested in the topic I’d look at the work from the labs mentioned in the article as well as Saul Villeda (former grad student of Wyss-Coray, full disclosure I know him socially) at UCSF. TLDR: This article is a breathless take on active research, clearly the author is excited. There’s reason to keep investigating, but the conclusions in the article are stronger than what the research can say conclusively at the moment. Very early days.
cs02rm0 6y ago
Sadly, I'd revert to the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
tropheusduboisi 6y ago
I'm a grad student in the aging bio field. Steve Horvath is well known and well regarded, but I'm pretty sure he just did the regressions. Other characters on the paper are more unusual including a former Investment Banker from India. I think the mainstream aging community view would be "wow these results too good to be true and I wish they presented more methodical details and individual data points". If it's true, it's quite exciting. In my own work, I've seen the rejuvenating effects of young blood.
- tanzbaer 6y ago
  That took a dark turn there at the end.

eternauta3k 6y ago

I'm dimly aware that issues with rat models for aging were pointed out by Bret Weinstein. Any comments on that?

spacephysics 6y ago
I recall it had to do with telomere length in mice, and how longer telomeres were involuntarily selected for when breeding lab mice [0] [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11909679/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11909679/

fredley 6y ago

Do we really want to live in a world where the billionaires live forever?

Exuma 6y ago
Let's make everything about "billionaires" and completely ignore any good news.
- fredley 6y ago
  To be clear: I do not see this as good news. The only way new life and new ideas arise is in the wake of the deceased. Death is neccessary for life. If those at the top can further cement and accumulate their wealth and power due to living longer lives, this is bad for everyone else.
  - commandlinefan 6y ago
    Maybe not: the only way we're actually going to realistically colonize space as a species is if people live so long that a few hundred years in a spaceship is a reasonable sacrifice. I would imagine that the same people who were willing to spend fortunes on rejuvenation would also be willing to spend fortunes exploring new galaxies.
    - ComputerGuru 6y ago
      Many science fiction writers who envisioned generations born and passing away on spaceships making their intergalactic journey to their new home world would disagree.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    Why even invest in the health system at all then?
- strofcon 6y ago
  I'm missing the "good news" part...?

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

I'm uneasy - this reads exactly like a snake-oil pitch. What next? Spas that supply plasma injections?

Invictus0 6y ago

Does this lend credence to the idea that blood transfusions from young people could make one healthier or extend one's life?

logfromblammo 6y ago
Yes, it does. The hypothesis is that "clock molecules" in the bloodstream provide a global age-clock for about five other tissue-specific age-clocks in the body. Spoofing the global clock signal for a long enough period tricks the subsystem clocks into thinking they are younger than they really are, including the native global age-clock mechanism. Completely replacing your own blood with a young person's blood, repeating if necessary, would also accomplish the same trick, more expensively. The real question is whether old tissues can function like young tissues when tricked into trying.

babesh 6y ago

Was told by my wife years ago that there is a Hong Kong tycoon who has been doing this for years. Supposedly hires young people to do nothing but to stay healthy and then has transfusions of their blood. Just checked and he is still alive at 91. But this echoes vampire. This reminds me of plasma treatment for covid-19 which is actually proven. Perhaps someone will create a market for that.

Nuzzerino 6y ago
This was parodied in Silicon Valley - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBA0AH-LSbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBA0AH-LSbo
moneywoes 6y ago
What's his name?
- babesh 6y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ka-shing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Ka-shing
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Ididntdothis 6y ago
90 is not that old these days. Both of my parents have reached their 90s without doing anything like this. Let’s take a look at that guy in 20 years and see how he is doing.
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  Both of my grandparents from dad's side are 93 and still doing relatively well - self-sufficient, nothing horrible looming that we are aware of. Genes, good eating habits and healthy dose of exercise (rather low/medium effort that lasts long like gardening or foraging mushrooms in their case), coupled with obvious things like no addictions... and voila. They both had very good work ethics, on a level I can only envy (thanks to communists that didn't get them far professionally but that's another story and it didn't bother them). Bad part is, all of their friends and colleagues are dead by now. They can only meet their kids' generation.

rootsudo 6y ago

This is really interesting, thank you for posting. :)

curiousgal 6y ago

Age reduction. Enammel reconstruction. Batteries. The three pillars of perpetual breakthroughs.

gameswithgo 6y ago
Since 1990 the energy density if lithium ion has has increased by a factor of about 4, and the cost had reduced by a factor off about 6. While keeping in mind that consumer lithium ion itself was quite a breakthrough in terms of energy density in the first place. Both of these metrics are still improving too.
- JoshuaDavid 6y ago
  I dunno about enamel reconstruction (though I was under the impression that materials used to _replace_ tooth enamel have gotten enormously better in the last few decades to the point where your fillings will wear down slower than your teeth), but life expectancy has also been slowly increasing over the past few decades, and a significant fraction of that comes from people staying relatively healthy for longer.
Axsuul 6y ago
Interested to hear more about Enamel reconstruction!
- zo1 6y ago
  We all do. Here we are in 2020 and we still can't properly fix teeth.
all_blue_chucks 6y ago
Add cold fusion to the list. That said, breakthroughs that would be phenomenally beneficial and aren't prohibited by physics are worth throwing money at decade after decade due to the risk/reward ratio. It's like playing the lottery where the odds are a million to one against you, but he payout if you win is a billion times your ticket cost. You probably won't win but you would be stupid not to try.

ryanmarsh 6y ago

Crucially, plasma treatment of the old rats [109 weeks] reduced the epigenetic ages of blood, liver and heart by a very large and significant margin, to levels that are comparable with the young rats Since I spend a lot of money on this kind of stuff I figured I'd share. The use of platelet rich plasma (PRP) is rapidly growing in the beauty industry. My wife has had PRP used in various procedures that have indeed created a more youthful appearance (by like 10 years). Basically they can inject it anywhere through hundreds of tiny needles. Most often this is done to the face but you can even do this to the vagina (you'd be surprised how many women over 40 do this). That is, if you want hundreds of needles entering the labia and (horror of horrors) the clitorous too. There's even a process for men where you can have PRP injected in your shaft and the results (I'm to terrified of needles in my dick to try it) are quite good (firmness, sensation, youthfullness) from what I hear. The PRP procedures my wife has had, although expensive, have had impressive results.

yeetman21 6y ago
how much does this cost on average?
zarkov99 6y ago
I hope you are not just trolling. I am not sure if I enjoy more the news that there are effective treatments against aging or the rage you are going to induce with this post.
- ryanmarsh 6y ago
  Google "vampire facial" and I can tell you from personal experience the results are impressive beyond anything else I've paid for my wife (laser facials, botox, fillers, lip injections, etc...). I don't understand what the "rage" would come from, or why it's "pot". This is available today, and many people pay for it. The results speak for themselves. People who pay for this stuff don't make a habit of talking about it. I'm going to guess by your comment that you're not as beauty focused as some other people. For beauty focused individuals this is serious business. Ever wonder why your favorite actress over 50 "hasn't aged" past 35? It's not just plastic surgery or makeup. This is how many people make a living in industries where looking old is not rewarded.

ve55 6y ago

As much as these things are very speculative, that is the necessary direction that we have to go in in order to maximize the chance of actually finding and then using these breakthroughs. The only way to actually make significant progress in an area this difficult is to constantly be looking for answers everywhere we can.

andy_ppp 6y ago

Vampires have been doing this for millennia right? Seriously though, does putting Tom Hanks’ blood plasma into a young coronavirus nurse age them a little bit? Does the effect work in reverse? (Just to explain the above Tom Hanks had Covid and gave plasma in a convalescent serum).

floatrock 6y ago

> Most of the explosion in aging research (and virtually all the venture capital startups) are looking to treat aging at the cellular level.... The truth, as Katcher understands it, is that, to a large extent, aging is coordinated system-wide via signal molecules in the blood. So the SV execs with their fit young blood-bois were right all along?

henearkr 6y ago
Also, telomeres shortening is a real thing. So... so much for a signal-only mechanics!
andreygrehov 6y ago
I had the exact same thought. I wonder where those execs get the information from and more importantly, how the information is filtered, because they are clearly a few years ahead of what's being posted on, say, HN.
- maxwell 6y ago
  It was widely reported years ago. The future is already here it's just not affordable. I remember talking about recent news that a few of us had heard about promising "young blood rejuvenation" with a bunch of random hicks in the woods of central Maine in the spring of 2014.
Medicalidiot 6y ago
Signaling within the body is a cascade-like phenomenon where every step gets progressively more enhanced. It makes more sense to target upstream events since one can use less to have a stronger response. A classic example of this is nasal steroids for seasonal allergies versus histamine blockers. Steroids will actually cause the genes that code for histamine/inflammatory proteins that are released by the cells to be downregulated. Whereas antihistamines bind to the histamine receptor at the penultimate step in the process. Steroids have a much stronger effect and are the current first line treatment for allergic rhinitis.

meiraleal 6y ago

The laziness of believing that we are going to have a rejuvenation pill in the future is a big scam/joke. Just like pills to recover from baldness. Most people are running on 10, 20% of their full healthy, no pills are never going to change that. Not even a weight reduction pill will help the ones who wants to still be able to eat junk food and drink soda.

troughway 6y ago

I wonder if HN would have a viscerally negative knee jerk reaction if this was about a cancer treatment breakthrough, that could have saved someone they know or love if it was discovered in due time. This whole “fuck the billionaires” attitude on a website that is supposed to uphold some kind of techno-progressiveness is just so tiresome. We get it, you don’t like people with money and you consider them vampires because they want to avoid dying for as long as possible. Go and be insufferable elsewhere.

mdszy 6y ago
Maybe if they weren't leeches on society it'd be easier to want technology like this to exist. But as it stands, there's no reason to believe it won't just be used as a way to make the rich even richer by letting them live forever.
- smegma2 6y ago
  What do rich people leech and from who?
  - mdszy 6y ago
    If you think someone can become worth tens or hundreds of billions of dollars without exploiting anyone then boy howdy do I have news for you.
    - google234123 6y ago
      You do know that it is possible to create value? For example, let's say I invent a pill that increases the average life span of a human by 5 years. It costs 1$ to make and I sell it to every person on earth for 4$ each. Who is exploited in this example?
      - AuryGlenz 6y ago
        Clearly you should be selling that drug for $1 you capitalist pig.

maxander 6y ago

Since it seems like the upshot of all of this is that Katcher is claiming to have discovered a set of signalling molecules which, when injected, rejuvenate tissue and presumably lengthen life, it runs into one of the most fundamental objections that can be leveled at theory of aging (or cure thereof): of the billions of humans that have existed, how is it that none of them have possessed a mutation which (in this case) endogenously produced the signalling molecules which Katcher is proposing as treatment? In the case of this proposal this sort of objection is particularly strong, since (though the blog post is silent as to what the treatment is) it's given that they are fractions from blood, so they're substances which the body produces in some quantity anyway, and which are sufficiently non-dose-specific that Katcher, with limited resources, could devise a reasonably effective regimen. Parabiosis is one of the most striking (and just weird) phenomena in aging research, so efforts to understand what's going on with it are liable to bear interesting fruit. I'm just pointing out that there's good reason to doubt that this particular "breakthrough" is the "cure."

putlake 6y ago
People who had this mutation could have died of causes other than aging.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  My first thought too - maybe it's just wishful thinking, but the bible does talk about people who lived for thousands of years. We're prone to dismiss this as hyperbole from uneducated ancients, but maybe they actually did exist and this sort of thing was why.
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    "Someone slipped up the distinction between years and generations and a legend was born" still seems enormously more probable than anomalous longevity existing but somehow never making it into the wider gene pool.
    - 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

henearkr 6y ago

I'm very curious about how this mere signaling solves all off once: - natural as well as stress-induced telomeres shortening - oxidative molecular stress - accumulative viral damage on body's DNA - natural atrophy of thymus (thymic involution) etc I'm curious about the proposed mechanisms, if any.

im3w1l 6y ago

So, do you become chimeric by doing this? Beating death Ship of Theseus style?

Gatsky 6y ago

Hmm. Well the epigenetic aging clock effects are hard to interpret, but they also show recovery of cognitive performance in aged rats treated with their magic plasma fraction. That is kind of exciting. Nevertheless, there are significant conflicts of interest going on, so confirmatory studies by independent bodies in animal models are required. Then there are the human studies. They obviously want to use the epigenetic clock as a surrogate endpoint in humans, so the trial can be completed in a short time frame. Not sure about that, this is a fairly complicated surrogate endpoint we are talking about. Some more relevant biomarkers of aging in humans which incorporate functional readouts would be required at the very least. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.082917v1.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.082917v1....

Koshkin 6y ago

But as always, there must be a katch.

Koshkin 6y ago

But aging, followed by death, is important. And not just for the biological evolution, but also for social progress. Besides, lifespan is measured not in years or the total length of the spaghetti consumed but in memories and accomplishments. So, I am not sure what exactly is the point of trying to extend human biological lifespan. There were people that in 30 years had accomplished more than other would not be able to in however many years would have been given to them.

frenchie4111 6y ago
It seems important to our current society because it is a pillar, or a given, to how society runs today. It is almost impossible to imagine a society without aging. If/when that day arrives, I am sure it will seem a lot less important.
deleted 6y ago
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pmiller2 6y ago
I don't see a single benefit we could get as a species from the combination of aging + death that we couldn't get from death alone, provided the viable reproductive period weren't dramatically extended. Even then, we do a pretty good job of moderating the number of children we have, if we're confident they'll live, as other comments have said.

lawrenceyan 6y ago

It's impossible for an old cell to become young again, at least with our current level of technology, because that would require you to reverse all the mutations that have built up over time in that cell. If your argument is that our bodies have many different repair mechanisms, and that as long as we can figure out how to activate them properly, we can then reverse aging, I would caution you that while you're correct in that repair mechanisms do exist, it's important to remember that these mechanisms are themselves composed from the same components as the rest of your body, i.e. they too will age and begin to fail over time. The only way to actually cure aging would be to develop sophisticated enough outside mechanisms that would be able to intervene and replace these biological mechanisms as they fail. Macro level replacements won't cut it either. Replacing an organ might give you a few years here or there, but it doesn't address the issue that aging fundamentally happens at a molecular / atomic level.

pmiller2 6y ago
> It's impossible for an old cell to become young again, at least with our current level of technology.... Depending what you mean by "become young again," that's not true. See https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/old-human-cells-rejuvenated-with-stem-cell-technology.html https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/old-human-cel... The problem here is scaling this up beyond tissue cultures.
- lawrenceyan 6y ago
  Again, I emphasize this point: > I would caution you that while you're correct in that repair mechanisms do exist, it's important to remember that these mechanisms are themselves composed from the same components as the rest of your body, i.e. they too will age and begin to fail over time. The process of nuclear reprogramming to induced pluripotent stem cells, which is the subject of your referenced paper, is something that I believe to be a great scientific breakthrough, but nevertheless fails to address the accumulated mutations that build up over time in your cells. All those mutations don't just magically disappear.
  - 6y ago

rantwasp 6y ago

Improving longevity is what the people at https://www.lifespan.io/ https://www.lifespan.io/ have been trying to do for ages. The research is being done, there are tons of new promising things - with the catch that they are experimental / not tested on humans. Before you get too excited and wonder where you can buy these magic pills, remember that there are things you can do right now to improve both your longevity and your quality of life: 1) sleep properly 2) eat properly 3) exercise 4) reduce stress That being said I think that the next 20-30 years are going to be really interesting in this space, and if we indeed have any sort of proven breakthrough this will force us to rethink how we think about our society and our mortality.

koheripbal 6y ago
I believe the most impactful thing you can do is drastically reduce caloric intake - like by 50%. Experiments have show large increases in lifespan, across mammals.
- zemvpferreira 6y ago
  It's weird to me to say so but this intervention is one of the few things that, even if it were to demonstrably increase my lifespan from ~80 to ~120 years, I probably wouldn't do. I don't know if that's because I enjoy food and bodily activity too much to value a longer life without them or because I'm addicted to food. I've wondered. What wouldn't you be willing to give up for a much longer life?
  - rantwasp 6y ago
    there is a huge difference between enjoying food and being a slave to food. the best example I have in this bucket is sugar. If you depend on sugar you're basically a drug addict (i know, i know, but just because it's socially acceptable does not make it okay. there is research out there that show sugar is as bad as cocaine when it comes to how addictive it is and on the health effect). if you could pick just one intervention you could do quitting sugar is what you want (maybe if you're smoking, quitting smoking, but after that sugar is the nastiest thing you can put into your system)

nil-sec 6y ago

Are there no people who have to receive regular blood donations? Would you not notice such an effect in these people? I guess the donors are probably not all younger than the receiver but on average this is probably true. Does anyone know of a subpopulation that might qualify?

fallingfrog 6y ago

Aw, I was hoping for something a bit more substantial here. I think the sens foundation is on the right track but this is a highly implausible approach (though I am not a biologist).

rlucas130 6y ago

There was a great sci-fi book (imho) by Robert J. Sawyer that posits the use of nano-tech to enable age reduction called Rollback (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollback_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollback_(novel)). This just made me think of that book.

virajgite 6y ago

Here's an excellent video on the same topic that discusses David Sinclair's research https://youtu.be/XlFl0jDg0Jg https://youtu.be/XlFl0jDg0Jg

Rury 6y ago
I like his interview here: https://youtu.be/IEz1P4i1P7s https://youtu.be/IEz1P4i1P7s Granted I'm not completely sold on the supplements quite yet.
- tim333 6y ago
  I was impressed by that interview and am thinking of trying the supplements a bit to see if they do anything. This article was jolly also https://www.bostonmagazine.com/health/2019/10/29/david-sinclair/ https://www.bostonmagazine.com/health/2019/10/29/david-sincl...

snvzz 6y ago

It's worth remembering there's an engineering-approach to undoing aging damage, and a foundation[0] dedicated to advancing this approach. [0]: https://www.sens.org/ https://www.sens.org/

dntbnmpls 6y ago

We could also look into whether holocaust survivors share a genetic, pyschological, etc predisposition which allows them to live longer than native born israelis. Certainly there must be a will to live/survive but also a genetic/biological aspect which helped them survive starvation, disease, deprivation and thrive afterwards. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-holocaust-survivors-live-longer-than-native-born-israelis-1.6822053 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-holocaust-survi...

busyant 6y ago

I thought one of the main purposes of research publications was to allow others to reproduce/verify or refute your work. If you look at the methods section, here is what you get for a description of the magic plasma: 'We used a unique plasma fraction "Elixir" developed by Nugenics Research.' This seems to run counter to the philosophy of reproducibility. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.082917v1.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.082917v1....

lwansbrough 6y ago
To be fair, this would be a contender for the most epic discovery in human history. Would you simply give the solution away?
- busyant 6y ago
  If that's my primary concern, I wouldn't publish until I had the patents nailed down.

tim333 6y ago

Some details: >18 rats were divided into three groups. 6 young rats (30 weeks old), 6 old rats (109 weeks old) & 6 old rats (also 109 weeks old) treated with plasma fractions from the young rats. >Plasma fraction treatment consists of two series of IV injections, four times on alternate days for 8 days. A 2nd series of injections were given 95 days later. In its entirety, the experiment lasted 155 days. >Blood was drawn at regular intervals for analyses to monitor the impact and cognitive functions were assessed 4 times. DNA methylation profiles of several organs were generated and age was calculated using six epigenetic clocks. >Using the final versions of their epigenetic clocks the reversal was: liver 75%, blood 66%, heart 57%, hypothalamus 19%. Average rejuvenation across four tissues was 54.2%. Source some David Sinclair tweets (more in there) https://twitter.com/davidasinclair/status/1259912928695857152 https://twitter.com/davidasinclair/status/125991292869585715...

greyhair 6y ago

You may be able to slow aging, but you are still going to deal with wear and tear. Until they actually find a way to promote well regulated regrowth of tissue, that is going to be a problem. I am young for my age, having been born into a family the generally lives to be old. My parents both lived to be 90, my maternal grandfather lived to be 95, and my maternal grandmother was one of three in here family that lived to 100+. On my father's side, his mother died at 88. For someone born in 1890 that was a feat. His father committed suicide during the great depression, but two of his father's sisters lived to 98 and 101. You get the drift. Dinosaurs. But wear and tear still took their toll. My father's hearing was week, and he was losing his eyesight before he died. My grandmother was completely blind before she died. My mom succumbed to a cancer that had recurred. Wear and tear. I worked outdoor physical labor through high school, and I have the moles and other skin issues related to excessive sun exposure. I also have several joints that were injured then that have caused problems my whole life. I lost much of my hearing to childhood illness before I was twelve (an misdiagnosed issue that would have been malpractice in today's environment) that I followed up with too much live music, operating heavy machinery, and shooting trap. Wear and tear. So maybe we can extend the healthy life of our organs, but that isn't going to magically make injuries go away. And I am not suggesting that young people should ever listen to people in their sixties, I certainly never did, but if you can avoid damaging your skin, hearing, and joints while you are young, you will live to appreciate that.