Aubrey de Grey, Ph.D., chief science officer and co-founder of the SENS Research Foundation, believes some of the people living today will still be alive 1,000 years from now.
A biomedical gerontologist, de Grey believes the physical damages of aging can be reversed through medication. He is not alone.
Dr. Nir Barzilai, MD, agrees with de Grey that human life can be extended dramatically. He is director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Director of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging.
While Barzilai does not dispute de Grey’s projections, he’s looking a little shorter term.
“We die at 80. Getting an additional 35 years is relatively low-hanging fruit,” Barzilai told WebMD. “But I don’t believe that is a fixed limit.”
A cure for aging
Barzilai, de Grey, and other researchers are targeting age as a preventable condition.
As we age, our cells wear down and eventually stop multiplying. That leaves our genes more likely to mutate which can lead to cancer. In addition, the capacity of mitochondria, which release energy from food to power cells, declines. That can result in cell damage and chronic inflammation, which may lead to diseases such as diabetes, ulcerative colitis, arthritis, and more.
When these damaged cells become dormant, our immune systems attack and remove them. However, just as our cells decline, our immune systems are less effective as we age. As a result, more damaged cells remain in our bodies.
“Many things go wrong with aging bodies, but at the root of them all is the burden of decades of unrepaired damage to the cellular and molecular structures that make up the functional units of our tissues,” according to the SENS Foundation. “As each essential microscopic structure fails, tissue function becomes progressively compromised — imperceptibly at first, but ending in the slide into the diseases and disabilities of aging.”
Prescriptions for long life
The cure, some researchers believe is to clear out these damaged cells with the help of medications.
“These therapies would actually repair damage,” according to de Grey. “They’ll eliminate damage from the body by resetting or turning back the clock.”
“People assume aging is immutable and that it is a fool's errand to look for drugs that slow the aging process — but they are wrong” — Dr. Richard Miller, University of Michigan School of Medicine
It is hoped that drugs can slow or halt the common markers of aging, such as telomere length (life span of cells), inflammation, oxidative stress (an imbalance between production and accumulation of oxygen in cells and tissues), and slower cell metabolism.
“You don’t have to target all these hallmarks to get improvement,” says Barzilai. “If you target one, you show benefit in the others.”
“People assume aging is immutable and that it is a fool’s errand to look for drugs that slow the aging process ─ but they are wrong,” Richard Miller, director of the Glenn Center and professor of pathology at the University of Michigan School of Medical, told Michigan Today.“We have documented four different drugs that work in mice to decelerate aging and postpone the diseases and disabilities which make aging troublesome.”
Quercetin, an antioxidant that flavors some fruits and vegetables, and cancer drug dasatinib have been used by Dr. James Kirkland, MD, Ph.D., of the Mayo Clinic, to eliminate dysfunctional cells in people suffering a disease. However, it is too early to tell if the quercetin/dasatinib combination will have a lasting impact on life extension.
Diabetes drug may extend life
One common treatment for diabetes may be among the most promising and affordable drugs for life extension.
Researchers have found that people who took metformin for type 2 diabetes had lower death rates in general than people who do not take the drug. It also may reduce incidences of Alzheimer’s, dementia, and heart disease.
More research is need on the impact of metformin on aging and Dr. Barzilai is doing that. He heads TAME (Target Aging with Metformin), a six-year clinical trial studying over 3,000 people between 65 and 79 at 14 research institutions across the country.
“If the results are what they think they will be, the whole world could go on metformin and extend life for everybody — extend your good quality of life,” Barzilai told WebMD. “That’s what we all want. Every extra year that we could get where we’re still vigorous and vital would be amazing.”
It should be noted that in February 2019 the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a recall of Metformin ER (extended-release) because it may contain N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), an organic compound found to be carcinogenic above certain acceptable intake limits. Metformin IR (immediate-release), the most common kind prescribed for type 2 diabetes, has not been recalled and is considered safe by the FDA.