A lot of what goes on during aging remains too poorly understood for straightforward translation. There are hallmarks of aging, and researchers are getting a handle on its biological mechanisms. But in a basic sense, “we still don’t have much of an idea what causes aging,” said Björn van Eyss of the Leibniz Institute for Aging Research. Part six of BioWorld’s multipart series on extending the human lifespan explores the moonshot attracting the most attention: in vivo partial reprogramming.
In the biopharma industry, the sirtuins have been a cautionary tale of some of the challenges in translating aging research. Research in the early aughts suggested that activating them could extend lifespan, and the spectacular rise of sirtuin activators crested in 2008, when GSK plc bought preclinical startup Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc. to the tune of $720 million, only to shutter it a few years later. But the hopes attached to sirtuin activators have not panned out. Read more in part seven of BioWorld’s multipart series on extending the human lifespan.
If anti-aging drugs are to become widely available and adopted, especially in the U.S., they have some serious hurdles to overcome. And those hurdles aren’t all in the lab or clinic. With classes of anti-aging drugs already in the pipeline, “the biggest hurdle is FDA approval. Then reimbursement,” said George Kuchel, a professor and director of the UConn Center on Aging at the University of Connecticut. Read the final installment of BioWorld’s multipart series on extending the human lifespan.
Two studies published back to back in Nature have looked at the accumulation of mutations in blood-forming stem cells with age, gaining new insights into how the overall landscape of such cells changes across the lifespan.
Age is the biggest risk factor for just about every common disease in high-income countries, which suggests that slowing down cellular aging would have massive effects on individual and public health. Delaying the average onset of Alzheimer’s disease by five years, for example, would roughly halve its prevalence. But in practice, there are no approved anti-aging medications.
The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitor rapamycin extended the lifespan of female but not male flies, through sex-specific effects on the enterocytes that line the gut.
Biotechs that tackle the effects of aging are beginning to make headlines: in January Altos Labs Inc. launched with a reported investment from Jeff Bezos. With Bezos getting involved with San Francisco-based Altos, the immediate reaction was that anti-aging biotechs would be there for the benefit of billionaires searching for eternal life.
Not so, according to London U.K.-based Genflow Biosciences plc, which hopes to show that fighting aging is really about improving health as people age.
By using roughly 400 data points, from molecular to physical fitness, researchers have gained new insights into how organs such as the heart vs. the skin, and systems such as the immune and metabolic systems, age at different rates within individuals.
An international collaborative study led by Australian scientists at the University of Queensland in Brisbane has demonstrated that dietary selenium supplementation mediates exercise-induced adult neurogenesis and reverses learning deficits induced by hippocampal injury and aging in mice.
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