The Sunday Times Magazine • 61a few years in human terms) but, most
crucially, they did so in better health than
their untreated counterparts, got less cancer
and fewer cataracts, could run further and
faster on their treadmills, dangle from wires
for longer and regained some of their
youthful curiosity in new environments.
Today scientists are moving rapidly
beyond lab mice: the first senolytics entered
human trials in 2018. Biotech companies
are targeting age-related diseases such as
arthritis and lung fibrosis where senescent
cells are thought to be driving
factors but, if clinical trials
over the next few years
show that the drugs areeffective and safe, they could begin to be
used more widely. It’s not ridiculous to
suggest that preventative senolytics could
be prescribed to healthy sixtysomethings
within the next decade.
And senolytics is just one avenue of
many that scientific teams are exploring
and tech billionaires are pouring money
into. The Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan,
have directed the scientific arm of their
foundation to “cure, prevent
or manage all diseases by
the end of this
century” by funding
technologies that they
hope will provide more
detailed maps of DNA,CELLULAR EXHAUSTION
As we get older we lose cells and those that
survive become worn out and less capable of
doing their jobs properly. Stem cell exhaustion
is particularly problematic because these are
the cells responsible for replenishing all the other
cells when they wear out. One of the hottest
areas in medicine is stem cell therapy and it
is likely to be a key weapon in our arsenal against
ageing. Stem cell therapy (the transplantation
of adult stem cells) allows us to replace cells
lost through the ageing process. It’s a variation
on bone marrow transplants, which have been
successfully carried out for half a century.
Stem cell treatments for patients with
Parkinson’s and many other diseases are
now at clinical trial stage.TRIMMED TELOMERES
Our DNA is split into 46 lengths known as
chromosomes (we get 23 from each parent). At
the end of each length is a cap called a telomere.
When a cell divides — which they do to replace
dying cells — the caps get shorter. This is bad
news for risk of death: short telomeres are
associated with many of the diseases and
dysfunctions of ageing — they’ve been linked
to diabetes, heart disease, some cancers,
reduced immune function and lung problems.
They are also implicated in the rather more
superficial phenomenon of our hair turning grey.
An enzyme, telomerase, can rebuild these caps
and scientists have shown that using telomerase
gene therapy leads mice to live longer, healthier
lives. Human trials aren’t far away.cells and brain diseases. Peter Thiel, a
co-founder of PayPal, has been investing in
longevity research for 15 years. “I’m looking
into parabiosis stuff,” he said in 2016.
(Parabiosis is the Frankensteinian practice
of sewing together mice such that they
share a blood supply. Sewing an old mouse
to a younger one seems to rejuvenate the
older mouse — leading to speculation that
transfusions of young blood could have
the same effect, and an industry trying to
cash in on that notion.)
The Google co-founders, Larry Page and
Sergey Brin, have invested at least $1 billion
in Calico, a company trying to understand
the ageing process, with a secretive remit
that seems to focus on using huge datasets
to decode longevity. And Jeff Bezos and
the Russian internet tycoon Yuri Milner
have created Altos Labs to look into “partial
cellular reprogramming”, a technique using
four genes, named the Yamanaka factors,
to turn back the “epigenetic clock inside
individual cells”. If these genes are active
24/7, they can rewind a cell back to an
embryonic state — an undesirable Benjamin
Button scenario because these newly
embryonic cells don’t fulfil their former
role, causing organ failure. Activate these
genes briefly, though, and cells perform a
rejuvenating spring-clean, while carrying
on with their adult functions.
Some of these ideas are just getting off
the ground in the lab. Other interventions
may be around the corner. If evolution
can stop some animals from ageing, it’s
not implausible that medical science can
at least alleviate the side effects of ageing
in humans. In fact, it’s looking like a
distinct possibility nAgeless: The New Science of
Getting Older Without Getting Old
by Andrew Steele is published by
Bloomsbury at £9.99Despite its wrinkles the Galapagos tortoise ages gracefully, with no fall in health or fertilityAge is just a
number and
I’m 173
ALAMY, GETTY IMAGES
Who are you calling
long in the tooth?