Reverse Aging Technology Could Bring Us Closer to the Fountain of Youth
Humanity’s quest to beat back aging has long been an obsession, with researchers employing genetic engineering and cell reprogramming techniques in an effort to slow the natural aging process.
Scientists have recently discovered a way to rejuvenate cells by returning them to earlier gene expression patterns. But any such attempt must avoid pushing cells too far back toward youth and risking cancer in the process.
Stem Cells
Stem cells are precursors to specialized cells with specific functions in your body, found throughout and helping regenerate tissue, repair organ damage and contribute to immune defense as well as supporting growth and development. They play an essential part of life.
There are various kinds of stem cells: embryonic (ploo-RIP-uh-tun), which exist during early development; tissue-specific stem cells which appear during fetal development; and adult stem cells. Embryonic (ploo-RIP-uh-tun) stem cells have the ability to give rise to all cell types in the body and therefore considered pluripotent; while tissue-specific ones often limit themselves to specific tissues like bone marrow or fat.
Scientists now believe it may be possible to reverse cellular aging through genetic “reprogramming” of adult cells back into stem cell-like states, using just four transcription factors and their combinations, similar to what was discovered by Kyoto University researcher Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto. He discovered this methodology can transform adult cells back into pluripotent stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
Reprogrammed iPSCs then have the potential to become specialized cells that can replace diseased or damaged tissues within the body, providing treatment such as skin grafts for severe burn victims or replacing heart cells to combat heart disease. This could open the way to numerous regenerative medicine therapies, including skin grafts for severe burn victims or replacing cells to treat heart disease.
Reprogrammed iPSCs may provide researchers with the raw material for developing treatments for age-related diseases associated with decreased cellular metabolism, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cardiovascular disease. To reach their goal of treating such diseases with stem cell treatments they will need to identify which genes and molecular pathways cause changes to cellular metabolism, develop procedures for growing stem cells before transplantation into bodies, as well as ensure they survive after being implanted into bodies.
Senescent Cells
Researchers are engaged in extensive efforts to target senescent cells and flush them from the body, including using drugs known as senolytics to kill these cells directly or preventing their secretions so as to help immune cells identify and eliminate them more quickly. Scientists are also studying a drug class called senomorphics that don’t directly kill these cells but instead represses harmful secretions without killing senescent cells directly.
Senescent cells accumulate, leading to damage that breaks down tissue’s ability to repair itself – one cause of age-related diseases such as heart attack and macular degeneration. Researchers have found that extracting these damaged, non-dividing cells helps restore their tissue’s regenerative capacities.
But this is no simple fix; senescent cells produce toxic chemicals that interfere with healthy tissue functioning, making their removal more complicated than it would otherwise be. Furthermore, senescent cells can initiate a positive feedback loop that promotes their own proliferation through various cellular pathways that become activated as soon as one begins accumulating.
To avoid such problems, scientists need to find ways to target only senescent cells without impacting other cell populations. Gorospe and his team are working on developing biomarkers such as BrdU, EdU and IdU that can pinpoint senescent cells across various tissues; they’re also working on creating senolytics and senomorphics as well as other strategies to remove senescent cells.
These therapies all share one key trait in common: they aim to break the positive feedback loop that senescence creates between itself and itself, which allows reprogramming to occur without incurring unnecessary senolytic removal or induction, thus decreasing risks such as organ dysfunction or tumor formation, often associated with these therapies.
Age-Related Deficits
Humankind has always sought ways to slow or reverse aging; we see evidence of it in myths, religions, science fiction and horror tales alike. Scientists are continuously exploring methods to slow or even reverse it – and now Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory scientists may have made an amazing breakthrough that may provide us with one such remedy!
Researchers have recently made the remarkable discovery that the natural immune system can be modified to fight cells which contribute to aging and delay life expectancy, potentially providing hope of an anti-aging drug or vaccine solution. This breakthrough represents a major step toward realizing this vision.
No matter our age or background, how we age is determined by a complex interplay of biological processes that are both controlled by genes and affected by environment and individual personality characteristics. Physical and social environments that we inhabit as children – or when developing as foetuses – have long-term implications on health and well-being in adulthood.
As populations worldwide become older, it has become more urgent for healthcare providers and researchers alike to devise ways of prolonging healthy living through strategies which may slow or even reverse aging.
Development of an anti-aging cure will likely involve multiple approaches, ranging from genetic reprogramming of cells to drug therapies that target senescent cells that accumulate with age. Environmental interventions designed to help people cope with changes related to ageing while maintaining independence and wellbeing are also being explored.
Ichor’s team is currently creating a chemical alternative to gene therapy that could reverse aging of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), used in blood and bone marrow transplantation procedures. HSCs from older donors tend to die off sooner than those from younger ones; so using reverse aging therapy on these HSCs would go a long way towards improving patient outcomes.
Treatments
Humans have long sought ways to counter the ravages of time, seeking innovative and unorthodox means in search of an eternal youth-inducing fountain. Today, new breakthroughs in anti-aging treatments are opening up new possibilities and moving closer to our ultimate goal of perpetual youth – these developments even include whole body rejuvenation as part of this pursuit!
Researchers discovered in one study that rapamycin could effectively reverse aging processes in mice by blocking an important signaling pathway regulating cell growth and function – including how quickly cells age over time. Although already used to treat various conditions in human patients, its ability to reverse the aging process has attracted renewed attention among researchers.
Other scientists are investigating ways to replicate the anti-aging benefits of caloric restriction for humans, and to use methods that involve taking fully developed cells and “turning back time”. Cellular reprogramming holds great promise as an anti-ageing strategy – it involves taking mature cells and turning them backward into stem cells with more youthful properties; similar to how iPSCs are made; offering promise both for regenerative medicine as well as total body rejuvenation.
Harvard Medical School recently unveiled the first chemical approach to reprogramming cells back to a youthful state, drawing upon Yamanaka factors’ discovery that adult cells can be transformed into iPSCs without gene therapy. This novel approach may offer safer and cheaper means of rejuvenation while hastening development of improved rejuvenation methods.
The team developed an approach combining RNA sequencing and gene networks to identify which genes were highly connected with biological processes that change as cells age, before activating candidate genes to see which ones reset the cell’s transcriptome clock back towards youth – successfully reversing senescent cells to their more youthful state after four days of treatment.
Although the results are still preliminary, this research is promising in that it could potentially halt or reverse the aging process by blocking certain harmful genes and activating others. If successful, these discoveries could potentially reduce disease incidence while leading to healthier, longer lives for all involved.