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by LinuxBender 2432 days ago
Several companies and research groups are working on it. The challenge is a lack of priority, funding and even recognizing aging as a disease, at least in legal terms.

Look up the Sens foundation (Dr. Aubrey De Grey), Dr. David Sinclair (Harvard .. Some are skeptical because he has started several companies) and Dr. Bruce Ames as starting points.

2 comments

I think the real challenge is mind boggling complexity of interactions. Suggesting it’s a question of funding etc is vastly understating the actual issues.

Curing cancer for example is a vastly simpler problem.

Don't get me wrong, it is a very complex set of complex issues depending on which pillar we attack. (Metabolism, Repair, Pathology). The latter is very expensive and too late in the game. That is what we attempt today with conventional medicine and it's just treating symptoms of aging. We barely understand human metabolism and the little bit we know is a auditorium wall sized flow chart. Repair is the new area and Aubrey is putting a lot of effort into that pillar. That is where funding would certainly help. Then there are legal and ethical issues we will eventually dive in to.
Not only simpler, curing cancer is also necessary for curing aging.
Absolutely. There is already a great deal of work on the metabolic side, such as removing biofilms of cancer with AGE (aged garlic extract), slowing or stopping metastases with bio-availability enhanced Curcumin, up-regulating autophagy and cell apoptosis with the up-regulation of NRF2 via cycling Sulforaphane and Myrosinase, starving cancer cells by removing all glucose and processed carbs via Keto and intermittent fasting, 5 day FMD (fast mimicking diet). All of these things highly complement Chemo, increasing the effectiveness and mitigating much of the damage caused by Chemo Therapy.

On the repair pillar, quite a bit of work is being done with CRISPR to attack cancer cells. There is also research on targeting specific cells using sound (11th harmonics) and destroying them.

Sorry I don't have any links to share. I must get back to work. :-)

Why Bruce Ames? Bruce Ames is long retired, and his research was on the free radical theory of aging, which is largely seen as a dead-end for the past 15 years after it was realised that merely throwing different antioxidants into the works gummed up the normal function of reactive oxygen species and did nothing or worsened aging.
Actually he still does a lot of work and is currently researching theories around "conservation". e.g. when the body is low on a particular micro-nutrient, it conserves delivery on particular pathways that are related to longevity.

So while he may have "retired", I mean, he's 90, so it's about time, he most certainly still works full time in the lab.