2y ago

Age Reversal Breakthrough: Harvard/MIT Discovery Could Enable Whole-Body Rejuvenation

Age Reversal Breakthrough: Harvard/MIT Discovery Could Enable Whole-Body Rejuvenation::In a pioneering study, researchers from Harvard Medical School, University of Maine, and MIT have introduced a chemical method for reversing cellular aging. This revolutionary approach offers a potential alternative to gene therapy for age reversal. The findings could transform treatments for age-re

Longevity @mander.xyz

astronaut_sloth @mander.xyz

2y ago

scitechdaily.com /age-reversal-breakthrough-harvard-mit-discovery-could-enable-whole-body-rejuvenation/

76 comments

Horray, the rich will live forever! All hail our immortal overlords!
- Don’t worry we'll live forever too since now we won't have to retire
- Yeah, check out Altered Carbon (the first book or the first season) for how this would likely play out.
  
  I like how you only mentioned the first season, I didn't watch season 2 at all..
- I guess this is the future that will come sooner or later...
  Btw if someone doubts about it - it's already happening. Here is the example.
  
  All technology is initially available to only the rich. But it can be widely available, if people demand it.
  Also, those pills don’t work anyway so don’t get too worried yet.
- Jokes aside, are we just cribbing from sci-fi cart blânche these days?! I mean, sure "Art imitates Life imitates Art", but still. When the only dead are the poors (>99% of humanity itself), the entire species will certainly collapse. (Where's the "bridge of nose pinch + sigh" emoji when you need it?) 🤷🏼‍♂️
  
  All technology is initially available to only the rich. But it can be widely available, if people demand it.
  Also, those pills don’t work anyway so don’t get too worried yet.
- I came to the thread to post that, but here it is on the top ✊
Couldn’t you wait until Mitch Mconnell died until you released this? I’d rather not him be in the senate forever.
- I was thinking Henry Kissinger
Full text of actual paper: https://www.aging-us.com/full/204896
Tldr; seems like decent science and the compounds used are fairly ordinary ones for the most part. Note however this is all in vitro so far and it might be a challenge to deliver the same chemicals in the same concentrations to all the senescent cells of the body.
Prepare to see these ingredients added in insignificant amounts to expensive skin creams before the year is out, whether they can penetrate the epidermis or not
- The full journal article says "in vivo" not "in vitro". They have already successfully regenerated mice which are organisms biologically similar to humans.
  Edit
  I was wrong about this. The journal article does only talk about results obtained "in vitro" but mentions other studies that have successfully reversed cellular ageing "in vivo".
  The ability of the Yamanaka factors to erase cellular identity raised a key question: is it possible to reverse cellular aging in vivo without causing uncontrolled cell growth and tumorigenesis? Initially, it didn’t seem so, as mice died within two days of expressing OSKM. But work by the Belmonte lab, our lab, and others have confirmed that it is possible to safely improve the function of tissues in vivo by pulsing OSKM expression [22, 23] or by continuously expressing only OSK, leaving out the oncogene c-MYC
  So in this study the results were only in vitro but other studies have successfully reversed cellular ageing in vivo.
- Yet so many upvotes :/
Even if for the rich, this would be good news. The rich and powerful will stop ignoring things like distant climate related deadlines, if they think they'll be alive to feel their effects.
- This is the such a silver lining take I never would have thought of. Well done.
- No they won't. The answer remains hard vore.
- I honestly don't think so. I don't think they care of the condition worsen, including theirs as long as they stay above the poorer people.
  Like, if we look at the living condition of a medieval era king. You live in a stone castle do your bedroom as freezing temperature in winter, terrible healthcare so you might be in terrible pain for things that easily treatable, no hygiene the smells everywhere must be horrible... Compared with the comfort of a normal person in a developed country. ( Not the US though, now like Denmark or Switzerland) the modern life is clearly way more comfortable.
  However I suspect that a lot of people, especially richer people would prefer to be the king, despite the conditions.
- They'll just build a space city just for them and live for ever up there
- If this take is anything like whales with stock they’ll just jump ship onto the next country/planet to start over it’s a never ending cycle
  A lot of the rich/ultra wealthy are selfish and don’t give a fuck unless it directly affects them so I don’t foresee any accountability if the planet Implodes instead they’ll just fling their money at the next thing that buys them a ticket out of here
Ahh, immortal super-rich people whose views get more and more conservative as they age forever... What an exciting future to look forward to!
- The only upside I can think of is they'd actually start caring about the planet instead of thinking they'll be dead in 100 years anyway.
  
  They try to get so rich no matter what, so they can evade all consequences. (That's not possible, but they want to believe it)
- I see one potential good thing though: maybe people would be less interested in killing the only planet that supports human life if they knew they were going to be on it forever.
“As long as men die. Liberty will never fail.”
The sci-fi type implications of this would be astounding. We would see a rapidly increasing global population with high natural resource use. On a philosophical level, is living forever a blessing or a curse?
- I doubt it works on anything but skin cells.
- We could start by giving it to congress
  
  Immortal, corrupt, power-mad billionaires, great idea...
- It's not a path to living forever; cells can't reproduce once they burn through their telemeres. What this is is a way to have a youthful body at an older age so you won't spend the last years of your life frail and wrinkly
  
  I'm betting any genuine anti-aging therapy is going to be a complex mess of many treatments. Top off the telomeres, error-correct the DNA, roto-rooter the arteries, reprogram cells, etc...
Without paywall: https://archive.is/QX1w7
- i can browse the page without paywall in Firefox android
Why does the woman in the first photo appear to be molding?
- Molting*
- can you name a better way to ride in the multipassenger HOV lane when nobody else is going your direction?
  save that shit, molts come in handy
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Kurt Vonnegut, 1953
- Thanks for reminding me to prioritize the capacity for dignified exit from the game.
Before people lose their minds, this research, while interesting, is very far from true aging reversal. At most it could be one aspect of it.
The comments be like: I didn’t read the article, here my pissed off reaction calling for 1984
- Good thing you brought us a bunch of useful information with you from the other side.
  
  Op didn't read the article either
Heh, science journalism.
Ugh. I barely want to live my whole life on this planet with the ways it is going.. let alone reverse back into my 20s with no actual "new game+"
- I would think suddenly being able to go back to your 20s is the NG+.
Why a cure for ageing would benefit everyone and not solely the ultra wealthy
If you put aside ethical and humanitarian reasons for making a cure for ageing widely available, there is still economic considerations, i.e. if you are a government you will be presented with a choice between:
Do I pay to treat people for ageing, even though the treatment might initially be expensive, or do I let them age without intervention?
The former option might actually be significantly cheaper because people in an advanced state of ageing cost more money. They have more diseases, since many diseases are age related such as dementia, cancer and cardiac disease, and need more healthcare and also can't work anymore.
If instead, the government pays for rejuvenation treatment they save on all the other healthcare costs and their people don't have to stop being productive.
So perhaps in the future when a cure for ageing is actually developed it will be made available for everyone rich and poor alike
- Let me start by saying that I haven't read the article or the study, but I would be very suspicious that this could stop, slow, delay or reverse cancer. In fact, I would guess that it would actually cause more cancer. I hope I'm wrong.
  We would also have to consider the impact of people living longer would have on the environment. People will still be having kids, and if you were going to live longer you might want to have many more kids while you're young. Our rock is going to get pretty crowded really fast if people stop dying of old age.
  Then there's the point about people still being 'productive' to society. Honestly, if I'm going to live longer, I don't want it to be so I can continue to be productive. I don't like being productive as it is. I'd prefer that humanity focus first on fixing our economy before trying to extend our lives.
  Despite appearances, I'm not trying to argue with you for the sake of argument, but more just putting other ideas out there to consider. I do hope your vision is right, and this will be something available to everyone and helps to make our final years more pleasant.
Full journal article here
https://www.aging-us.com/article/204896/text
"Thus, rejuvenation by age reversal can be achieved, not only by genetic, but also chemical means."
-- Journal article abstract
this is the worst it's just going to be available to rich assholes
This feels like stuff from a Star Trek episode.
Our society is so far from that though. I feel like this would break our society currently where the rich will only have access to it.
I wonder what people will look like in their reverse-puberty stage.
Ah, want to be old ! Can it speed body decaying?
- Meth's the chemical you want for that! Because nothing beats that 28-going-on-82 look!
  
  Lol
  
  alright alright, where do I sign up?
And we will have the T-virus outbreak in 3... 2... 1...
Or the Krippin virus.
- T-virus because I want to fight Nemesis! 😤
Hope that arc to Mars finishes soon enough. Apparently we will pay to live longer, but not to survive.
Looks like it's servators for the rest of us
Grandma’s a hottie
Their CEO should do this, along with some other billionaires!

76 comments