Destroying worn-out cells makes mice live longer
The company founded for this is Union Biotechnology; they wouldn't be getting VC money if they were more than a couple years away from human trials. Indeed, the CEO is on record in some of the present press as saying two years.http://finance.yahoo.com/news/unity-biotechnology-launches-f...The technology being used here in mice is not suitable for humans in its present form. But it won't take much tinkering to make it so - this is an age of gene therapy. The most important things here are that:(a) a robust life extension was achieved with a SENS approach of damage repair, something that SENS advocates have been working towards for more than a decade. The SENS view is right. It is right today, as demonstrated, and it was right ten years ago when people were lining up to deride it. A SENS technology has produced a robust life extension and remediation of age-related diseases across the board in normal mice. People who think that SENS and damage repair are not the way forward need to take a long, serious look at why they think that, and then revisit the science.(b) The Union Biotech VC and university PR machines are putting out word for word the SENS vision of damage repair to treat aging. SENS has won. This is the dawn of the age of rejuvenation biotechnology, with a near future of widespread support for that goal.(c) There are at least three methods of clearing senescent cells in mammals, and most likely four. (1) The method of Oisin Biotechnology, seed funded last year by Methuselah Foundation and SENS Research Foundation, (2) the senolytic drug combination demonstrated last year, (3) the capase/gene trigger work linked here, and (4) the adaptation of method #3 currently underway at Union Biotechnology.To be clear, half of these methods work in mammals now. If you had the right connections you could use them today. Clinical availability will not be a long time in coming, and I for one hope to see this escape the regulatory gauntlet very rapidly and get into medical tourism and clinics worldwide just like stem cell therapies did at the turn of the century.Finally a note for investors and business people: every SENS rejuvenation technology of this ilk has a target market of every human being on the planet over the age of 30. Everyone, with treatments once every decade at a minimum. This is medicine that will make blockbuster drugs of past years look like damp squibs. That is why this should and will escape the narrow regulatory gauntlet that will try to restrict use to old people with the late stage of a few specific illnesses. That is nonsense and no way to run the future - senescent cells should be periodically cleared every few years starting at 30.