
Drug 'reverses' ageing in animal tests - abhi3
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39354628
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nabla9
They should test these with old volunteers first.

Life expectancy of 90-year old is 4-5 years depending on gender. If the drug
increases the life quality it's probably worth the risk even if it increases
changes of getting some cancers.

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anotheryou
Or sell it for hamsters and old people will try it anyways...

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tunnuz
Mind blown.

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henryaj
Original paper:
[http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30246-5](http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(17\)30246-5)

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bmcusick
The SENS Research Foundation ([http://www.sens.org/](http://www.sens.org/))
has identified the seven ways that the elderly are different from the young,
and hypothesizes that the aggregate damage from these seven things is what we
call "aging".

Essentially, aging is just accumulated damage from these seven processes.

One of the seven processes is the accumulation of senescent cells. They clog
up the works and also release chemicals that prevent normal cells from
functioning at full effectiveness. Normally senescent cells kill themselves
and are broken down by the body, but this process gets worse over time and
senescent cells multiply.

The drug in this story targets and kills these senescent cells selectively.
Effectively they are reducing the population of senescent cells in your body
from the number you'd find in an 80 year old person so some lesser number
(perhaps like a 20-, 30-, 40-, or 60-year old, but human studies would be
required to say how effective it is).

But that's what aging reversal is. It's taking the seven biomarkers identified
by SENS and reverting them from 85-year old levels to 25-year old levels. If
all you're biomarkers are the same as a 25-year old, you _are_ 25 in every
sense except calendrical.

EDIT: typo

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maxander
Seeing the headline I shrugged and thought to myself, "oh, I bet it's
rapamycin again." That and a few other old cancer drugs routinely get studied
for antiaging effects- which is cool, but somewhat less than directly
applicable because of the side-effects associated with what is essentially
chemo.

But here the drug is apparently a peptide, so it's presumably somewhat more
benign (at least relative, mind you, to chemo.) Also easily synthesizable! I
wonder if an amino acid sequence can be patented?

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JPLeRouzic
I am not a biologist but the whole business of senolytics is to mess with the
cell cycle. That is not something benign.

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maxander
Not really the cell cycle per se, but yes, the idea is to poison senescent
cells. But it can be benign to the organism as a whole nonetheless.

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JPLeRouzic
There are lot of buzz since some months about "senolytics". However I think
aging is a complex phenomena, including having social dimensions. It is
probably not something that you could solve with a pill.

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DoofusOfDeath
I would imagine that many of the social dimension are consequences of, rather
than sources of, the physical ones.

If a pill could give someone more energy, less daily pain, a more regular
sleep schedule, and/or increased sex-drive, I suspect we'd see their place in
society nudge towards that of younger persons.

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JPLeRouzic
I am not sure. For example menopause had been linked to social events like
having grand children. It can occur earlier in those who smoke tobacco. Immune
system working depends on your social status and has consequences on aging
diseases. People who are engaged in a relation and that have a strong social
network are aging better. And people are dying around us as we age, one in
four people that were born at the same time than me has already died, and I am
only 60. So being older means more solitude, which means more biological
aging. All in all, there are many indications that aging is something social
as well as biological. (edited)

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anotheryou
Than there should be outliers of those who have younger friends. E.g.
Professors with a good relationship to the students or people that live in
more age-diverse peergroups/communities like in a small village.

