Panel beating your age: Aging looks like it can be genetically manipulated

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Most people would know that a lot of diseases have genetic predispositions, and some genes trigger the onset of these age-related things.

Prior research had already indicated that aging could be described as a matter of maintenance, repairing damage to tissues. What hadn’t been understood was how the body’s systems, which have some pretty advanced self repair abilities, started to foul up with the onset of age.

A single therapy approach is a big paradigm shift, after decades of independent research into the various aspects of aging. That’s one of the contributions of a small research agency called Buck Institute for Age Research, based in California.

Spencer Michels of PBS Newshour did something similar in putting together his piece on the subject, and there’s a lot of new ideas and information:

“DALE BREDESEN, CEO, Buck Institute for Age Research: When you have an animal and you make a genetic manipulation that allows the animal to live longer, it puts off all of the associated diseases. That argues that, if we're out there looking for treatments for Alzheimer's and treatments for cancer, et cetera, maybe these are all one treatment. Maybe these are all something we should be focusing, not on each disease by itself, but on the aging process itself.

SPENCER MICHELS: Lithgow has coined a new term for the interdisciplinary work he and his colleagues are doing: geroscience.

GORDON LITHGOW (researcher, Buck Institute for Age Research): We have people interested in individual human diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. And we've realized that we're all kind of working on the same thing, really, and the same genes and the same mechanisms are at play. We started to use this word "geroscience" as an umbrella term.”

The idea of a holistic approach to aging isn’t new, but it’s come at a time when an enormous amount of new information is being generated by gene science. The body’s ability to regenerate itself through things like exercise is now making more sense:

“SPENCER MICHELS: These seniors participate in a strength training class at The Redwoods. Melov investigated exercise like this as a way to rejuvenate muscle tissue and slow down or even reverse biomarkers, biological indicators of aging. He found that exercise actually reversed the aging process.

SIMON MELOV: We were able to very clearly show that these biomarkers of aging were reversed to a very large extent back to that of younger individuals just through resistance training over a period of six months. Now, we know from other studies that if you stop exercising, it just goes back.”

As you can see, this has moved quite a long way beyond the motivate-the-old-folks routine into some actual working science.

A moving set of biomarkers is only going to mean one thing: It’s all fixable, if you know how. You don't become biologically a few decades younger by accident.

Even the biology of exercise isn’t in dispute; the cells respond to the exercise, and the whole body responds to the higher activity levels. That's been established theory for years.

As a matter of fact, being physically or mentally inactive is one of the best known causes of ill health, in all age groups. Being confined to a bed, for example, can actually trigger depression.

What wasn’t known was that the body naturally readjusts to a younger model when it’s needed. Makes sense, really, because it’s adopting a physical profile able to do the work. The reversal of the process simply indicates that a certain level of activity is required for good health, and that anything less than that is dangerous.

Some people consider aging natural, but the signs are now becoming insistent that it’s really a sign of faulty equipment, or not using the equipment properly, as in the exercise effect.

This is no longer exotic science, either. The therapies being discussed are entering the mainstream. Gene switches, at least the ones for turning dangerous genes off, are now becoming standard therapeutic options.

Compared to the old Medieval type “give ‘em a walker and a room” gerontology approach, they’re potentially a lot cheaper, and have the advantage of actually working.

In point of fact you’re as young as your biology allows you to be.

The single therapy idea is becoming very productive, in terms of ideas and scientific standards, and quality of argument.

The scientists are holding a pretty healthy debate about what’s possible and what isn’t about a single therapy, at this point. Researcher Cynthia Kenyon of the University of California San Francisco, has a lot of things to say about her views, which are balanced by Buck Institute’s slightly clinical, but hardheaded approach:

“CYNTHIA KENYON: If you're 80, but you're really like a 45-year-old, if you look like a 45-year-old, I mean, you're not just healthy, but you are young, then you're not going to be susceptible to these diseases until much later.

SPENCER MICHELS: Several companies, including one she founded, are trying to make a pill that would slow down the process that makes people age. It would mimic gene manipulation.

CYNTHIA KENYON: And then all these diseases of aging are postponed by this pill. So how realistic is this? We already know that this can happen in these long-lived animals. We see it. It's amazing.

SPENCER MICHELS: But that approach is controversial and premature, says the Buck's Simon Melov

SIMON MELOV: It's sort of not productive to talk about developing a pill to cure aging. Certainly, we will be in a position to help alleviate some of the symptoms of aging and maybe even reverse specific aspects of the aging process. But talking about, you know, living for 500 years, 1,000 years, is a little bit kind of flight of fancy, frankly.”

This is definitely not going to be a dull debate. For those who don't know the scientific protocols, Kenyon's not being starry eyed, and Melov isn't being a killjoy. This is how the debate has to work, to get real science done, and have the kind of peer review required to maintain accuracy and scientific propriety.

Kenyon’s talking ideas, Melov is talking about the need for real working science. Both arguments are essential to develop theories, standards of scientific proof and methods.

The critical approach to what may become one of the most sought after treatments on Earth is itself very important. The kind of half witted, "any old expensive thing in a tablet" pharmacology we see in "normal" medicine would be lethal in genetic treatments. Nobody wants to be guessing about their facts.

A door has been opened by the results of the gene manipulation. To previous science, the idea of increasing lifespan by such huge amounts was simply not even worth talking about, let alone basing any sort of real research on it.

Curiosity has been piqued, and one of the absolutes of the whole idea of natural life has been shown to be adjustable.

Somebody will open that door.

This could be a major turning point in the basis of human life and health.