CAN ONE PILL CHECK AGING?

Let me start with that blizzard warning this weekend.  Alaska, sure they had some snow and wind.  Perhaps that storm moving east along the Canadian-U.S. border?  Nope, the Big Island of Hawaii.  The tops of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa began to accumulate snow last week.  The total snowfall could have been a foot by Sunday, with winds exceeding 100 MPH.  Just a typical winter over the telescopes on Mauna Kea, which might still someday build the Thirty Meter Telescope.  That photo to the right is actually from January of this year.

More than a decade ago this blog site had a series on eternal life.  This was linked to my Huffington Post article on Science and the Future of Cloning:  Is Immortality Possible?  To quote:

There are at least two pathways to continue your presence. One does not involve human cloning. Without going into telomeres and ribonucleoproteins, let me just say that science is actually close to finding and checking the aging gene. Someday, you might be able to take a pill and stop growing old. The question is, can this technique be perfected before you get too old? You can still, then, of course, get killed in an auto accident or through an illness, but that so-called 130 year old lady from Georgia (of the former Soviet Union) could someday be commonplace.

The other is cloning, and there are two kinds: therapeutic and reproductive. The former is almost okay, while the latter is verboten, except in certain countries where the laws are fuzzy. You can expect some future breakthrough in countries where religion is not dominant.

So how far has genetic engineering advanced to create such a pill?  It now has a name:  SENOLYTICS.  About this future pill:

• Could be available in 5 to 12 years.
• ...a pill that could push back the ageing process – a medicine that could stave off the fragility, osteoarthritis, memory loss, macular degeneration and cancers that plague old age.
• Researchers have already demonstrated "the possibilities" in animals, and are now beginning human clinical trials, with promising results.
• This science has evolved from lengthening lifespan to increasing healthspan.  That is, aging will less pain and illness.
• This will lower medical costs, for, in London:
• The government spends twice as much to care for 65-year-olds versus 30-year-olds.
• But 85-year-olds cost more than 5 times as much.

Why call this field senolytics?  

• This branch of medicine targets senescent cells, which have been identified to cause death.  
• These cells were first described in the 1950's, but only became of interest in 2008 when Judith Camapisi and others found that they secrete a cocktail of factors.  Worse, just a few of them can damage a whole organ.

• 
  While the government is involved, increased funding is coming from billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel.

• 
  These "zombie" cells cause inflammation and turn healthy cells senescent, leading to tissue damage throughout the body.

• 
  In 2016 researchers used a genetic trick to rid mice of senescent cells.  They flushed out these zombie cells from one mouse.
• They showed a photo of two elderly rodents born of the same litter.  One was spry and glossy, while the other was shrunken, greying and old.

Then, into the picture came Unity Biotech, funded by Jeff Bezos, to develop a pill that could safely clear zombie cells from a human body.  Their early path seems related to the eye, specifically targeting conditions like age-related macular degeneration and glaucoma, but also emphysema and osteoarthritis.  The latter has to do with injecting a senolytic drug into the knees, something for which I would volunteer to be a guinea pig.  Early human trials began in February.

More recently came Altos Lab, also partially funded by Bezos, to reprogram human cells to revert to a stem-cell-like state.  Chair of their scientific advisory board is Shinya Yamanaka of Japan, who won a Noble Prize in 2012 related to mice research.  Also involved is Russian tech billionaire Yuri Milner.  They plan to establish institutes in California, the UK and Japan.

To quote Sebastian Gronke of the Max-Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne:

That’s why there’s so much interest, for they seem to still work very late in life."  So it will be possible to study more quickly whether they actually work in humans, and they are applicable to people already at the end of their lives.

Of course, the risks of disease that increase with aging are heightened by sedentary living, alcoholism and bad diet. Grönke recommends, along with a healthy diet, reducing the amount of animal protein you consume – you can eat meat but ideally maybe once per week, maximum. He says an association between low protein intake and longevity is well established in humans. Ideally the protein should come from vegetables and not from meat.

Ming Xu of the Mayo Clinic said:

We also found that clearing senescent cells improves insulin sensitivity. So senolytic drugs not only work on ageing but also on obesity.  Senescence is a connection between these two very common conditions.

He expects the ideal treatment age will differ from person to person, and that ultimately scientists will develop a blood or urine test that can assess the level of senescence present. Some people age very fast, and some age very slow, so it could vary a lot, he says.

Interestingly enough the U.S. Military is testing a pill that could delay aging:

The pill involves a “human performance small molecule” that will be fashioned into a nutraceutical form for both civilians and military personnel.

“These efforts are not about creating physical traits that don’t already exist naturally. This is about enhancing the mission readiness of our forces by improving performance characteristics that typically decline with age. Essentially, we are working with leading industry partners and clinical research institutions to develop a nutraceutical, in the form of a pill that is suitable for a variety of uses by both civilians and military members, whose resulting benefits may include improved human performance—like increased endurance and faster recovery from injury.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, does not regulate nutraceuticals, meaning these anti-aging pills are exempted from those standards that have delayed the utilization of COVID-19 vaccines.  This is partially why Elysium is already marketing Format, Index, Matter and Basis as advanced supports for immune aging.  About Format:

• Supports a healthy immune system and combats immune aging at the cellular level
• Senolytic Complex based on leading institutional research in the field of cellular senescence and developed under the advisement of an expert member of Elysium’s Scientific Advisory Board
• Helps protect cells against free radicals and oxidative stress 
• Induces autophagy and helps the body manage senescent cells
• Targets inflammaging at the cellular level and supports a healthy inflammatory response

I can't seem to find a review about Format.  However, here are two about Basis and Matter.

• Innerbody Research.
• Honest Brand Reviews.

These two reviews tell you all you need today to proceed or not.  

• My assessment of what I read is that these anti-aging nutraceuticals are similar to those naturopathy or homeopathy pills.  
• They might work, but you wonder if the placebo effect is dominating.  
• You worry a bit about the long-term effects, for nothing is today known, and won't for some time to come.  You can't take one pill and expect to feel better.  
• You will need to invest your money and body for perhaps a year or more to gain the full benefits.  
• Cost?  $1 or $2/day.  
• With regard to anti-aging, the field is not quite there yet, so these Elysium products are mostly preparatory for the reality someday.  
• Elysium is linked to research conducted at Harvard, Oxford and MIT, so the credibility is high.

There are other companies, for example, like ChromaDex.  Then you can read Southern Living on the 35 Best Antiaging Products that Our Editors can't live without.

Well heck, then, what about an anti-aging pill to reverse aging?  While I suspect this one is many decades away, if ever, here is a study that says it's possible to reverse aging in just a few weeks:

• Eight-week period of dietary, supplement, sleep and relation changes could reverse DNA aging by up to two to three years.
• This author also recently had an article on how sleep, oral hygiene and exercise helped maintain chromosomes to that cells could replicate longer and thus stay alive longer.  Simply, sleep seven hours/night, exercise 30 minutes per day five days per week.  Forget pills, this is what I already do.

Plus, a drug called ISRIB has already been shown in lab studies to restore memory function, reverse cognitive impairment in Down Syndrome, prevent noise-related hearing loss, fight prostate cancer and enhance cognition.  Wow!  But, so far only in animals.  The man behind this is Peter Walter of the University of California at San Francisco.  However, nothing said about when I will be able to take this pill or treatment.

I''ll end with HUGS:

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