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Humanity now needs to think about the fight not only with the COVID-19 pandemic, but also with the most global disease – aging, Peter Diamandis believes. Technologies that can defeat it – in the selection of an entrepreneur
Today, there are about 7,8 billion people on the planet, about 9% of whom are over 65 years old and suffer from the most deadly disease on Earth – aging, the visionary writes on his blog. It has no competition when it comes to deaths from heart disease, as well as from cancer, diabetes, respiratory disease and dementia. In fact, this 9% of the population is 720 million confirmed cases of aging.
Despite these numbers, the world is just beginning to recognize it as a disease. Society today has simply resigned itself to the fact that aging, like death, is part of our lives, but there is no evidence that it cannot be significantly extended.
Many species on Earth live much longer than us. The bowhead whale can be up to 200 years old, while the bowhead shark and sea turtles can live over 400 years. If they can, why can’t we? It is clear that so far the problem lies in the lack of necessary hardware and software, but both tasks are within our capabilities, and they will be solved soon.
Here are some key technologies that can help to significantly extend human life and health right now.
CRISPR and gene therapy
Aging is ultimately a dysregulation or destruction of the cells in our body. Gene therapy is a technology by which a genetic construct is introduced into certain cells of the body in which genes are missing or not working properly. The second method, CRISPR-Cas9, allows editing (eg, cut and paste) DNA sequences in cells. It is our main weapon in the fight against genetic diseases. Importantly, this technology is getting cheaper, faster and easier to use.
Treatment with stem cells
Each of us is a set of over 30 trillion cells. Each of them comes from one pluripotent cell type (capable of forming many others), called stem cells. They can replace any damaged tissue.
There are many of them in a young organism, but with age their number in tissues and blood flow can decrease by 100 or even 1 thousand times. But what if we could restore our body’s “rejuvenating engine”, the stem cell population? At Celularity (a company founded by Robert Hariri and Peter Diamandis. — Trends), for example, have demonstrated that placenta-derived stem cells injected into animals can prolong life by 30%. Now Celularity is looking to make this approach work in humans.
Manipulation of the Wnt signaling pathway
Samumed, a San Diego-based biopharmaceutical company, is targeting the signaling pathways that regulate adult stem cell self-renewal and differentiation, a pathway known as “wnt.”
Their products have been proven in animal studies and several phases of human clinical trials to repair cartilage, heal tendons, remove wrinkles, and even stop a host of cancers, as well as reverse Alzheimer’s disease. So far, Samumed has developed nine so-called “regenerative medicines”.
senolytic drugs
Throughout life, the cells in every organism divide until they reach what is called the “Hayflick limit” (the limit on the number of somatic cell divisions, usually 50 divisions).
This is followed by their death or destruction by the immune system. A small number of cells with signs of aging, however, escape this fate and linger indefinitely in the body. They cause chronic inflammation, damage surrounding tissue structures, and change the behavior of neighboring cells for the worse. Fortunately, the scientific and business communities have begun to work on senolytic therapy. One such company is, for example, Unity Biotechnology, which promotes technologies that selectively destroy senescent cells and provide localized treatment.
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