How can I stay young forever? Scientists: "Rejuvenation Technology" research is on the way

2018-04-28 06:59 | Science and Technology Daily

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Human beings have always dreamed of eternal youth. From ancient times to the present, there are endless stories about finding the secret recipe for immortality. Unlike many people's impression of "crooked ways", aging biology is actually a serious discipline, and scientists have made many achievements in the field of anti-aging that have not yet been understood by the public.

In the BBC's recent podcast "Tomorrowland", the host introduced some researchers who are studying slowing down or even stopping the aging process. Is aging, which is considered a natural law, really reversible? What is the frontier of aging biology concerned about, and can "immortality" be achieved? The reporter interviewed relevant experts on this.

Scientists have found many codes that govern life

Aging research has been a hot topic in the field of life sciences in recent decades. Dong Mengqiu, a researcher at the Beijing Institute of Life Sciences, previously said in an interview with reporters that before the 1990s, most people felt that it was meaningless to study aging, believing that aging was random and unregulated. It wasn't until 1993 that an nematode researcher discovered a genetic mutation in nematodes that could double the lifespan of nematodes. Later, some people also found that the insulin signaling pathway was related to aging in fruit flies, and there were clues in human genetic data to support it, and the research space was opened.

"Modern scientific research on anti-aging is indeed not very long, and if it is calculated from the first discovery that the lifespan of small animals can be regulated, it is only a few decades." Cai Shiqing, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Biological Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with reporters, "But since then, the progress in this field has been very fast, especially in the regulation of lifespan has made many breakthroughs." ”

In short, the pioneer of nematode biology, the 2002 Nobel Prize in Biology or Medicine, biologist Sydney Brenner and others began to use nematodes as model organisms to study developmental biology problems, and nematodes are gradually widely used in various branches of biological research.

Subsequently, in 1993, the laboratory of Professor Kenyon of the University of California, San Francisco, reported in the journal Nature that the lifespan of nematodes after the mutation of the gene Daf-2 encoding insulin receptor-like proteins doubled, which is a landmark work in the field of aging research, revealing for the first time that a single gene can regulate animal lifespan, opening a new era of research on the mechanism of life regulation. "Up to now, scientists have successively discovered hundreds of genes related to the extension of animal life, and the discovery of these longevity genes has given people a more comprehensive and clear understanding of the life control mechanism." Cai Shiqing said.

Explore the secret of "immortality" on the road

Based on these scientific research results, capital began to move. "Google, Yahoo, and others are starting to set up companies to develop life-extending drugs." Cai Shiqing said metformin, a common drug for treating diabetes, has been shown to extend the lifespan of rodents. "Overall, the regulation of longevity is already a fact, and scientists have found some ways to do it." Cai Shiqing said, but at the same time, researchers have found that the extension of life expectancy and high-quality life are two different things, "'immortality' and 'immortality' are actually two concepts, at present, 'immortality' is possible to some extent, and 'immortality' is one of the frontier directions of aging biology." ”

"If you extend your life expectancy from 80 to 100 years, but in the next 20 years, people's various physical functions are still deteriorating, it doesn't really make sense." Cai Shiqing said that maintaining the vitality of various functions while extending life and achieving youth in the true sense is one of the research directions of his research group.

It is well known that most people's behavior and cognitive function gradually deteriorate with aging, but there are also some people who can maintain good vitality in their old age. Cai Shiqing's team chose to start with the significant differences in aging rate between individuals and found that neuropeptide signaling plays a key role in the process of behavioral degradation in aging animals. This work revealed for the first time the genetic basis of differences in aging rate between individuals, found a new signaling pathway to regulate animal aging, elucidated the important role of neuropeptide-mediated glial cell-neuronal signaling in the regulation of aging rate, and is an important breakthrough in the field of aging in recent years, which was reported by Nature in a lengthy paper last November.

The "rejuvenation technology" is still in the experimental stage

As Cai Shiqing said, scientists from all over the world have gradually interpreted the "immortal" code while beginning to shift their focus to exploring the secret of "immortality".

De Gray, chief scientific officer of the California Foundation for the Study of Negligible Aging, said their goal is to develop a specific therapy for middle-aged and elderly people whose physical and psychological ages are comparable to those of young people under the age of 30. De Grey said they wanted to "fix bad changes between the ages of 30 and 70." He believes that cellular damage that results in related diseases that coincide with aging is mainly related to seven physiological factors: slower renewal of tissue cells, loss of control of cell proliferation (such as cancer), cell failure to die at the prescribed time (such as cancer), damage to mitochondrial DNA, accumulation of waste products inside cells, accumulation of waste products outside the cell, and extracellular matrix stiffness.

De Grey said they have found ways to deal with all of these problems, which can be solved with the therapies they have developed. He believes that stem cell therapy can solve the first problem, providing tissues with fresh young cells to replace cells that die during aging, while other problems, such as cells not dying at the prescribed time, require more complex solutions. In his view, the future "rejuvenation technology" can transform the cells in the elderly into the state of youth, and ideally, the physiological level of the 60-year-old can be restored to the level of 30.

At the same time, scientists from various countries are studying the topic of "how to keep people young" from different aspects. For example, in 2017, a team of Professor Daniel of Duke University in the United States reported a simple way to combat aging. The team analyzed that reasonable control of calorie intake in the diet can effectively slow down the aging of individual physiological age. This also means that people can "stay" in their youth through reasonable dietary calorie control.

In addition, researchers from Brigham Young University found that telomeres in the cells of those who sustained high levels of physical activity were significantly longer than those who had a sedentary lifestyle and moderate levels of activity.

Telomeres are protein cap-like structures at the ends of chromosomes, and like our body's biological clock, which is directly related to age, every time a cell divides, we lose a small fraction of telomeres, so as the body gets older, our telomeres get shorter and shorter. The study found that the telomeres of the high-level physical activity population were 9 years higher than the telomeres of the sedentary population, and the biological aging advantage was 7 years higher than the telomeres of the moderate active population.

"Overall, peers are looking for ways to fight aging, but most of them are still in the animal experiment stage." Cai Shiqing said. He analyzed that aging is a particularly complex process. The academic community has provided a variety of hypotheses on the causes of aging, trying to explain them from different aspects, including the oxidative free radical damage hypothesis, the telomere hypothesis, the erroneous protein synthesis hypothesis, and the gene mutation accumulation hypothesis. "However, the above hypothesis can only explain part of the phenomenon of aging." Cai Shiqing said.

"At the same time, due to the long time of human experimentation, the development cycle of anti-aging drugs will be particularly long compared to other drugs." Cai Shiqing said that although there have been some exciting achievements in the academic community in recent years, anti-aging research still has a long way to go from academic to application.

(Original title: "Youth Forever Stays in This Matter, Scientists Are Trying to Find a Way", the original author Cao Xiuying, editor Huang Huixian)