[Sipewrio]

If America does not become a third world country, first.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...cience-health/

I don't put too much stock in one possible result, but the number and pace of discovery's says that just by the law of averages, a breakthrough is going to come, assuming one is there to be found.

Aging mice can be made "young" again, according to findings one scientist initially found unbelievable.

The key is muscle-derived stem cells, which—like other stem cells—are unspecialized cells that can become any type of cell in the body.

When injected with muscle stem cells from young mice, older mice with a condition that causes them to age rapidly saw a threefold increase in their life spans, said study co-author Johnny Huard, a stem-cell expert at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Pittsburgh.

"I've been doing science for the last 20 years," Huard said. What "makes the story so amazing is that in the beginning, I didn't believe the result," he said.

"I bet that we mixed up the animals—you know, scientists are always skeptical."

"Tired" Stem Cells Re-energized

The study mice were genetically engineered to have a condition similar to a rare human syndrome called progeria, in which children age quickly and die young. The fast-aging mice typically die around 21 days after birth, far short of a normal mouse's two-year life span.

When scientists looked at the muscle stem cells of the fast-aging mice, they found what Huard called "tired" stem cells, which don't divide as quickly.

The team then examined mice that had aged normally and found their stem cells were similarly defective.

Curious if these deficient stem cells contribute to aging, Huard and colleagues injected stem cells from young, healthy mice into the fast-aging mice about four days before the older animals were expected to die.

To Huard's astonishment, the treated mice lived an average of 71 days—50 more than expected, and the equivalent of an 80-year-old human living to be 200, he said.

Not only did the animals live longer, they also seemed healthier, the scientists found.

Mysterious Secretions Make Cells Young

The "drastic" results bore out with repeated experiments, leaving the scientists to wonder how exactly the stem cells were working their magic, Huard said.

To find out, the team "tagged" stem cells injected into the fast-aging mice with a genetic marker that tracked where the cells went inside the body. Surprisingly, the team found only a few stem cells in the mouse organs, squashing a theory that the introduced cells were repairing organ tissues.

The scientists went back to the lab to test another idea: that stem cells secrete some kind of mysterious anti-aging substance.

The team put stem cells from the fast-aging mice on one side of a flask and stem cells from normal, young mice on the other side. The two sides were separated by a membrane that prevented the cells from touching.

Within days, the aging stem cells began acting "younger"—in other words, they began dividing more quickly.

"We can conclude that probably normal stem cells secrete something we don't know that seems to improve the defects in those aging stem cells," Huard said.

"If we can identify that, we have found an anti-aging protein that is going to be important" for people, said Huard, whose study appeared January 3 in the journal Nature Communications.

Stem-Cell Research "Intriguing" but Preliminary

But other scientists are cautious about how soon the discovery may help people delay the aging process or treat age-related disease.

"They did a beautiful job of showing that, when they put the muscle stem cells in [the mice], they improved function," said Justin Lathia, an assistant professor of cell biology at the Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute.

But as far as people go, it's still not clear what exactly stem cells do in the body, as well as what the mysterious stem cell secretion really is, Lathia emphasized.

Jeremy Rich, chair of the department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, also pointed out that the study is limited to muscle stem cells. That means the research can't be generalized to include all stem cell types, which are often very different from each other.

Paul Frenette, a stem cell and aging expert at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, called the research "intriguing," but said one of the messages for "patients is not to get too excited."

"You see all these clinics that are popping up all over the world—even in New York—where they're injecting stem cells" into people to treat disease, even though such therapies have not been proven.

"I don't think people should run to the clinic right now to have injections of stem cells to live longer."

Stem Cell Therapy to Help People "Age Well"?

Indeed, study co-author Huard noted that before any human anti-aging trials can begin, scientists need to repeat the experiment in normally aging mice to show whether these mice also live longer.

If that turns out to be true, Huard could imagine a scenario in which some of a person's stem cells are harvested at about age 20 and then injected back into his or her body at around age 50 or 55.

Stem cell therapies do already exist for conditions such as incontinence and heart problems, so he thinks "we're not that far [from applying] this approach clinically down the road."

But Huard warned that such a treatment would not mean a 55-year-old will suddenly look and feel 25 again.

"The goal of doing this research is not to [be like a] movie star with a ton of money [who wants to] look great for the rest of their lives," he said.

"The goal is, if you delay aging, maybe you can delay Alzheimer's or cardiovascular problems."

In other words, he said, such stem cell treatments would help people "age well."

[kmjbbT3U]

We should be concentrating on things such as renewable energy and solving the food supply issue rather than wasting resources on making a few elite people live forever.

[goldcigarettes]

We should be concentrating on things such as renewable energy and solving the food supply issue rather than wasting resources on making a few elite people live forever.

Except I always think of that as a self limiting argument, since the people who feel that way are voluntarily self selecting to die "early' which will quickly remove people who feel that way from the gene pool.

[BinasiDombrs]

Except I always think of that as a self limiting argument, since the people who feel that way are voluntarily self selecting to die "early' which will quickly remove people who feel that way from the gene pool.

Not really, we do not have the resources or the technology to support a society with people who have finite lives let alone infinite.

[kylsq0Ln]

I am thinking of science fiction (probably Star Trek) where they are offered immortality or something and the main character makes a speech about not wanting to live beyond his natural span, and the human race not being ready, etc.......

And I always think "Well, cool!" because after the people with objections live out their natural spans and die, all that will be left is the (perhaps more selfish people) who thought it was a great idea.

I think the same way about people in religious-type sects that rule out medical intervention.

Not saying its a good thing, just that in human history, few are those who really really turn away from a longer life, even those who claim they would. Always in the end, some rationalization is found to accept whatever new discovery's brought about the extension.

[lipitrRrxX]

We should be concentrating on things such as renewable energy and solving the food supply issue rather than wasting resources on making a few elite people live forever.

Mmm yes I agree and find this very annoying.

[themsrsdude]

We should be concentrating on things such as renewable energy and solving the food supply issue rather than wasting resources on making a few elite people live forever.

They are Biologists, unless you're asking them to make Biofuels or some new organic renewable energy, I'd rather them not make any more shoddy GM foods. If rich people are going to live for 300+ years I'm pretty sure they are going to care a little more for the world they are no longer leaving behind.

[VewCoorkPow]

I was listening to a talk about ageing and medicine progression. For every day that passes life expectancy increases by 7 hours. That means that I should live about a decade longer than my dad does (who had me age 39). That's excluding radical medical breakthroughs such as stem cell research. There are some doctors that believe the first 1000 year old person has already been born.

It sounds great but it also creates lots of problems. We'll soon be at a stage when people live most of their lives as pensioners and even now people are in getting into their 70s before they inherit from their parents.

[XGoFivk7]

We should be concentrating on things such as renewable energy and solving the food supply issue rather than wasting resources on making a few elite people live forever.

Uh, if this can be worked into a cure for Alzheimer's or cardiovascular problems like the article suggests, then wouldn't that end up helping everyone?

There are plenty of other people working on food and energy problems, let these scientists work on getting me to live forever, please.

[SinncmxM]

They are Biologists, unless you're asking them to make Biofuels or some new organic renewable energy, I'd rather them not make any more shoddy GM foods. If rich people are going to live for 300+ years I'm pretty sure they are going to care a little more for the world they are no longer leaving behind.

I agree, many of the 'rich' people are that because they're selfish, greedy and self serving - the results of their actions are 'someone else's problem'!
if they can expect to live longer, then the results of their actions are going to have a much more significant result for their later lifes.

However, IIRC, it's more a matter of the telemers (IIRC) that limit cell life and recently I'd read about the serious concerns the medical profession have about the rapid increase in resistant infections and diseases that are unaffected by most modern anti-biotics, etc. They're worried that we're going to return to the days like a hundred years ago when even simple infections may result in death as no treatments will work any more.

[feedcomnet]

This is only one piece of a gigantic puzzle. If we manage to get our cells to live longer, we still have the multifaceted problems of cancer to deal with. The longer a cell lives, the more time it has to accumulate damage to it's DNA which can/will eventually lead to cancer.

I tend to think of cancer as an inherent limit of our biology (or biology in general). As we eliminate external threats to our biology (disease, etc) and grow older we are increasingly bumping up against this limit. Before we can live for a very long time, we need to have all pieces of the puzzle, and we still have very few.

[XarokLasa]

This is only one piece of a gigantic puzzle. If we manage to get our cells to live longer, we still have the multifaceted problems of cancer to deal with. The longer a cell lives, the more time it has to accumulate damage to it's DNA which can/will eventually lead to cancer.

I tend to think of cancer as an inherent limit of our biology (or biology in general). As we eliminate external threats to our biology (disease, etc) and grow older we are increasingly bumping up against this limit. Before we can live for a very long time, we need to have all pieces of the puzzle, and we still have very few.

But the rate at which we are accumulating that new knowledge is accelerating every day. Its been hypothesized that the 7 hours longer we live each day (assuming that's correct) will one day reach the point where we are learning how to extend our lifespans quicker than nature and accumulated cell damage can kill us.

For some reason, I have always had a feeling that the total defeat of cancer would have a huge impact on our attempts at human longevity, because the tendency towards eventual cancer as one of the likely results of greatly extended cell life would be one of the biggest limiting factors.

But what is the maximum possible lifespan? Does such a thing really even exist? Who says death (from old age) is inevitable, now and always?

Being human, we will not simply let those questions go unanswered.