r/biotech • u/ALeeWriter • 23d ago
Will anti aging or longevity ever progress? Open Discussion šļø
This is a follow up to a post I made earlier today about if there was anyone in these fields whoād be willing to talk to me and run me down on the field. But I never realized so many people here also viewed it in a negative light(rightfully so though itās a highly skeptical field). So it made me want to ask the community a new question, which is that I have recently gotten in contact with a few scientists from such people say that it can be in 10 years where things start to get rolling. What are your views?
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u/Reasonable_Move9518 23d ago
David Sinclair is a con artist with a special talent for separating rich people and organizations from their money.
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
Ah David Sinclair, yes I donāt agree with him either so completely fair. But seriously outside of him how much else do you really hate? Skepticism makes sense to me of all things but truly blocking it off and labeling it as impossible seems to defeat the purpose of investing in research
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u/Reasonable_Move9518 23d ago
Pretty much all of it. Itās a field that attracts grifters and dilettantes rather than solid scientists due to the promise of world changing benefits if This One Simple Mechanism turns out to be correct.
Most of the basic science about longevity and anti-aging are major over simplifications which fail to replicate in diverse systems, or are just over extrapolations from edge cases. The translational/clinical claims are thus cherry picked studies with flimsy foundations.
Add in some hot money from Godless VC bros who are afraid of death and āthink we can solve Death in the next few decadesā and the tech world approach of āso what if itās BS if thereās a small chance it works weāll be gazillionairesā and youāve got a bunch of snake oil salesman.
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u/AnatomicalMouse 23d ago
Elizabeth Holmes and all the Silicon Valley bros who donāt understand that āmove fast and break thingsā doesnt work with biology
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
Do you think it will ever go away or do you only foresee it growing as time passes on? Some scientists Iāve spoken with who work at those companies claim that clinical trials will be seen in like 10-15 years even.
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u/Reasonable_Move9518 23d ago
I think anti-aging will continue but will not be successful. Anyone who says āoh Iām 10-15 years weāll see progressā is talking out of their ass. it takes that long to move a drug through clinical trials so thatās basically saying āwhat we have now will work!ā with a degree of certainty that is not appropriate for any disease area, let alone one as complex as aging.
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
How long does it usually actually take for something to move through all the clinical trials
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u/Reasonable_Move9518 23d ago
10-15 years.
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
That was a foolish question sorry didnāt read properlyšš. Do you think it will ever be feasible to stop aging?
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u/Reasonable_Move9518 23d ago
No. Our bodies were optimized by evolution to survive to childbearing age and a few years beyond. Every system at every level was not optimized for longevity, and each system has a different failure rate and mechanism.
Ā We can make progress slowing failure rates and avoiding catastrophic decline, but really truly stopping aging probably isnāt possible.
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
What makes you say that anti aging isnāt possible then? Of course the task is insane and huge but after enough research and understanding of aging as a process wouldnāt it be possible to then eventually reverse it? Similar to a cure for cancer, which must exist
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u/thisaccountwillwork 23d ago
Those scientists are morons/grifters and you shouldn't waste your time with them.
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
Iām skeptical too donāt worry. Serious question though and I understand why people are skeptical but doesnāt closing off things impossible defeat the purpose of science itself?
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u/Eko01 22d ago
Not really. What you don't get is that we don't understand ageing properly. How can a treatment be developed when no one even properly grasps the problem? Proper understanding of ageing could easily be a century or more away and I doubt a treatment will be possible then either.
This is why these guys get called grifters. They are trying to sell you interstellar FTL spaceships when we aren't even able to reliably travel to our own moon.
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u/ALeeWriter 22d ago
I do get why we call them salesmen because of the promises of anti aging being 10 years away. But my biggest thing is isnāt it better to just get started now? Aging is a process of science, extremely complex yes but both aging and death are science at the end of the day. Which to me makes me think that, especially if we reach something like an AGI, that eventually we can crack the code on both and even reach revival with cryonics
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u/Eko01 22d ago
Legitimate scientists are working on understanding aging now.
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u/ALeeWriter 22d ago
I agree, but with the lack of money they receive and the unbelievable complexity of the issue are we really surprised that they havenāt made a game changing breakthrough or is that sort of the expectation in science?
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u/bitechnobable 17d ago
Yes. We should definitely put more research funding into how to put people firmly on the surface of the sun. I mean denying doing that is simply not trying innit?
Why be sceptical of something that might be true and possible?
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u/ALeeWriter 17d ago
Fair point, but I think solving aging would seem more useful I suppose in my eyes than placing someone firmly on the sun. I also saw your other comment which was also a fair point and I respect the perspective. Like I said, I simply am curious as to whether or not we believe it will make progress as a field. The basis I suppose which I seem to be steering away from is I think we will make progress just because of the fact that humanity will always look to stop death
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u/bitechnobable 16d ago
My point was rather that both aging and putting people on the sun are not really priorities for humankind. Since they both somewhat likely are not feasible.
Think about how life has become longer for humans. We are not curing old age, we are in effect extending our childhoods and youths? We remain as plastic children longer (due to reducing the child/youth mortality and need to grow up).
As such we are not extending life,we are delaying old age. Since we don't usually appreciate doing experiments on our children it's a tough field to push.
It also seems it's mostly rich individualists that want to live longer. Society definitely doesn't want people to live longer, it's massively expensive. And old people although useful in many ways, are not the most productive for society.
Mind. I dont say its impossible simply that there are many reasons why academic institutions on their own are not progressing aging research very fast. Yet with individuals having more power over research and its funding than ever, there may be unexpected advance. Private research institutes are popping up everywhere. Also outside the US where they have been the norm for a long time.
Yet I am still to see grand results coming out of any of these institutes that in effect are run like companies.
One could also argue that aging is a huge and vastly complex question. Science is poorly equipped to answer big and complex questions using traditional scientific method. Practically problems often are reduced to a simpler model of the phenomena you want to study. This works great in physics and to some degree chemistry where problems are reducible.
Imo. Biology is not like this. You can't separate out a specific "pathway" in biology and study it on its own. Because biological systems are complex.
This may also make sense if you think of why we discovered gravity and classical laws before we found the flip-flop lipid exchange over membranes. - that the scientific method is best at solving reducible problems. This is something that physists have difficulty in grasping. And that sociologist take too little pride in. That the same strategy of science works alot better for non-conplex problems.
Ps. Yes physists im looking at you when im saying your problems are simpler than those of a biologist or social scientist. :D
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u/ALeeWriter 16d ago
I do agree with a lot of what you said. It just makes me curious as to why anti aging is not more of a priority when we consider aging and death a biological process that takes everyone. But I also understand why itās not a priority considering the shit fest the world is in 24/7. I do think though that anti-aging will never have its own breakthrough moment but instead be an accumulation. I view cryonics(however skeptical I may be of it) in the same light. Both are biological processes and I think if we put the same amount of research and money into it as we did COVID we would make noticeable progress of understanding which eventually leads to smaller improvements and progressions.
But again everything you said makes sense and I donāt disagree with it
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u/bitechnobable 14d ago
Cryogenics is at least a phenomena that some organism have a solution for. Even mammals can be put into natural or artificial hibernation. iMO makes cryogenics alot more credible.
There are not even a universal agreement of what is meant by "aging". Further, to my knowledge there is neither any animals or organic life that doesn't age at all.
Money is great if you know what you want to do. To hand out money to projects with vague and arbitrary goals may be useful, but won't necessarily bring the science any closer.
Before resources there needs to be ideas. And I don't think there are any rational ideas.
COVID didn't really lead to much scientific progress did it? Any examples in particular you are thinking about. Developing a new flavour of old scientific approaches is arguably not really gonna bring about any major changes. And mRNA vaccines were not even new technology, although the production of them and approval of them in a rapidly scalable manner was. I would argue it was not the access to money in itself ( i.e being able to buy something) but rather the freedom from having to consider fiscal matters that made the rapid technological deplyment possible. (I am speaking from a biomedical perspective here, it may be different in physics and other massive energy/scale experiments).
I am not arguing against research into aging here, I'm simply saying that I don't think it's a phenomena that can be "cured". Perhaps I find the idea closer to if one. Would suggest we can cure hunger. Which is obviously true and false depending on how you interpret that goal. We can stop the feeling of hunger, put to stop metabolism of a living organism to me seems somewhat a fuzzy goal.
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u/ALeeWriter 14d ago
Yeah I agree. I think the main issue with anti aging and cryonics in the biotech space is that
- Theyāre pretty bold pursuits in terms of feasibility
- The way the lead pioneers of both market it as something ācoming soonā only makes it more scammy.
I think if companies were simply straight up honest with the fact that āhey we need money to show you guys itās possibleā the rep and outlook would improve.
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u/bitechnobable 13d ago
Another view is also that any science that is heavily invested in by big capital (private capital) but not as much of focus for established (less biased) public institutions - can give a hint on whether it's a hype that is sellable - or - actually organic 'evolution' (rational next steps) of scientific insights that are well founded in previous research findings.
Fiscal bias tends (iMO) to push ideas that arent really well founded in previous research but rather motivated by fantasies, dreams and desires of individual people.
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u/ALeeWriter 13d ago
I think anti aging and cryonics will always be sellable just because humans are always going to fear death and conquer it if they know they will die. But I do think that right now it for sure sits on sellable. I mean sure thereās a few small studies about it being theoretically possible and progression in understanding how do we age at the cellular or DNA level etc. But as much as it is sellable I think that we will never get to a point where we find basis in research unless we fund it appropriately. But I do agree with you
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u/Bioinfbro 23d ago
Let me put it this way. Male pattern baldness is a aging skin condition that is experienced by hundreds of millions. Anyone who can find a cure will become an instant millionaire. It's easily accessible and easy to study. When we cure it then we can discuss curing death.
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u/bitechnobable 23d ago
Indeed. Its the newest fad. Live for ever.
Thing is good stories are always sellable a market.
If that, and peoples pairing of money into finding specifics ever decided the direction of science - is a matter to decide for future scholars of "science-economic history of the post-war to late internet era"
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23d ago
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u/bitechnobable 22d ago
Yes. And kings and powerfull people have been buying into this ideas since the beginning of each civilization.
But to be serious. The amounts of fiscal resources being poured into it in contemporary "serious science" is mindboggling. Guess old age is the new frontier now that "obesity has been solved by ozempic".
Imo. Pharma tends to fear towards incurable chronic disease, not because their are dimple, but because they have a fiscal centered buissness strategy. I.e. where money is the end not the means.
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u/ALeeWriter 22d ago
Itās definitely seen a recent monumental jump but isnāt calling stuff fads or testing crazy lines of biology and reality as we know sort of the point of science? Granted of course some of these companies are clearly fads and donāt actually care about results, others are genuinely making real attempts and there are people on this very app contributing.
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u/bitechnobable 19d ago
Its a fad because people believe it more than we have seen results.
Imo. The results for extending life are also inconvenientsd they include either heavy medicational intervention, or starvation.
Its Interesting. But the whole idea of "curing" lies pretty flat in most companies.
Extending ln the other hand?! Sexy!
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u/TheIdealHominidae 23d ago
Nice try but this is a misconception. Indeed there are many conditions and metrics we can use to assess the speed of aging, far before the final endpoint that is death such as handgrip strength, gfr, Nfl, MDA, etc.
Male pattern baldness is partially driven by aging processes such as oxidative stress but most of it probably comes from a downregulation in fat storage in the skull, which is necessary for hair formation, this is why it is a sex specific pattern and why it is caused by DHT
> In summary, the theory points out that the pressure on the hair follicles is buffered by the surrounding subcutaneous fat tissue and young dermis that is capable of keeping itself well hydrated. As one ages, thickness of the subcutaneous fat tissue and the volume of the dermis decreases,11,12Ā that is, the buffer decreases and consequently the pressure on the hair follicles increases.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4174066/
Now as to why DHT receptors upregulate with age, I am not sure.
For those contingent reasons, it is more worthwile to test the efficacy of geroprotectors against generic alopecia instead of male pattern baldness.
Indeed the most revolutionnary drug at slowing aging prevent alopecia
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u/Charybdis150 23d ago
What exactly is a misconception? You are arguing that male pattern baldness isnāt an aging disease by citing a paper that points out that the thickness of the subcutaneous fat layer is dependent on age? Please explain.
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u/bitechnobable 17d ago
To my knowledge the best "drug" is calorie restriction. Simple , subtle, but does not seem to gain traction. I wonder why. Could it be that problem want to also be able to stay sharp?
Why is it do difficult to see that benefit in biology always comes at a cost. Biology is not a machine one can simply upgrade or update certain of its paths. Its a whole package. The very same Genes/proteins can and do have entirely diffrentent consequences in a neonatal, in am adult and in the elderly. We change therefore our composition and it's response also change.
I'm no expert in male baldness, but I'm pretty sure the argument was rather about that some issues simply seem untouched by ambition to solve them. Like the person said before we gave solved balding, nobody should wonder why we haven't solved death.
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
I think itās more so that people just get hair transplants rather than care for a real cure. But they do get money in the door yes no doubt. Just curious was all
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u/Bioinfbro 23d ago
Yes, the hair transplant cartel is suppressing the anti aging science. It all makes sence now.
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
Not what I meantššš. I suppose a fair follow up though in all seriousness is do you think stopping aging is plausible
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u/Bioinfbro 23d ago
Yes, it's theoretically possible, for example whales, turtles and elephants all exhibit slow down in aging and live much longer than expected.Ā Some whales can hit over 300 years old. All of these animals have much more efficient mechanisms for stopping cancer than humans. Some mechanisms have been described. However, replicating this in people would require a heavy dose of genetic engineering that is technically not possible today.
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
If something is theoretically possible though isnāt it essentially guaranteed in the future? Or is there stuff thatās theoretically possible that we will never be able to achieve?
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u/Bioinfbro 23d ago
Hmm, interesting question. I would rank it as a successful return manned multi year mission to mars. All the pieces are there, but lots of unknowns, incredibly dangerous and hideosly expensive.Ā
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u/Bioinfbro 23d ago
I would say our current genetic engineering technology is somewhere similar to 1960s space era.
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
Would you say itās closer to that kind of endeavor or further?
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u/Bioinfbro 23d ago
I would say maybe a little futher?
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
Oh so you donāt think a trip to Mars is suitable even any time soon essentially. I donāt mean to tie everything back to anti aging but that makes me wonder even more as to why Musk doesnāt investā¦Bezos does I believe Gates does and even Vladimir Putin does now. Shocking that the richest man in the world doesnāt
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u/johnsilver4545 23d ago
Anti aging is just basic cell and molecular biology rebranded for VC degenerates.
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
So you think itās not possible or it is but just pursued at the wrong time where we donāt know enough and donāt have the tech to learn it any faster
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u/HearthFiend 22d ago
What do you think the recent anti neurodegeneration drugs are doing? There is no single golden key for longevity only a single aspect of it from every field.
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u/ALeeWriter 22d ago
I agree with that, Iām just curious I suppose as to whether anyone here even views it as possible. Iāve asked this prior on this very post but isnāt it somewhat ironic for scientists to call something impossible when I feel like in all of history thatās what science has been about? Testing to see what is impossible and even maybe in the future testing to see if we can overcome what was once impossible?
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u/HearthFiend 22d ago
I think that is more impatience than anything. The fact that we are having an aging population crisis in western countries clearly show we are actually very successful at longevity development.
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u/ALeeWriter 22d ago
What do you mean by impatience?
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u/HearthFiend 22d ago
For something this complicated wont happen in a few years, but it is gradually happening.
The real question is if our political cluster fuck will sufficiently support this endeavour consistently without dooming ourselves first on some of the major social issues we have to fix.
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u/ALeeWriter 22d ago
Yeah that much I see with the impatience. The claims a lot of companies make are outlandish but itās quite funny as some of the scientists who simply work there even agree with those time tables
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u/johnsilver4545 22d ago
Increasing human lifespan is possible. Throwing money at a single company or set of companies like they are going to make some breakthrough is silly. This will be the patient and thankless work of basic researchers.
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u/McChinkerton š¾ 23d ago
Even Google/Alphabet got wise and dumped that business. Im surprised its still alive though
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
I didnāt know they were even into it? What were their companies called?
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u/McChinkerton š¾ 23d ago
Calico Labs
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
I thought Calico was still running?
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u/Dramatic_Thing5640 23d ago
It is. They have a lot of funding from Alphabet and Abbvie. The last publicly announced funding was in 2022 of 1 billion. That's after 3 billion in 2014. It's not a big company so that money is going to last a while.
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
Do you think theyāll ever make progress? Iāve said this often but with the funding going into it and the discoveries we make everyday I genuinely think we can see progression in the field
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u/TheIdealHominidae 23d ago
Gerontology is NOT bottlenecked by technological limitations but by the universal prevalence of cognitive biases that makes researchers extremely inefficient and misguided
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u/Phoenyx_Rose 23d ago
True anti-aging is decades out, if it ever gets there at all.
The best thing we have right now is retinols for anti-aging in skin care.
But itās unlikely weāll see another new compound hit the market anytime soon because aging/longevity is incredibly complex and comprises a multitude of pathways in developmental biology that we maybe have even halfway figured out in higher order organisms.Ā
Not to mention the primary pathways people look at for longevity are involved in a ton of different other processes, particularly cancer. So if someone figures out a way to cure/prevent all cancers, then you might see some actual anti-aging products.Ā
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
I am curious how close are we to cures for cancers, dementia, and other age related diseases? Also I personally think that within 30 years we might see some real progress in anti aging, just think about the advancements in the last 10 years. Some werenāt even considered feasible
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u/TheIdealHominidae 23d ago
DHA reduce prevalence of dementia by 50% and it is a dumb monotherapy without any synergy. As often prevention is considerably easier than cure but leads to the same effects.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4019002/
Cancer is the only real challenge and even there, it is trivial to do order of magnitude better than the standard of care, e.g. via an aptamer specific moiety or an epigenome editor
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u/ZRobot9 23d ago
There was only one study that found reduced prevalence of 50%, many found no reduction, and these are also only correlation.Ā The study in question also found no benefits for people who have the mutations that confer risk for dementia.Ā DHA is not a therapy for dementia, nor does it appear to be viable as a preventative in most cases
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u/trolls_toll 22d ago
you have no idea what you are talking re cancer. Vast majority of new meds are for advanced stages of disease and they all suck. Standards of care for most cancers im early stages are still same they were decades ago - surgery, chemo and radio
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u/TheIdealHominidae 22d ago
> e.g. via an aptamer specific moiety or an epigenome editor
You have no idea what I am talking about it seems.
Of course the standard of care is peak mediocrity. Most of new drugs are on the unoriginal obsession with tyrosine kinase inhibitors...
Doing considerably better than that is trivial for an erudite like me but the commercial companies are all dysfunctional.
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u/TheIdealHominidae 23d ago
True anti aging is actually decades old
> group of patients was treated with Thymalin combined with Epithalamin annually for 6 years. We registered a 4.1-fold mortality decrease in this group as compared to the control level.Ā
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12577695/
The fact is that the true limitation to geroprotection democratization is universal ignorance and neglect of the scientific research.
Retinols btw are a poison and highly neurotoxic, their use for skin cells is not worth it and there is no longitudinal study on their effect.
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u/Orennji 23d ago
"Longevity" would just turn into living until we inevitably succumb to cancer and neurodegeneration. So might as well solve those problems first.
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u/Reasonable_Move9518 22d ago
Isnāt that the world we live in now in the western world? For the what, 50% or so who donāt get bumped off before 65 or so by heart disease, accidents, gunshots, or alcohol/drugs, isnāt the rest of life in the 70s or 80s basically gambling against neurodegen and cancer?Ā
Wouldnāt the future just be moving more and more people into the ācancer and dementiaā phase of life?
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
How close are we to solving those problems though is my next question?
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u/Pellinore-86 23d ago
Neurodegen is hard. The best alzheimer drugs are just slowing down progression right now.
Cancer is actually a collection of diseases. Given time, any tissue or organ could give rise to cancer. There is a lot of progress but it has taken extraordinary investment over decades.
I think I commented on your other post, diseases of aging are real areas of research and have progress. Wet AMD for instance.
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
You may have as this is simply a follow up. Not sure how many people are credible though cause in reality no one knows. Hell tomorrow morning something for cryonics could come through
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u/Impressive_Slice_935 23d ago
u/pellinore-86 has the correct approach and explanation here. Longevity will be achieved by gradual elimination of various conditions that leads to human demise at advanced age, and you won't get a magic solution overnight. Think about it the way Boomer generations greatly surpassing the life expectancies of their parents by a lot (from 30-45 to 75-80) over half a century by the advancements in medicine and pharmaceuticals.
You asked somewhere about the negativity towards it: if you are really interested, I recommend you checking bioethical concerns surrounding both longevity and immortality (anti-aging).
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u/ALeeWriter 22d ago
So are people more concerned with the ethical side of these things rather than the plausibility?
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u/Impressive_Slice_935 22d ago edited 22d ago
Well, I referred to bioethical concerns, because most of them involve plausible outcomes with wider implications, and again, most of them have sound scientific bases. Given the gray-ish nature of ethics, where it is hard to assign qualitative adjectives, condensing such arguments down for the sake of momentary simplification may lead to unintended loss of information. Hence, my recommendation.
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u/ALeeWriter 22d ago
Ahhh got it. I do agree there, lots of these companies are run by sales men but some genuinely seem to make small discoveries everyday which is important to any scientist in my opinion regardless of whether you think their end goal is good or not
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u/HearthFiend 22d ago
Neurodegen therapeutic is fighting against entropy and that is a primordial force of nature we think we could overcome zš„²
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u/Master-Movie9270 23d ago
Altos labs whole thing is about that but I donāt think they have a pipeline yet
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
What do you mean by pipeline
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u/Master-Movie9270 23d ago
Drug programs that passed discovery stage under development to get into clinic
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u/phriot 23d ago
It's possible that we'll discover a reason why we have to age. We haven't, yet. I think this means that the hallmarks of aging/accumulated damage hypothesis makes sense to explain why we get old. Some future technology should be able to prevent damage, and fix what damage gets through. If that's true, I can't see why progress won't happen, eventually.
My guess is that real progress will start with an expensive, multi-pronged suite of treatments/therapies. Maybe something like growing autologous replacement tissues and organs, therapeutic cancer vaccines, prophylactic CAR-T cell therapy, personalized nutrition tailored to genes, gut microbiome, and activity level, rapalog dosing cycles, etc. It's going to be expensive. It's going to take dedication to stick with the plan.
Even then, it's possible that everything we can imagine today that can/should work could still miss something that kills within the normal timeframe. But at some point beyond that, we should know more and be able to do more. It will happen some day in the future.
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u/Round_Patience3029 23d ago
There is a lady who has a startup for antiaging for dogs, she was somehow involved in an SA scandal with a prominent "scientist". I think VC gave her money because she is attractive.
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u/AmbitiousStaff5611 23d ago edited 23d ago
What do you guys think of the Buck institute for Research on Aging?
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u/fooliam 23d ago
They did nothing for a very long time, and their only promising areas of research have been exercise as an intervention (which we already know and have great prescriptions for, people just don't like to sweat) and some things related to diabetes.
That they've been around for 25 years and have "discovered" that exercising will keep you alive longer basically sums it up.
But they're real good at talking tech bros out of money.
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u/bitechnobable 23d ago
Not really
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
Why is a reasonable follow up for this I feel
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u/bitechnobable 22d ago
Because people who predict things 10 years in advance tend to be full of .. great expectations?
If I were to simply want to get research funding ,it's an obvious path to choose (purely strategically) . Yet following simple economical logics has rarely advanced real understanding. Its a strategy for your career, not for science.
Please do let me elaborate if you need more clarification.
Imo, its like focusing on living on Mars like musk, but all you do is adress the next problem rather than figuring out the living-on-mars-science first.
Saying we shall cure obesity, but we dont study how the body handles excess storage of metabolites.
Simply it's selling a short answer to massively big questions. Its simply not credible, unless you thing science "can accomplish anything".
Imo. Money simply finds solutions to money problems. Money driven research rarely make discoveries that are entirely unexpected.
Here a scientist doesn't need money do to science, they need the lack of being restricted by money. Which are two very different things.
My own solution would be a scientist salary, taking the heat from delivery to having good ideas.
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u/ALeeWriter 22d ago
So do you think progress in anti aging is simply not going anywhere until we see more companies switch over to truly understanding aging first etc before trying to create some complex solution?
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u/bitechnobable 20d ago
I mean that all intellectual companies are dependent on the insights realised in academic tax payed science. (Yes tax pay for almost all independent science). Companies would not care about interacting with academia if it weren't something financially worthwhile (according to their own logic).
Academics can do decades of really focused research in entirely neglected (by capital) areas of understanding things. Meaning that its financially untapped potential.
This is the boost that private research simply can't manage. Some big companies tries to do research themselves. But science driven my profit will only find the same the (fiscal-risk-calculated) results.
Imo.
/S
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u/loafoveryonder 23d ago
So right now, there is no consensus on what aging really is. We've identified a ton of things that correlate with age, like epigenetic or metabolic changes, but there's no consensus on which is the actual cause vs the symptoms of aging. At the same time there is a huge financial incentive to rashly go straight to finding "the cure" and skip over the mechanistic understanding, and then you get people like David Sinclair who prematurely publish bad or fake science in good journals. This is all really difficult to notice unless you are really trained in critiquing papers and have spent a lot of time reading about it. But anyway yes it's progressing, it's just going to take a long time whenever you're trying to cure something that's very multifactorial (unlike many diseases where it's just a single malfunctioning protein that we can replace) and that we don't even understand the fundamentals of. Like right now there is a lot of rediscovery of what senescence even is, what its subtypes are, what it looks like in different tissues, questioning the validity of the classical models and theories of aging we had before.
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
How long would you say will it truly take? Obviously itās impossible to tell what happens in 10 years. I mean even if the last 10 there were things in biotech that happened that we thought were dreams or am I wrong there?
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u/loafoveryonder 23d ago
Depends on what "it" is that you mean. If you look at organ replacement, there's already stem cell engraftment therapies in the clinical trial process, and we pretty much know what we're doing on that front (just trial-and-error what cocktail of molecules it is that you need to replicate the natural development of a pancreas or a nerve cell, grow them, and inject them into the patient). So I bet those will happen sooner. But we are still arguing over what causes aging so... I'm about to enter grad school and I'm prepared to spend my whole life figuring that out.
Anyway I really /hope/ that it doesn't happen quickly, because the way society is right now, it would be disastrous to suddenly have a rich class of elites who can be the first to buy their way to immortality, who potentially have the influence to keep it out of everyone else's hands, and literally live like that forever. You'd imagine that everyone equally deserves to prolong their lifespan but there's obviously going to have to be a transition period to enable that. I hope our policymakers figure it out before the science happens.
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u/broodkiller 23d ago
Yeah, social consequences could be dramatic, for sci-fi exploration of that Altered Carbon comes to mind...
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u/wavefield 23d ago
Biotech needs to move from small molecule drugs to more complicated biological systems systems that have logic in them. We're still very far away from that but with all the AI I think we finally have a shot at it, maybe in 10 years..
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u/the-return-of-amir 22d ago
Technically yes but is it a valuable ethics pursuit? Who wants to live forever when life sucks and what are the sociological shakeups that would happen when this is inevitably used by the rich first and then how will they realise they need to accumulatr their power and wealth forever and how things will remain fixed in corruption for far longer.
Accelerating technologies will benefit those who already have power the most and catalyse/exaggerate the already existing evil on earth. All you redditors and idealists wanting to live forever dont realise that YOU arent the beneficiaries of that outcome, you will most likely be the victim of its consequences.
The focus should be to clean up humanity before we exaggerate its properties through fubdamentally transformative technology.
The only hope is that people can leverage other exponential technologies or social movements to help fix humanity and society faster than the evil agents can solidify their position. Otherwise the only way to survive is to comply or join their ways.
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u/the-return-of-amir 22d ago
So much of the incetives and ideals of human life are manipulated and shaped by the rigged game already. You dont even know what you truly want or need outside of the contexts and dogmatic beliefs youre biased by already.
Eternal life is a prison as much as death. It just makes death a choice and to choose to die will lead to a huge rebirth of existential philosophy so maybe in the long run people will awaken their minds more but by then it may be to late as the dystopian reality will have been fixed in place.
Powerful people are already seeing ahead of us and fixing the game for their own needs.
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u/drchiguy 23d ago
I recommend reading Why We Die to provide some perspective on the topic and field of longevity.
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u/thecrushah 22d ago
Anti-aging is super complicated and still isnāt fully understood. If you arenāt sure of that show me an anti-aging company that has succeeded. I can give you the names of at least a dozen that have failed. Calico and Unity are the two that have probably come the closest and nothing of real note has emerged from either.
What also complicates the anti-aging space is misinformation and hucksters selling youth in a bottle. There are plenty of āinfluencersā selling everything from supplements to creams to riskier things like stem cells and epigenetic analysis but there is virtually no research to support these things as āanti-agingā
Even worse are academics who supposedly do anti-aging research under the auspices of legitimate and respected institutions but are in fact just lining their pockets via misinformation and selling sketchy supplements. Andrew Huberman and David Sinclair come to mind. Both are bullshit artists and Stanford and Harvard should be ashamed to employ them.
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u/bitechnobable 22d ago
Science has many ideas paths and strategies . Free science if it all was free - then in theory as you say, all areas are worthwhile.
The problem is that all money-oriented science tend to end up with the same analytic conclusions. I.e. dont cure the disease - maintain the symptoms.
Fiscally it's a simple logic, don't kill your revenue stream.
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u/ALeeWriter 22d ago
I do think all areas are worthwhile but I also do agree with your point that the areas explored are only the ones that will get the money to do so. Others like anti aging will probably never die or go away though simply because I think humans will always want to complete such a feat. Or even with revival in cryonics
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u/bitechnobable 19d ago
Let me first say aging is not a disease that cam be cured. Nothing lasts for ever and there is no such thing as continuous growth.
The question the. Become when does a system brake down.
Aging can be delayed, but to stop or cure it would require the system to be dead. Why? Because no biological system can exist without consequence. And systems are shaped by the part until they proliferate, not until they die. Therefore there are no powers to shaoe biological systems to be continuous, according to evolutionary theory.
I e. There is pressure to extend the fertile and middle life of organisms.
But to extend the life of pretty old incompetent people is simply not what life arrange around. If it doesn't make sense please do ask.
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u/ALeeWriter 19d ago
So you think that reversing aging as a whole is not a possible feat basically and your explanation makes sense. I suppose my question though is wouldnāt further technology in the long long future be able to at least somehow reverse the effects on the elderly? Now I know thatās even more of a reach than just lifespan extensions but isnāt there a chance that we would ever reach a point of reversing cellular damage whether thatās some extremely advanced nanobot tech or something even further? Iām thinking of it from the pov that even 100 years ago the internet would have been viewed as the worlds most impossible idea but look at whatās happened since.
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u/bitechnobable 19d ago
Yes. I guess I see processes as fundamentally non-reversible, including a plant growing and a life spent.
Thank you for a great reply!
Would you expect us finding technology that, not indirectly, but directly would turn the same adult tree into a younger one? Its not about regulation, it's perhaps about accumulated mass.
Not sure how you mean. Naturally we can invent cures for the consequences of aging. Curing symptoms?
Guess aging becomes a philosophical question.
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u/ALeeWriter 19d ago
Well Iām thinking of reversing aging from a biological pov. Same thing with cryonics in reversing death. Neither break any laws of physics and I know that isnāt a good argument so donāt worry itās not my case just like to add it. But in terms of stopping symptoms well that would be great but I think literally finding a way to self correct cell errors or even just find a way to essentially perfect our cellular mutations would stop most issues no? I mean itās kind of like a cure for cancer argument where right now there will never be a single cure, but over time could we not achieve ways to even microscopically correct errors that lead to the cancer as a whole?
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u/PreferenceFeisty2984 23d ago
Longevity is an abomination research. Look at all the recent military conflicts in the world, all started by dudes who stayed too long in power. If you make people live longer, incompetent will stay longer in power. People are fundamentally shameless, be it a dictator in a authoritarian regime, or a director in a big pharma, they will always want to stay in power for as long as possible, regardless of their competence. Whether itās government, academia or industry, making people live longer will ultimately destroy innovation
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u/trungdle 23d ago
I feel you. I got into biology to do anti aging research. But I didn't get to do - or see any in sight that's currently being worked on... Maybe some stem cells effort. I don't really understand - I thought rich people will do anything to research that stuff? Look at all the longevity stuff they tried in Egypt and China. Maybe we don't have enough dictators that are older? LOL
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u/loafoveryonder 23d ago
There's lots of places right now. Buck Institute, Harvard, Stanford, Mayo Clinic, NIH / NIA, Altos Labs, Cambridge / Babraham, UCL
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u/ALeeWriter 23d ago
So then what do you do right now?
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u/trungdle 23d ago
I work at a CDMO as a manager for the process engineering/msat team now. It couldn't be further from my original goal haha. Sometimes, I think about it and wonder if I will ever be able to work in anti aging technology. It's hard to give up the money to go back to research even if there's something, and in my limited exposure to the industry - nothing really stands out right now...
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u/RamenNoodleSalad 23d ago
The field of anti-aging will never die!