Rejuvenate Bio Using Gene Therapy Has Reversed Aging Effects in Mice and Dogs

Harvard Genetics Giant Geroge Church and Noah Davidsohn, a former postdoc in his lab, have engaged in a secretive antiaging venture called Rejuvenate Bio. They are making old dogs new. They have conducted gene therapy on beagles and are currently advertising for Cavalier King Charles spaniels to use gene therapy to fix their hearts.

They have identified many other targets for gene-based interventions, studying a database of aging-related genes.

Most of the work was done in mice, where they have extended the life of mice by a factor of two. Nextbigfuture notes that this would mean mice would live 6 years with treatment instead of 3 years.

Some are not impressed, because it’s mice, but Nextbigfuture is impressed. It is three times better than calorie restriction or senescent cells.

George Church and Rejuvenate Bio working on dogs. There are about nine different pathways that they have identified for cell rejuvenation, one of which eliminates senescent cells. Zombie cells that have stopped dividing and cause inflammation in other good cells.

Church believes that dog trials will go well. Based on the mouse trials, they are hoping that the effects are general and independent of species. They will use the same gene therapy in mice and dogs and humans.

They are working on age reversal rather than longevity. It is easier to get permission from the F.D.A. for reversal of diseases than to wait decades to prove you are living longer.

63 thoughts on “Rejuvenate Bio Using Gene Therapy Has Reversed Aging Effects in Mice and Dogs”

  1. So its all about you? You are all that matter, not even your own younger family members? That is, if you even have them – because no parent that I ever met only cares about themselves and the number of years that they may have left – they are keenly interested in the long-term welfare of their kids and grandkids.

    I guess that you won’t be that old man planting trees in his yard from which he’ll never enjoy the fruit or shade.

    Oh, and if you die, then you’re not going to feel much consolation…or anything else.

  2. Church is a publicity-desperate clown. No surprise his “secret” venture became public before achieving anything documented.

  3. It is easier to be understood as a simpler cause and effect scheme. But our body doesn’t exactly work like that. Nothing has been achieved so far and I don’t think that much will.

  4. btw This is just the start, with genetic engineering death will be optional. I used to say “Live Forever” now that I understand more about age reversal with genetic engineering I say “Forever Young”,
    Lets see you do that with your hot baths and yoga!

  5. Please actually read my post before answering it. I am no more cranky than my married 45 year old son, because I have dogs.
    As far a genetics being responsible, since you asked me for proof please give some proof on your view that it is all genetics.
    BTW, at 72 I have learned there seldom is only one reason for anything. It is usually a combination of things. That is why I could believe it is part genetics, part environment, part upbringing and part physical(pain, sickness etc) etc.

  6. It’d be surprising for someone like Church to stick his neck out, esp given how little publicity they’ve chosen to have, saying they expect good results unless there were good reasons to.

  7. It already has begun. First drug for longevity – Metformin
    FDA is hoping to approve it this year. It does very little to extend life but once the FDA makes a category called longevity the pharmaceutical companies and investors will sit up and take notice.

  8. Genetic engineering therapies are just blueprints for the modifications to the DNA to get desired results. You can buy the tools and chemicals to do the actual genetic engineering for the blueprint on Ebay very cheap. Check it out on Ebay.
    Now I am not naive enough to believe it will be that cheap and simple for a few years yet.
    I personally think that since everyone’s DNA is different the necessary blueprint will very slightly per individual.
    A quantum computer will be used to analyze a individual’s DNA and make the individual’s DNA blueprint, which will then be made and administered. With the current price of genetic sequencing being cheap and getting cheaper the treatment will be cheap.

  9. If it is proven it works, someone will find alternative solutions to any and every proprietary solution.
    Why?
    Money.

  10. It is not.
    Fusion was always 20 years away.

    Now, apparently it is 5 years away.

    As soon as the right people (wealthy and powerful) understand rejuvenation is possible and they can get it in their lifetime, this field will explode in funding.

  11. This sounds like the rapamycin thing but I can’t find after a brief skim any confirmation, they may be keeping it proprietary whatever it is they’re using. Even if it is a rapamycin analog, they’re probably combining it with something to prevent some of the side effects.

  12. One year ago Church’s startup did not have as much to publicly share nor had as much experimentally achieved as today. So the article you quoted is necessarily outdated.

    You made that comparison anyway, and from that faulty premise you leaped to calling NBF’s article “skewed” because of the difference between the ’18 article and the ’19 article.

    Are you seriously this dense?

  13. You NEVER “joined” this blog which follows non pseudoscience developments, because from the beginning your argument is that aging can be reversed by [various Oprah-like new age faith-healing and naturopathic etc] to some extent that matches NO recorded and independently vetted evidence (where are the multi century humans you assert are so much more easily possible?), and that basically all science and medecine (incl experimental) is hopelessly mistaken about fundamentals like “cause and effect” and facts like the “rejuvenation […] achieved […] with the help of mother nature by practicing intermittent fasting, steam sauna, breathing and emotional cleansing”.

    <<Another self assigned constricted doorman to keep out all heresies from the temple of simple cause and effect solutions in a world that is only partially governed by them…>>
    You don’t just sound a bit like a kook anymore, but convincingly appear to be one. Re read previous conversations. They start with simple questions by me and right away you have only pseudoscientific answers.

    Define pseudoscience. Compare that with everything you’ve proposed as your “alternatives” to Church & co.

    NO ONE is going to live longer than all previous humans by sufficiently significant deviation because they cleanse emotionally or breathe or steam sauna.

    Empiricism is as far from “delusional” as you can get as far as cause and effect go. If you can’t get that right…

  14. Nope. I am arguing that you are not responding to my points as I bring them but rather you ferociously attack ridiculous points that you keep establishing that I make or exist about the arguments I bring, creating altogether a pointless argument that I am not going to join.

  15. Are you seriously arguing that George Church and co’s work does not follow empirical principles?
    Did you notice that the article you chose in the comment directly above this one, is ONE YEAR old?

    <<[claims for these life extension natural therapies] proven and working from the dawn of humanity>>
    There’s no credible evidence for that. One of your go-to insults is that people who disagree with you are variously brainwashed; but this seems like precisely your own handicap.

  16. Perhaps a more useful application of this comments section might be to generate a detailed, but purely hypothetical, of course; treatment protocol that could be used with today’s technology, on humans. Something that lists all the specifics of the reagents, application methods, monitoring techniques and other information that would be needed to rejuvenate humans, beginning right now. Not to be be actually used in defiance of FDA principals, of course, but just as a basis for discussion, and as a set of “warning signs” that we should all watch out for, in case some Bond-type villain should need to be prevented from setting up a secret clinic on an offshore island. Purely to prevent evil-doing and rule breaking, of course.

  17. Yes, mother nature clearly intended us to take steam saunas.

    And to work “with the layers of our being” by practicing “emotional cleansing”. Go ahead – I suspect that mother nature actually intended to clean out the gene pool occasionally by having some people practice self-delusional nincompoopery.

  18. I have looked online for Rejuvenate bio and their research. Here is what I have found:
    “Previously, age-reversing technology has been tested on worms and flies, whose lifespans can double with a few simple tweaks to their genes. In mammals like mice, blood transfusions from younger mice can restore biomarkers to youthful levels in older mice.”
    https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a20674816/this-secretive-harvard-startup-is-trying-to-reverse-aging/
    So it is doubling life of flies AND blood transfusions to Mice. Our copious blogger, it seems has a tendency to skew the articles he copies. I sensed that something wasn’t right. So much for your delusional empiricism. Don’t know what biomarkers they are working on, but again, no gurus, I am pretty sure that our body has a capacity to do that with the right natural care!

  19. It has basically all the implications from the mythical fountain of youth. Including obvious exceptions like turning your brain to white-pink mush by abusing drugs, getting run over by a train, drowning or electrocution, being shot in the head (just in case you somehow stayed alive after every previous calamity), etc.

    Less obvious ones: education, welfare, employment, politics, all adapt or die in their present form.

  20. The study referred to in the article is precisely science because it is empirical at every step, whether the step is a failure or success and regardless of INTENT.

    Intent, which is all you’re about, rather than unbiased, objective fact. Mystic hand waving has existed since the days people lived in caves. Where are the multi centenarian/millenarian gurus? Why are they hiding? Is intellectual property another one of those convenient taboos for them?

  21. This are not new unsubstantiated claims, they have been proven and working from the dawn of humanity. I gave evidence in the past and I will it give again at some other point. I am not going to bother at this point. Look at my prior posts if you really care. Hints of some new therapy that does much of what our body does naturally and can do better with better care and yet can triple mice life is not much of a science either.

  22. I am complaining about people explaining old age personality changes with glittering generalites, and you offer yet another generality without any clinical proof what so ever. Do you see the irony?

    Your mom would probably not have reacted that way to the smoke alarm with a treatment of whatever neurodegenerative process goes on in old people, and the same is probably true for your crankiness.

    My guess is that you and others are unwilling to look for biological explanations because you don’t want to face the possibility that it may not be that much you can do about these changes without a proper treatment. Better then believe that you will not age disgracefully since you can reverse any changes by will power and self motivation.

    The same is also true for those that don’t want to believe in any major heritable component of IQ. If I would only choose to, I could also be a nobel laurate. I just don’t choose to become one right now…

  23. You have made claims for these life extension natural therapies many times now. But that’s all? Just claims.
    We need data. Measurements. 180 year old examples.
    Otherwise what’s to distinguish this claim from thousands of others?
    saying that asking for evidence is proof of mental weakness is rubbish. We have a thousand year old tradition of wisdom… and THAT tradition says that if someone makes amazing claims then demand evidence.

  24. 2nd paragraph?
    “They have identified many other targets for gene-based interventions, studying a database of aging-related genes.”

    not clear what you mean there.

  25. Yep, most people will almost instantly realize that; and that snowball is the start of an avalanche for almost everything else about human life on the day (not everyone will be exactly synced obviously) that people start thinking about life as something that’s arbitrarily long rather than inevitably interrupted around a century after birth.

  26. Nope. Your mindset is constricted, close to change, to the point that is is blocking needed change in general.

  27. Yes, but if I die without getting the coveted immortality/longevity, then I’m not going to feel much consolation just because everybody after me might get it.

  28. Same as any other experimental treatment (which run a large gamut); except of course the obvious difference in trade-off: risk a post-aging lifespan rather than merely a century or so.

    I would argue that unknown unknowns aren’t only not unique to rejuvenation but simply a philosophical conjecture at this point. There’s been basically zero actual attempts. Thus no evidence.

    Then I’d add that even if there were, the sooner we get from here to there and ultimately to destination, the better. If we don’t want to take risks we should not be alive in the first place. The longer we delay negligible aging the longer people are dying from the absence of a choice WRT how and how long they get to be alive.

    Which is morally worse than whatever inherently naive first attempts at that desired outcome.

  29. Focusing on his 2nd paragraph, it’s worth considering that the early human subjects will be guinea pigs who may potentially suffer adverse side-effects that are beyond our current awareness or understanding. Are you willing to roll the dice with your life like that?

  30. If mouse lifespan has been increased by 3 years, then what kind of increase is expected for dogs? I wonder if this can also be done for champion racehorses?

    Beyond the benefits for humans, could this technology be useful for preserving endangered species? If an elephant could live longer and be fertile for longer, it could potentially have more offspring, for example.

  31. One reason out of many that old people seem cranky is because with no one around they so they get their own way and there are no small disturbances to their lives they have to quickly adapt to.
    I would be like that except I have two dogs that challenge my adaptability all the time. Yesterday I came home to find the trash all over the house (unusual). I was upset at first but i quickly came to terms with it. My mom when she was 80 had the smoke alarm go off when she was making toast. She about had a heart attack. She knew what the sound was and what caused it but she could not handle the disturbance to her world.

  32. Another self assigned constricted doorman to keep out all heresies from the temple of simple cause and effect solutions in a world that is only partially governed by them…

  33. Right you are. And furthermore, I believe that old people suffer from a lot of brain wear/damage that is explained away with empty generalities.

    For instance, how come so many old people get so cranky? Conventional wisdom says that this is because they are “lonely” or that it is because of dealing with pain. But does this “wisdom” really hold up to scrutiny? I think it is BS that is stopping us from finding an effective cure. Nobody even tries to measure “crankiness”, “stuborness”, and “inflexibility” let alone look for biological mechanisms that may be causing it..

    And what about IQ? IQ goes down tremendously, but the phychologists have invented the term “crystalized intelligence” – sounds really important – which is basically knowledge of words. Apart from this single skill, intelligence is reduced by more than one standard deviation from the age of 22 to the age of 70, statistically speaking.

    So we are to believe that processing speed, pattern recognition, auditory processing, visual speed, long term retrieval and short term memory all are reduced with age, but age cannot possibly affect you personality…?

  34. Yeah screw nature, nature’s the one who put us in this situation in the first place. Also gave us parkinson’s, alzheimer’s, cancer, and chronic pain.

  35. The best you can get from pretzeling, pin poking, bone cracking, herbal stuff, talking cures, cleanses, King Fuing the air in slow motion, concentrating on your navel and such pseudoscience, is stress reduction, maybe some pain reduction. While that is nice, life extension it isn’t.

    We know this because there are people who feel no stress and no pain, yet they age like anyone else: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/healing-powers-no-pain-mutant-gene-scotland-a8842836.html

  36. “They are working on age reversal rather than longevity. It is easier to get permission from the F.D.A. for reversal of diseases than to wait decades to prove you are living longer.”

    True age reversal would mean avoiding an awful lot of awful things. Only bad in that the medical research to combat them in younger people might not get the support it needs.

    It also means not having to wonder what new degenerative diseases and conditions people might fall prey to once they age past the current limits, just like you don’t have to worry about polar bear defense if you never get near the arctic (unless you work in a zoo).

  37. Show empirical evidence for it. Unless your actual intent isn’t empirical truth but proselytizing.

    Does your Yoga mystically get stronger the bigger the pyramid scheme followers you’ve peddled or something?

  38. Careful with the steam sauna. It increases the risk of stroke. Get some more sunlight
    instead.

  39. The human body is capable of rejunivating itself provided we look after health by practising Yoga Meditation other forms of exercises strict diet and peace of mind.
    Going against nature by the cell therapy will have immense damage to the body which cannot be cured.
    Bhaskar Raj
    Bangalore

  40. Wonderful news. When will it be available for humans, that’s the billion dollar question.

  41. I am 72 years old, you must be quite a bit older than me to believe that a little help, perhaps from warm baths will make you live 3 times longer. Unless your going to die a teenager without them. Your proposal could NOT even come close to matching gene therapy.
    It is people like you that hold back real scientific achievements. It could even be termed fake news.

  42. Cell rejuvenation can be better achieved by letting our body work the way it meant to work with the help of mother nature by practicing intermittent fasting, steam sauna, breathing and emotional cleansing, working with the layers of our being, easily incorporated into our life, made even easier if we make it a society new norm and probably can be perfected with the help of science without going secretive about it.

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