Antiaging Gene Therapies Extend Lifespan of Mice by 41%

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Antiaging gene therapies to overexpress TERT and Follistatin were used in a mouse model. The mice saw a 41 and 32% increase in median life span. The study also used a novel viral vector, cytomegalovirus for the delivery.

Liz Parish of Bioviva has treated herself with all of these antiaging gene therapies.

If humans experienced the same antiaging effect as the mice then humans would live to a median age of 100 with these treatments.

Biorxiv preprint – New intranasal and injectable gene therapy for healthy life extension

Significant lifespan extension
Seven groups of eight aged female C57BL/6J mice received mock (IP), WT-IN, WT-IP, MCMVTERT-IN, MCMVTERT-IP, MCMVFST-IN, and MCMVFST -IP, respectively, for six consecutive months, at doses of 1×105 PFU. Treatment started in 18-month-old mice, equivalent to approximately 56-years-old in humans. One mouse per group was sacrificed at 24 months for tissue analyses, while the remaining subjects were monitored for physical and physiological changes until their natural death.

Bioviva will release human results of antiaging gene therapies later in 2021.

Bioviva is switching from AAV (Adeno-associated viruses) so that they can deliver larges doses and combination therapies and avoiding toxicity at higher doses.

Antiaging human treatment will be multiple genes and small molecules.

Abstract
As the global elderly population grows, it is socioeconomically and medically critical to have diverse and effective means of mitigating the impact of aging on human health. Previous studies showed that adenovirus-associated virus (AAV) vector induced overexpression of certain proteins can suppress or reverse the effects of aging in animal models. Here, we sought to determine whether the high-capacity cytomegalovirus vector can be an effective and safe gene delivery method for two such-protective factors: telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) and follistatin (FST). We found that the mouse cytomegalovirus (MCMV) carrying exogenous TERT or FST (MCMVTERT or MCMVFST) extended median lifespan by 41.4% and 32.5%, respectively. This is the first report of CMV being used successfully as both an intranasal and injectable gene therapy system to extend longevity. Treatment significantly improved glucose tolerance, physical performance, and prevented loss of body mass and alopecia. Telomere shortening seen with aging was ameliorated by TERT, and mitochondrial structure deterioration was halted in both treatments. Intranasal and injectable preparations performed equally well in safely and efficiently delivering gene therapy to multiple organs, with long-lasting benefits and without carcinogenicity or unwanted side effects. Translating this research to humans could have significant benefits associated with increased health span.

SOURCES- Modern Healthspan, National University of Singapore, Bioviva, Rutgers
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

80 thoughts on “Antiaging Gene Therapies Extend Lifespan of Mice by 41%”

  2. Perhaps no one really does want to live forever, at least, no one we would qualify as sane and free from personality and mental disorders. However, one of our chief goals is to stay healthy and spry till the day we die.
     
    Which introduces the following scenario: Imagine waking up in the morning a few centuries from now in a body equivalent to that of, say, a twenty year old world class gymnast, thinking to yourself: "Gosh, I'm really old now; I should cancel my tennis match, and my lunch at the club with my friends, and that romantic evening out I had planned, and stop reading this book I've been reading, and just go die instead."

    As for ennui? Boredom will kill you or it won't. Some people get bored when there is nothing to watch on television. In that case, I would say good riddance, whereas I suspect just my current hobbies alone could keep me occupied for at least a few thousand years.
     
    To borrow from Kurzweill, I don't necessarily want to live forever, I just can't imagine a day when I would reject trying to live a good life of my own choosing and choose instead to die.

  3. Agreed, the problem being that, in the US, FDA approval could be many decades in coming, requiring us to leave the country every month, as it is illegal to bring back a supply.

    At best, under current laws, you would have to have to do a lot of paperwork and get customs officials to buy into the idea that aging is a "a serious condition for which effective treatment may not be available domestically either through commercial or clinical means." And this alone could be a real stumbling block, as many politicians, bureaucrats, medical professionals, and even ordinary people, are unwilling to assert that "natural" aging is a problem that should be addressed.

    You would also need a prescription, and probably statements from a foreign doctor about necessity and, even after all this, would be limited to bringing in a three month supply.

    I suppose there would be a black market, but lord knows what you would actually be buying, never mind the legal and health risks.

  4. Actually, it should be mice's not mices' and later on you said mice DNA when it probably should have been mouse DNA or mice's DNA.

    But we knew what you meant. Personally, after a childhood full of cat and mouse cartoons (where the cats often had speech impediments), I prefer meese's but I guess that would be confused with a possessive plural for moose, which, sadly, is moose's, because moose was only added to the English language in the 1600s, much too late to get the full Anglo-Saxon corruption-over-time treatment.

  5. Orange Juice. A little sip on an empty stomach, as you will gag, then *growl* it up behind nose area. Blow and spit. Repeat until it gets things going, very intense. Breathe free the rest of the day.

  7. They give a fairly good account, of the opinions of talk therapist particularly. Totally ignore the epigenetic changes which are clear proof of major permanent physiological change in a non drug therapy, but it is Wiki. To not see something so important stated so often and consistently thru out the books is more than missing something, it is direct evidence of repression. Are they afraid of the info getting out? They state there are no studies, then list them later. But, it is Wiki.

  8. So to fix the world, billions of people need to die.

    I dunno man, that sounds like the opposite of fixing the world. Maybe you could take a more creative approach?

  9. For any who figure this is just a cynical ploy to get a permanently paying patient population, I would like to point out a long term concern of therapies which integrate into the host genome.

    A few years ago, George church ran a combo trial in mice, looking at several different gene therapies and their impacts on several different biomarkers of aging. Each therapy worked well alone. Some worked better together. But some combinations were markedly less effective – in the best combination, it was best to leave some treatments out, overall.

    It's a good thing to be able to discontinue a treatment when it turns out to interfere with another treatment.

  10. Nah, the economy is big enough for both, and they aren't really competing for the same scientists. Aging research takes biologists, and only a tiny tiny fraction of them are working on this problem.

    The post-human cell research will eventually need to be unified with biology, but for now is best pursued purely by advancing AI. Comp sci and engineering, and the various materials science and physics branches that go into supporting chip development. And whatever is involved in quantum computers.

    I don't think they're even really competing for the same funders. All the computer/nano/quantum stuff is big billions business long before you need to attract donations from the immortality crowd.

    The real problem is that industry and public funding agencies don't really take aging research seriously. But if they did, pharma would scrounge around in the couch and find tens of billions for that too.

  11. I think ursolic acid is supposed to be a myostatin inhibitor. Available as a supplement. Only one human study so far though.

    The dosage they used was 3 times daily at 150 mg each, if anyone here is going to try it. This was at the upper end of the range where they found an effective does from animal studies, which suggested you might get away with one third that.

    Tomatidine is also supposed to be a myostatin inhibitor, but I can't find it for sale. If anyone knows a good place, let me know.

  12. It's not the mice that got gene therapy. It was the virus that got gene therapy.

    Then they infected the mice with the virus, the virus infected the mice for a couple of days, which produced the relevant biochemicals, and then the viral infection was killed off by the mices' immune system.

    So then next month they needed another shot of virus.

    They explicitly chose a virus that would not permanently affect the mice DNA.

    Cytomegaloviruses also do not integrate their DNA into the host genome during the infection cycle, thus mitigating the risk of insertional mutagenesis.

  13. Note that the OP finds that nasal inhalation was as effective as injection, so we aren't even talking about shots here.
    This is a snort of rejuv once a month. Far less effort than putting on moisturizer.

  14. We get shorter and shorter and shorter. The proportions of our skulls shift. If you lived a thousand years, you'd end up looking pretty odd, even if everything was functional.

    True. Look at Yoda and he was only 900.

  15. maybe more about providing more detailed system mapping – say beyond, genome, now proteome and transcriptome… map these and AI can do all the figuring… less need of 'stab in the dark' clinical trials….

  17. which brings up the effectiveness of maintaing a certain level of regular or exceptional health as the base for which to add therapy. My issue is on costs and time commitments – pulling a Michael Jackson, and enclosing yourself, allegedly, in an enriched gas pod for 12 – 16 hours a day, seems a diminishing in quality of life not worth the extra 5 – 15 years.

  18. The Space Sage – lone traveller, millenia upon millenia, to rack up the most miles, for a human 'intact and continuous' intelligence.

  19. they're actually enrolling a lot of twins in 'general' deterioration-since-25 studies in the UK, since pre-2000. Unfortunately, much of this is pre-genome so 'mapping a baseline in health' is very crude.

  20. agreed. The branching of the 130-year old 'real' human research industry vs the immortality of the mind-in-whatever-container industry may indeed cannibalize resources, effectively pushing off both, so as all born after 2000 may never see either…

  21. Well, sure – I wasn't trying to say I came up with it, just commenting that we aren't likely to have any other option for some time to come, and that we should be OK with that approach.

  22. "…at what point do you stop being a human…" (or start?)
    that's a bit of philosophizing/ navel-gazing; over-stating the significance of the 'self' in a mostly physiological view. At the most basic level, human indentity, in decreasing importance but increasing life quality, is 1) continuity – having a connection to memories and skills from near and far-past (but this is living in a sensory-deprivation chamber). 2) able to sense the outside world and make new memories (this is a jail cell with an internet connection). 3) interact with the outside world and communicate (this is being a quadriplegic with outside access). 4) affect the outside world and control your means of sensing and level of effect (21st century G7 country citizen status). 5) controlling all your inputs and outputs with great range of possibilities and access to all human knowledge and extensive sensing of vast areas of the cosmos (this is my dream life: being immortal within a self-contained, all-sensing, human-knowledge-database containing, solar-sail driven-fraction-of-c, shangri-la asteroid interior — bonucing off each solar system's local laser-projector array – off to the next star system, eternally) My point is that there may not need to be an organic piece within any of these levels to be 'human' – data use and memory and sensors (what is a computer circa 1979)

  23. Agreed. We need to differentiate between therapies that increase potential (set up opportunities to longer life expectancy or health span) rather than maximize potential (make the best of a mediocre body service life). Very different ideas. Very different approaches. Somone who lives to 100 in a 130-year potential body likely has a very different lifestyle than someone who lives to 90 in a 95-year potential body – yet, who is better off?

  28. My concern, when you bring this up (morphic drift, CNS, etc), is that you are validating 'average people acting averagely'. Having a vigorous daily exercise routine consisting of cardio, resistance, flexibility, and muscular/nervous dexterity of at least 90 minutes a day in total, perhaps 3 – 4 days a week, consistently since you were 14 MUST be the baseline, based on whatever combination the kinesiologists feel is 'ideal'. This is the metric for which a healthy body, and ultimately the likelihood of integrating a successful life extension policy/ intervention/ therapy must be judged, not so much the 'fixing' of the 90%+ of sedentary human creatures which fall below this. Of course, bringing one up to such an 'amateur athlete' level should be a priority – but one must admit, doing much less than this, though typical, was simply neglect, and even self-abuse. Do we burden the life extension community with fixing our neglect before we even make it to extending the healthy body? My point, further, is that: do amateur athletes even suffer many of these things to such a recognizable degree? Being sedentary vs being active vs being consciously athletic are very different states that I believe undertake significant epigenetic changes so that these three human sub-species may be, in effect, fairly different in physiology. It is easy to analogize the human body to a machine that has some self-healing properties — but it is likely more than that: a self-creating machine.

  29. The Ship of Theseus approach to brain repair goes back a long while. In Hans Moravec's Mind Children, for instance, which was published in '88. But cryonicists were discussing it before that.

    It's the sort of thing people come up with on their own, over and over.

  31. Pretty much everything EXCEPT the brain could be replaced. But the brain, yeah, we're probably going to have to accept some sort of 'Ship of Theseus' approach as the best we can do there for quite some time to come.

    Luckily, that's kind of what we do anyhow – brain cells die, memories start to fade, we struggle to recall them and transfer the recreated memory to other brain cells. No one is exactly the same person as yesterday, due to fading of memory and addition of new memories. And we seem to be OK with that.

  32. I'm always puzzled how a person could lack the curiousity about things yet to come so as to be willing to cease existing and observing the world around age 85. Or 130 for that matter.

    Maybe such a person has lived such a dramatically dynamic life, travelling and solving world problems with their youthful creativity, that they've already experienced so much of life and the world that they're afraid they're going to run out of new stuff to do and see by age 85.

  33. These are both gene therapy treatments. So why do they need to be re-administered monthly?

    If the cells that got edited were dying off faster than usual, I dont see how TERT would provide any benefits.

    So maybe the rapid aging in mice just keeps needing more edited cells? If that's the case, assuming a proportionate number of human cells were edited, AND if it had similar effects, maybe it wouldn't need to be administered nearly as often in humans – maybe yearly.

  34. Several brainstorm ideas: We are evolved for much more of the adrenaline activities than we get now, so it may need some moderate use? Also, be sure to not confuse coffee effect with sugar, which is pure evil. And, you could easily test the theory by drinking a solid cup! If you have not had coffee at all, that was my case. If gross stuff comes out for a little while, then is gone, it is not *from* the coffee, just released by it, a good thing, no?

  35. Likely more near term applicability to all of us here (if it actually works) than Liz Parrish/George Church's admittedly more ambitious work. We could all probably afford DHEA/metformin/HGH out of pocket if need be. 1.5yr for every year of treatment in "age reversal" via DNA methylation clocks. Somewhere in the talk he mentions that they haven't yet noticed any visible age reversal as far as facial wrinkles are concerned; but some experienced grey hair turning back black.

  38. My interpretation of *good* is that a lot of *bad* stuff was expelled when I drank the coffee, that being good compared to leaving the stuff inside. As I say, light on the amount seems to work. You may be correct otherwise, but it is a balance between factors. Some drink a frightening amount of coffee. I find overall a general inability to see the advantage of getting rid of bad stuff. I have recommended using OJ to loosen up sinus mucus and spew it for over 40 years. Very few will try it, even while complaining about allergies. Don't get me started on Primal Therapy.

  39. If coffee did not do good to you when you started, it may be for a reason. The amounts adrenalines your body release when you drink coffee, slowly poisons your cells and your nervous system in particular, and needless to say, destroys your adrenals. We used to know all that before the coffee industry started publishing its own research. Spinach Mango and Pineapple also cleanse the liver all right.

  40. The experiment was done in the presence of one banana per day, but no apples. And not a lot of coffee either, moderation. Idea based upon early finding of less, by 1/2, liver disease in alcohol users who also drank coffee v those who did not. I had not had coffee for months when I read that, and when I drank some, let's say nastyness flowed for a few times. I mean, whew! And, I have heard no follow up on the initial findings. But I still drink ~5 tablespoons of coffee grounds brewed daily. I suppose I would have to stop coffee, bananas and apples for a long period, they try one at a time, coffee last, to see if the others work too.

  42. The stuff I really want to try you can't buy without a prescription, and sometimes can't buy with one. 

    Got a bottle of ALT-711 once, ("Alagebrium") to try. Research with it got discontinued, but it did an amazing job of cleaning your teeth, because decay bacteria use sugar bonds to hold on to surfaces.

  44. I play around, from time to time, with the idea of nano-machines that can emulate a human cell or, more likely, many human cells. If you then gradually replace them, at what point do you stop being a human?

    I imagine we would simply redefine what a human is, rather than ever try to answer that one.

    I rather thought I'd come up with this idea mostly on my own, decades ago, as I had never heard of the Ship of Theseus until it was mentioned recently in Wandavision. Turns out Heraclitus and Plato beat me to the core idea about 2400 years ago — assuming it was original to them.

  45. Well, it all has to be defined in levels. Level 1 might be "radical life extension." Level 2 might be "indefinite lifespan." Level 3 might be "minor immortality" which could involve actually being able to survive destruction of the physical body. "Major immortality" could involve being able to survive the complete destruction of the planet, or perhaps even the Solar system. As a term "true immortality" could be reserved for those methods that confer a decent shot at seeing the end of the Stelliferous Era.

    Assuming I was there to see it, I really wouldn't expect to see a lot of off-Earth dwellers until the people who choose that are largely inorganic.

    Still, it all gives one pause. If we actually do get an extension big enough to get us to the next extension, and to the one after that, and so on, until lifespans are indefinite (meaning we have no clue any longer as to how long a human can live), what state would our finances have to be to fund a real retirement? Could humanity afford so many people doing the same thing? Or will cognitive automation make it necessary that most people be more or less retired, anyway? Unless, of course, they start augmenting their intelligence with a prosthetic, or two, so as to keep up with the synthetic cognitive systems.

  46. Plane ticket to Bolivia would probably be a bit safer and easier. The problem is bringing back pharmaceuticals if you have to spray it in your nose everyday or some such. This is about the only thing that could give me serious thoughts about becoming an expat.

  48. Indeed, that was my point about the self reporting. They were attracted to the eviros because of earlier stuff they don't remember, perhaps. Now, I'm assuming you did not seek out the school abuse, the way they do!

    So, what did the sadist say to the masochist when the masochist said "hurt me"?
    "No".

  50. Feedback loop. The key concept of life, indeed of any self organized dissipative structure, aka attractor, aka strange attractor. We are actually a sort of Space Settlement that our individual genes collectively form and inhabit until they disperse and recombine into another, later, our offspring. Our genes are the things that live on, not us. They are the actual individuals, not us, if you have to do the math. In a similar way, we organize and form larger entities, forms of civilization or what, and they too are alive, as we are, a pattern of smaller pieces, yet self organized, alive. And, importantly, able to evolve, with the feedback.

  51. I had enough childhood trauma to give anybody nightmares, (Good home life, though, it was all at school.) and while it left me quite the misogynist for a few years, and pathologically shy for a few decades, I never became a bully. It probably requires some degree of initial psychopathy, too.

  52. Sounds like it. As to sports, a recent study found, astonishingly, that bully personality was linked to adolescent sports or frat environment, not earlier childhood stuff. Now, the problem with such studies is they usu ask for self reports of childhood trauma, but that is a deeper issue.

  53. Probably experimenting with myostatin inhibitors and insulin-like growth factors. (I know they're researching that for zero G, just wasn't aware they were testing it on people for that purpose.) Myostatin inhibition is probably the lowest hanging fruit there, people who are natural double myostatin knockouts don't seem to suffer any ill effects at all, they just get enormously more muscle accumulation from a given amount of exercise, and then tend not to lose it if idle, because the feedback mechanism limiting muscle growth to just what you need has been taken out.

    Myostatin is understandable from an evolutionary standpoint, it's energy inefficient to be carrying around muscle you're not routinely using. But it serves no useful purpose in a species that has defeated food limits. (Basically all famine today is thinly disguised genocide.)

    We know how to inhibit myostatin safely, and it would be a wonderful sarcopenia treatment and preventative. Very frustrating, availability and research are being suppressed to protect professional sports from "doping".

    Just one of the reasons I've grown to hate professional sports.

  54. We're made of molecules — it's just a matter of manipulating the matter periodically for maintenance. As far as running out of room in your brain, we might be able to upload some of our storage to the cloud, or else further increase our storage density through artificial enhancements. That's part of what Transhumanism is about.

  55. Someone was at NASA and saw a group walk out of a room that were not *human* (his word) in their extreme muscularity. Prob about recovering from micr0g, but interesting.

  56. Janov dedicates books to the youth, our hope. Some of us are young at heart, however, having started our therapy. Some are dictators.

  58. Thanx! The problem is not my being specific, it is my not being able to tell what the general topic is when I read articles. Primal Therapy has been changing the epigenetic (the word I use to be specific) imprints or settings of the somatic (internal) genes for decades. Very important stuff. I need to find related info about this, not the *expression* of other stuff. This other stuff is not changed epigenetically, it just produces proteins. Its expression is not changed. Nature v Nurture, changing genetic expression. Slam dunk for Nurture.

  59. We don't need to live 130 years, We need to have enough trust in the future to make children. It's also a feedback loop : Only future youth will have the creativity to fix the world. Not grayed hairs

  60. People often don't realize how much of your body layout is fluid, and responding to environmental forces. For instance, the only reason your teeth stay where they are is that there's a cheek pushing on them from one side, and a tongue on the other. Apply any kind of consistent force, and they move around, the principle of orthodontics.

    Basically everything in your body is like that. Skin stretches and contracts, bones remodel under stress. Your genetics lay down an original body plan, but environmental and internal forces maintain or alter it. There are a few things in your body that aren't like that, such as the lens of the eye, and they're notorious for decaying over time.

    And you can already look at people and guess their age just from their facial structure. Even a healthy 60 year old looks dramatically different from what they did in their 20's, almost like a different species.

    Like I said above, if you wanted humans to live essentially forever, you'd have to redesign our whole biology from the bottom up. End the reliance on cells that have to survive our whole lives. Institute feedback mechanisms to hold body structures to a fixed plan. Maybe incorporate some kind of distributed backup for the nervous system, (Everything else can just be swapped out in a pinch.) so that major damage can be repaired without loss of identity.

    But the stuff we're working on now could give us the time to invent those things.

  61. Seems like they're testing an NMN pill? Always good to have more human trials so we can really explore its uses and efficacy, but keep in mind you can already buy the stuff now.

  62. I've heard that the ears and nose never stop growing, too. And other things on the inside, like kidneys and prostate, etc. Of course, people already very on shortness, size of ear and nose, skull proportions, etc, so a 'cellularly rejuvenated' older person wouldn't necessarily stand out at the moment.

    But since the features would be subtly consistent, it might be identifiable like an ethnic group. A collection of traits that vary but on average that can be used to identify a group of people based on a particular background. Except the background would be decade of birth instead of ancestry.

  63. I actually tend to agree, in the very long run. Human biology, fundamentally, is not set up to last forever. You could slow down the decay, repair a lot of the damage, and possibly push things out to 2-300 years, but if you ever wanted to get beyond that, you'd need to fundamentally reengineer things from the ground up.

    Long term connectivity in our CNS, for instance, relies on extremely elongated cells that have to last your entire life. There's no turnover in those cells, no replacement, they just have to live as long as you do, or your CNS falls apart. There are similar problems in the lens of the eye, and other places. Non-reproducing cell populations that even rely on proteins created in your youth and never replaced.

    And there's what I like to call "morphic drift", which we don't really live long enough to take much notice of. Over decades, people sag under gravity, like a statue made of tar. We get shorter and shorter and shorter. The proportions of our skulls shift. If you lived a thousand years, you'd end up looking pretty odd, even if everything was functional.

    But, you know, plugging the gaps can give us the time to work on that, and the motive.

  64. We have a different set of issues than Mice, as the pathogens in in our bodies have gone through an accelerated evolution and our livers became weaker due to the unfortunate circumstances of modern life, bringing in the onslaught of modern chronic diseases. I doubt that any gene therapy will help us as it may helps mice.

  65. Plugging gaps and super-charging a few protein expressions is not anti-ageing. Until we realize how much of our humanity we want to maintain in an effort to switch out our fragile metabolism, immune system, and basically ticking-time-bomb organs; we will continue to uncover endless ineffective 'interventions'. Significant cyborg-ization at either the cell, organ, or system has to occur to continue to allow our fundamental essence/ memories/ personality to continue past our chronically delicate containers…

  66. I guess you'd just be more specific. You could say "increased expression of fgf21" to be general, "increased expression of autosomal fgf21 at chromosomal locus blah blah blah," or "increased expression of fgf21 from our vector".

  67. Maybe the military can help in this field:

    "Special Operations Command expects to move into clinical trials next year of a pill that may inhibit or reduce some of the degenerative affects of aging and injury — part of a broader Pentagon push for “improved human performance.”

    The pill “has the potential, if it is successful, to truly delay aging, truly prevent onset of injury — which is just amazingly game changing,” Lisa Sanders, director of science and technology for Special Operations Forces, acquisition, technology & logistics (SOF AT&L), said Friday."

    See:

    https://breakingdefense.com/2021/06/socom-to-test-anti-aging-pill-next-year/

  68. Eh, I'm already getting biweekly shots because my testes shut down after chemo. (As a guy you do NOT want to attempt life with a double digit testosterone level!) Believe me, you soon find it no big deal, so long as you can do it at home.

  69. Monthly administration of effective anti-aging meds is an inconvenience I'm prepared to accept.

  70. Yes, even things that won't necessarily result in a much longer lifespan would be very good to have.

    Preventing muscle wasting is a big one, this is one major cause of frailty and dependency on old age.

    Improving bone density, preventing dementia or Alzheimer's… these are also big improvements we all could benefit from, even if their average lifespan benefit turns out to be marginal.

  71. So, what term is used to *express* the notion of more protein from the individual gene copies when epigenetic imprint is changed, on that gene itself? To me, that is the true expression idea. Just curious, not my field directly.

  72. Expression usually means the level of transcription and protein abundance, With more copies of the gene you would expect more of both, per cell.

  73. "Antiaging gene therapies to overexpress TERT and Follistatin" Well, they are (monthly) adding copies of the genes, which make more of the proteins. The term "express" would seem to imply change in the epigenetics of the existing genes, but they are getting more production, not more expression. As I read the words, anyway.

  74. As noted in the paper, this requires episodic administration every month, which is a big disadvantage IMO.

  75. Apparently there are some reasonably decent measures out there, such as GrimAge, (What a delightful name!) but use of them is restricted to researchers. 

    I'm waiting on the stage two results from Dr. Fahy's thymus regeneration trial, due this October. If they're positive, I'm going to try to replicate it privately.

  76. Yes it is a big if. There are a lot of damages of overexposing folistatin for the heat, for example. However, it might price useful to compensate for sarcopenia . Another big question is how to make the therapy targeted enough. Usually most of the vectors end up in the leaver, heart and some other tissues with high metabolism

  77. There ought be some objective metrics of rejuvenation that we could get before a human lifespan passes, to know these treatments do work.

    Like immune response, reduction or prevention of muscle wasting, skin elasticity, etc.

    So it will be faster than sixty years, hopefully.

  78. A genuinely working anti-aging therapy is one of the few things that would get me to take a chance on bio-hacking.

  79. Agree. It's a big "if" that it will work on people.

    But let's say it does. It could take about sixty years before the FDA decides it has been adequately tested on human beings.

    Going to be one heck of a lot more medical tourism should that be the case, as people race to get it in other places with less red-tape (and only debatably lower standards).

  80. The usual problem with interventions in short lived species, is that when you look at them closely, they turn out to just replicate something human biology is already doing. The real promise is in looking at species that are already usually long-lived, and may be so due to mechanisms we don't already have, like the naked mole rat's enhanced transcription accuracy.

    Still, maybe this will prove to be the exception to the rule. Hope so!

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