According to legend, a Hungarian nobleman and alleged serial killer who lived at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries Elizabeth Bathory would have bathed in the blood of young virgins to preserve their youth.
This folk tale may contain a seed of little truth. Namely, researchers have been trying to find out whether the blood transferred from a young person to an old person could reverse aging and the diseases it causes.
In recent years, several laboratories and startups have been established in Silicon Valley, California, to develop life-enhancing technologies. The goal is to find ways to significantly extend the maximum human lifespan from the current approximately 120 years.
Altos Labs, a startup that develops technology related to partial cell reprogramming, began operations in January. The company has high expectations.
Altos Labs has attracted the world’s leading top researchers and raised $ 3 billion in funding.
Among the company’s financiers are Amazon, among others Jeff Bezos and the Russian-Israeli billionaire Yuri Milnerconsidered one of the most influential IT investors in the world.
There is already talk of a life extension industry in Silicon Valley. CNBC (switch to another service) among the industry’s enthusiastic billionaires include Google’s co-founder Larry Page and one of the founders of PayPal Peter Thiel.
This story introduces two areas of research related to prolonging life: the transfer of blood from a young individual to an old one and the partial reprogramming of cells.
The young blood worked in mouse experiments
One branch of research that has been going on for a long time has been related to the idea that there are factors in the young organism that maintain youth and the aging properties in the old organism, says the professor of aging biology. Pekka Katajisto.
He works at the University of Helsinki and heads the Academy of Finland’s Center of Excellence in Stem Cell Metabolism.
According to Katajisto, based on this thinking, the idea arose to perform experiments in which the blood circulation of a young and an old mouse was surgically combined.
The experiments found that pooling blood provided help to old mice. The wilting of their muscles with old age was slightly repaired, and they recovered better from the damage to the muscles.
According to Katajisto, the field of research in the biology of aging was initially inspired by the results. Different research groups are working to isolate from young blood factors that produce a rejuvenating effect.
– The end result is that all the experiments have been criticized. Their effectiveness has been questioned crosswise between different laboratories, Katajisto says.
Young blood is sold as a treatment
The rejuvenating effect of blood on many can bring to mind stories of vampires sucking people’s blood to gain vitality. This consensus is also familiar in research circles.
However, the lack of evidence of the healing efficacy of young blood in humans has not prevented enthusiastic entrepreneurs from commercializing the treatment. In the United States, for example, startup Ambrosia sells thousands of dollars worth of treatments that give blood to young people over the age of 30.
– It’s a shockingly stupid thing to do, says Katajisto.
According to Katajisto, the operation is still profitable because there is a demand for allegedly health-promoting treatments and regulation of blood transfusions is loose in the United States.
In 2019, however, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a general warning to consumers that plasma transfers from young people have no proven benefits in combating aging.
The life of the mice can already be extended
According to Professor Pekka Katajisto, the most promising research in the biology of aging is currently the research lines related to the partial reprogramming of cells.
It is a technology that could virtually stop aging.
“If this technology works, the irrelevant question is whether the maximum age is 120 or 150. Then we can live as biological beings for even 1,000 years.”
Pekka Katajisto
Aging is, in effect, the body’s inability to repair tissue damage at the rate at which it occurs.
– When enough damage occurs, unusable cells should be thrown away. New cells must be produced instead. This is due to the kind of stem cells in the tissues, Katajisto explains.
The ability of tissue stem cells to produce new cells has now been learned to be “boosted” by partial reprogramming, in which the old tissue stem cell is treated with so-called With Yamanaka factors. The factors are named after the development of the technology Shinya Yamanakan by.
Currently, boosting is achieved only in genetically engineered experimental mice that have been programmed to inherit susceptibility to Yamanaka factors.
– Special water is given to mice, which means that the stem cells in a way go back in development and are thus able to produce new cells in the style of younger tissue, Katajisto describes.
According to Katajisto, it has been shown in mouse experiments that after treatment, the learning and brain function of the old mouse work like a young mouse.
– The maximum age of a mammal may be extended if treatment is initiated in a mammal of the age of twenty.
According to Katajisto, certain species of polyps already live in nature and do not age at all due to the same mechanisms.
However, the goal of the research team is not to seek eternal life, although aging is studied in mouse experiments. Cell reprogramming is already being developed in human cells for the treatment of long-term diseases: for example, diabetes could be cured in the future on pancreatic islet grown in a petri dish.
“The rejuvenating effects are really noticeable”
The hybrid startup Altos Labs has focused specifically on developing partial reprogramming of cells. Shinya Yamanaka, who invented the technology, is one of the company’s scientific advisors.
According to Katajisto, researchers are excited about the new technology, because the health-improving and rejuvenating effects of aging are really significant.
Precise information on the effect of partial cell reprogramming on the life cycle of experimental mice is not even publicly available yet.
Katajisto says the matter is currently half-secret. But Altos researchers already know the answer.
“There are good reasons to assume that mice are already living significantly (now) longer. But how much, more than 10 to 20 percent, is not yet known.”
Pekka Katajisto
Researchers who have led research into partial cell reprogramming have been recruited to Altos. They were promised significantly higher salaries than the academic side. Now one of the best researchers in the world continues to work for a private company.
Katajisto says a company developing technology to extend life expectancy has already attracted him to work in California.
– Headhunt is in progress. I’m really not going to leave, even if the resources are certainly really good. I think it’s the wrong environment to act on, and I don’t like that idea.
Katajisto says he is disappointed that top researchers have retreated behind the curtain to hide their good research, which offers potentially very great openings to promote human health.
– It goes behind the wall. The firm owns those findings and not the academic community.
In academic research, the results are reported to everyone, and other researchers can continue the research in their own directions.
Billionaires have research results
According to Katajisto, the social debate related to prolonging life has become more difficult due to the operations of Altos Labs. There has been no similar concealment of information in stem cell research in the past, even though companies in the field have been the darkest in the clouds.
The situation can be interpreted as billionaires Jeff Bezos and Yuri Milner and their partners buying exclusive rights to the results that top scientists achieve in Altos ’breads.
– Bezos will be the first to see them and will therefore be able to decide whether to invest in further research that will ultimately aim at something that is relevant either to him or as a commercial product.
Katajisto states that it is difficult for him to avoid the idea that investors have put their money in Altos for their own interests.
However, he says that in principle it is not a bad thing to invest a lot of money in understanding biological aging. It can be used to develop medicines and treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and similar diseases, for example, which would improve the quality of life of older people.
Katajisto says that he does not consider extending the maximum life expectancy of a person to be a meaningful goal. That is by no means the goal of the research teams he leads.
“The biggest problem in the world is that there are too many people here. If we’re going to prolong our lives or become virtually forever, then everything would have to change very quickly. We shouldn’t be here anymore.”
Pekka Katajisto
He estimates that it is self-evident that people’s lives will be able to be affected over the next hundred years. However, he cannot say how soon a breakthrough will take place.
There is still a long way to go before human reprogramming of cells. According to Katajisto, over the next ten years, information will be available on what is the maximum of this technology for mice.
– Jeff Bezos will not live forever with this technology, Katajisto says.
Katajisto believes that decision-makers should start waking up to the topic. At some point, regulation is needed to extend life expectancy, because the impact on society would be huge if people could live to be moderately, say, 150 years old.
For example, the pension system and the balance between work and leisure would need to be redefined. The carrying capacity of the earth should also be considered.
Life-prolonging technology could increase inequality
Katajisto estimates that if researchers at Altos Labs or another company succeeded in developing a life-prolonging treatment based on partial cell reprogramming, it would not be very expensive to implement in terms of technology.
However, he believes the commercial value of the treatment would be so high that its price would skyrocket.
Super-rich people, who own tens of millions of euros, consume the most resources on average and have the largest carbon footprint. They often live in mansions, own many properties and cars, fly private planes and sail yachts.
Is it ethically correct that the super-rich could also live longer than others and continue their consuming lifestyle?
“Of course, it doesn’t seem to be a good option if you think about it for the overall well-being of the environment and the planet,” says the Doctor of Political Science. Rosa Rantanen.
He notes that such a situation would further highlight the inequalities in the world. In her dissertation in the field of philosophy, Rantanen examined ethical issues related to prolonging life.
He is currently working as a project coordinator at the Center of Expertise for Atmosphere and Climate, which aims, among other things, to increase understanding of climate change.
“On the other hand, it is certainly possible for the super-rich to live in a less consuming way or by spending their own lives helping others.”
Rosa Rantanen
The very high cost of life-prolonging treatments could open the door to a scenario where “superoligarchs” and dictators living for hundreds or thousands of years would control societies with their money and influence.
Professor Pekka Katajisto states that due to such threats, research should be open to the opportunities offered by technology so that decision-makers can create laws governing their activities in a timely manner.
– In my opinion, the emergence of superoligarchs must be prevented by some regulation from getting into an impossible situation where that legislation is no longer possible.
Rantanen says that the discussion should consider why one wants to prolong life in general and what a good meaningful life means to different people.
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