BackCan ageing be slowed down?
There are many scientists who think ageing should be classified as a disease and therapies should be developed to cure it
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New Delhi: Can ageing be seen as a disease just like, say, malaria? There are many scientists who think ageing should be classified as a disease and that scientists should work towards developing therapies to cure ageing just as they do for other diseases. After all, ageing is the root cause of many other diseases that afflict the elderly. Earlier this month, a concrete step was taken in this direction when the US Food and Drug Administration gave the green light for human trials to see if Metformin, a drug used to treat diabetes, can slow down the ageing process.
In June this year, scientists met FDA officials to make a case that regulators should consider medicines that delay ageing as legitimate drugs. They then made a case for a clinical trial called Targeting Ageing with Metformin, or TAME which would help validate their theory. They will give the drug Metformin to thousands of people who already have one or two of three conditions—cancer, heart disease or cognitive impairment—or are at risk from them. The participants will then be monitored to see whether the medication forestalls the illnesses they do not already have, as well as diabetes and death.
But some scientists say that a drug will only extend human longevity by a few years and other approaches need to be explored.
“The drug works, but it turns out Metformin does not work so well in humans as it does in mice. So, we need something much cleverer. And what that’s all about is identifying types of damages accumulating in the body and eventually kill it, and repairing that type of damage," said Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist and the chief science officer of the SENS Research Foundation which is working on ageing therapies.
Grey says CRISPR, a method of gene editing in which DNA is cut to replace mutated genes or insert new ones, is going to be very important in the quest to increase human longevity. “What CRISPR allows us to do is first of all to modify the genome in any places we like. We can do modifications that allow other modifications to be made or bigger modifications involving a whole new gene. We are working on how to use CRISPR to do much more, to introduce new genes or a whole dozen new genes. But we are going to have to do it with all the therapy work," said de Grey.
Why do we age?
In a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a clear link was established between living to 100 and inheriting a hyperactive version of an enzyme that rebuilds telomeres which are the ends of chromosomes. These telomeres play a major role in ageing, cancer and other biological processes.
Each time a cell divides, its telomeres wear away a little and become progressively shorter with each cell division. Eventually, telomeres become so short that their host cells stop dividing and lapse into a condition called cell senescence. It is because of this phenomenon that vital tissues and important organs begin to fail and the classical signs of ageing begin to emerge.
“Ageing is simply the accumulating of damage. Ageing is the same as ageing of a car, any machinery that has moving parts, is going to accumulate damage as a side effect of normal operation. It is not even biology, it is physics," said de Grey. “That damage can only be prevented by eliminating the damage and repairing the machinery," he added.
There are certain quarters which are against increasing human longevity raising concerns of quality of extended years, overpopulation and impact on economies. “The perception is that we are all looking for a fountain of youth. We want to avoid that; what we’re trying to do is increase health span, not look for eternal life," Stephanie Lederman, executive director of the American Federation for Ageing Research in New York, told Nature earlier this year.
“Considering the unprecedented increases in life expectancy and the heavy burden of medical costs in developed countries, maintaining the human body in the disease-free youthful state for as long as possible is not just an altruistic cause, but a pressing economic necessity," said Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO of Insilico Medicine, Inc., in a press release after highlighting the need for the classification of ageing by the WHO.
Meanwhile, as scientists race to find an effective age-slowing therapy, could The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a 2008 Hollywood movie in which a person progressively turns younger through his life, become a reality? De Grey says it will be every bit as dramatic.
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