Living Longer: The State Of The Art

Where are we going in the process of re-shaping the world that our bodies inhabit? We still have Ebola and we don’t yet know the answers. We still have some resurgent measles because some people won’t vaccinate their kids. We still have Cancer, so complex that there are many avenues to explore. We have that and other illnesses that can rebound on us because these plagues learn to develop resistances to tools we have discovered to fight them. COVID has reared its head taking us where? We may always have to  face these.

But something new is happening. Although we don’t yet have all the answers, our wise and devoted researchers, examining the very nature of what makes for life within us, are learning to change our individual insides, down to the level of our DNA, to give us the answers we seek to defeat disease and even ageing.

Part of the answer has been our increasing capacity to process quantities of data that we could never have handled in the past. This increased computing capacity has enabled us to do the research our discoveries require. Think about A.I and its impact on so many aspects of our very civilization.

Mutations, or changes, in a cancer in our bodies, can defeat our treatments as some of the cancer cells adapt. These mutations can now be tracked. Vaccines specific to our own personal version of a cancer can be designed to match those mutations. Our own immune systems can be educated so that our cancer can be destroyed leaving no surviving malicious cells. Our bodies can be taught to outsmart the diseases that plague us. Surgery and chemotherapy for this disease can become a thing of the past.

We have fought most communicable diseases to a standstill over the last hundred years. Since 1964, it has been estimated that life expectancy has been increasing by one day every week. Old age is a by-product of staying healthy.

Extending healthy lives is the central challenge we face as we confront aging. Much of the work in this area is done with mice, or using living human tissue, because of time lapse required to arrive at answers to these matters. Given the complexity of our bodies, the wonder is how much goes right most of the time.

Scientists have identified a number of areas which seem to be prime elements associated with the aging process. Data from the U.S indicates that there were fifty million people over the age of sixty-five in 2016 and that the figure will reach seventy-eight million by 2035.Health costs rise along with the numbers in this segment of the population. We need approaches that will lower costs.

The secret to our functioning lies with the proteins arrayed on the chromosomes (there are 23) present in each cell of our bodies. Their proper functioning essentially dictates the state of our health. As we age   these proteins begin to perform their assigned tasks  less efficiently.

The Telomeres, or the ends of our chromosomes, become shorter with age after multi-millions of cell divisions. When they are lost, our chromosomes begin to fray. Some of the proteins on our chromosomes, the message-carriers dictating our body functions, may become less effective at doing their jobs. As a result, our immune systems, for instance, in charge of the body’s housekeeping, do not do the full job assigned. Old cells which should be removed, live on, cause inflammation and cancers, and among other things, block communication between cells. Stem cells, creating new cells and doing cell repair fails to perform as they should, fats and sugars are improperly digested and accumulate, and so on. Alzheimer’s, diabetes, osteoporosis and cardiac damage can be some of the results. And, of course, also death.

Our scientists are working to decipher the aging process at the cellular level. Two particular lines of attack have been identified as a consequence of experimentation with mice and on human tissue. Human trials began in 2019, using synolytics. These are drugs which target senescent cells in the body, that is “old” cells which have not been eliminated by the body as they should have been. These cells have been associated with osteoporosis.

There are also trials which are targeting the “energy pathway”. In this case, the drugs restrict caloric intake from food inputs. Experiments have shown that this approach improves the body’s immune response to threats.

There are also tests being carried out with infusion of blood plasma from young donors into older patients with Alzheimer’s. Experiments have shown that blood from young subjects appear to rejuvenate older brains. It is felt that soluble factors, or proteins, in the plasma of the young provide elements no longer available in the blood of an older person. The challenge will be to identify those elements.

How wondrous are the bodies we inhabit. It is only natural that we would like to inhabit them as long as we can in a healthy state. Almost every day we see something in the news that speaks to advances being made to counter threats to our health and safety.

Some of these innovations include smart inhalers to treat the 50% of asthma sufferers whose condition is not under control, robotic surgery to add precision for difficult procedures, wireless brain sensors which dissolve when no longer needed, 3D-printed organs, precision medicines tailored to the individual, developing technology delivering medical care through digital devices and gene-editing to treat conditions involving defective DNA strands. Think about the future impact of A.I. on these technologies.

Those of us getting on in years need to survive just a little longer to get more of the benefits that are still on the drawing board.

Approaching my ninetieth birthday, could it be I have a stake in all these goings on?

Hold on tight!