Life Extension: What Does it Mean for Humanity's Future?

Life Extension: What Does it Mean for Humanity’s Future?

“Would you want to live forever if you could?”

This is by no means a new question or concept. But what about the question, “would you want to live to 150 years or older if you could retain the health and vitality of your youth?” Likely, more people would be interested. This is the form of biotechnology that life extension scientists are working on and even testing in clinical trials right now.

What exactly is life extension and why is it something that might change the future of aging? The process of aging involves deterioration in our bodies on many levels. This bodily degeneration includes telomere attrition, mitochondrial dysfuntion, cellular senescence, and stem cell exhaustion, among others. Of course, when taken as a jargon-filled list of inevitable physical failings, the challenges of aging seem bleak. However, researchers in the field of life extension do not believe this has to be the case.

An informative video on the subject, researched by a Germany-based science channel, explains: “Scientists are trying to shift the attention of the medical community from optimizing lifespans to optimizing healthspans, the part of our lives during which we’re disease-free.” Considering the multiple areas which contribute to the aging process, scientists will need to tackle more than one of these complications at a time to lengthen healthspan and halt age-related diseases. While this is a future objective for life extension research, current experimentation focuses on addressing a few of the individual detrimental aspects of aging. Lifespan.io, a nonprofit organization promoting, amplifying, and tracking aging and life extension research, describes its goal as making “chronologically old and chronologically young people, at every level, indistinguishable from each other.” One of the areas targeted in clinical studies is the damage done by senescent cells.

"Lifespan.io, a nonprofit organization promoting, amplifying, and tracking aging and life extension research, describes its goal as making 'chronologically old and chronologically young people, at every level, indistinguishable from each other.'"

How are senescent cells created and why are they harmful? To protect us from losing strands of our DNA, there are long segments of extra DNA at the end of chromosomes called telomeres. In some cells, after multiple cell divisions, these telomeres disappear, and the cell becomes a dysfunctional version of itself called a senescent cell. These cells don’t die; instead, the amount of them in your body increases as you get older. As the previously mentioned video states, “They harm tissue around them and are linked to many diseases that accompany old age like diabetes and kidney failure.” Therefore, reducing the number of senescent cells in our bodies could have positive effects on reducing age-related diseases. This process is called senolytics and has already been tested in studies with both mice and human participants.

When the study was tested on mice, a portion of older mice was treated, and another portion was kept as a control group. The older mice with a reduced number of senescent cells were found to exercise more and had better function of their hearts and kidneys. They were also less prone to cancer and lived up to 30% longer than normal mice.

Following this experiment, Unity Biotechnology conducted clinical trials with humans, specifically using patients with knee osteoarthritis. The drug, called UBX0101, was tested in phases. Phase 1b was successful, and researchers saw improvements for patients with osteoarthritis. Therefore, the U.S. FDA cleared the study for a second phase. However, in August of 2020, Phase 2 was discontinued because no significant difference was found in knee pain levels between participants in the test and placebo groups. Unity Biotechnology’s response to the discontinued studies was “While these are not the results we had hoped for, the evidence that senescent cells contribute to diseases of aging remains compelling, and we are excited to advance UBX1325 for retinal diseases, which inhibits Bcl-xL, a distinct senolytic target.” These two studies, in mice and humans, reveal a need for more research into the effectiveness of senescent cell elimination techniques.

In contrast with this discontinued study, there are other methods of life extension biotechnologies that are at more advanced stages of development. According to Lifespan.io’s Rejuvenation Roadmap, of 63 experimental medications and therapies, only 1 so far has been fully released (as of 2/25/22). This is the company Grifols’ AMBAR medication. AMBAR, which stands for Alzheimer Management by Albumin Replacement, is a technique that “infuses patients with human albumin and intravenous immunoglobin (IVIG) for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.” The MedlinePlus website defines albumin as a protein made by the liver that aids in keeping fluid in the bloodstream so that it doesn't leak into other tissues. AMBAR was tested in a series of studies with 496 patients between the ages of 55 and 85 with mild or moderate Alzheimer’s.

The patients were randomized into three treatment groups and a control group. The findings were a 71% less clinical decline in all treated patients and a positive impact on memory and quality of life in patients with moderate Alzheimer’s. To see the details of how the study was conducted and how results were measured, visit the AMBAR Clinical Program page of Grifols website. How far away is life extension from being available to people outside of clinical trials? While the answer is dependent on several factors, including research funding, Mikhail Batin estimates: “It will probably take another 10 years to create a megaproject. Then 10 more years for us to extract the first results on human life extension from the colossal amount of data. It will be sometime 2040-2045.” Some believe it could happen even sooner. Ray Kurzweil, in a 2016 interview, predicted that radical life extension could be widespread by 2030.

As is to be expected, there is controversy and pushback to the studies due to ethical, religious, and other concerns with the vision of prolonging human life to unprecedented years. Two of the more common concerns are the issues of overpopulation and economic access to these treatments. When the treatments come out, will only the richest members of society benefit from them? A 2016 survey suggests that American citizens are wary. Pew Research Center conducted a survey that asked US residents how they felt about potential biomedical techniques, one of which was using gene editing to reduce the risk of disease in one’s lifetime. Of the respondents, 68% said that they were worried, with a common worry being inequality between rich and poor.

"When the treatments come out, will only the richest members of society benefit from them?"

The website Lifespan.io has a response to this concern, claiming that while the drug will likely start out expensive, its price will decrease to affordable levels. The example given was that full genome sequencing decreased in cost from $100,000,000 in 2001 to $300 today. Life extension treatments could similarly fall to become more widely available.

Perhaps the main question when it comes to these new technologies is whether their benefit to society will outweigh potential evils which could arise. What will Technology Human Balance® look like when we become reliant on technology to keep us healthy and alive? Will these treatments raise the Quality of Life for all or only a select few who can afford them? While there are many more questions than answers, the one certainty is that life extension treatments would completely change the way we view death and aging.