Engineered negligible senescence
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Engineered negligible senescence is a term meaning an engineered prevention or reversal of cellular aging, which is called senescence in biology.
The term was coined by Cambridge associate and biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey around 2002, and is used in the context of his life extension medical proposal, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS). It has been reported on by many news sources, including the BBC, the New York Times, Fortune Magazine, and Popular Science
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Proposal
As Aubrey de Grey states, "geriatrics is the attempt to stop damage from causing pathology; traditional gerontology is the attempt to stop metabolism from causing damage; and the SENS (engineering) approach is periodically to eliminate the damage, so keeping its abundance below the level that causes any pathology."
De Grey has published papers along these lines with leading scientists, and has received support from others, such as William Haseltine, the biotech pioneer of Human Genome Sciences, who in March 2005 stated regarding the Methuselah Mouse Prize (see section below), "there’s nothing to compare with this effort, and it has already contributed significantly to the awareness that regenerative medicine is a near term reality, not an if."
The seven causes of aging
De Grey defines aging as "the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism that eventually kills us,"[1] (http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050411_aubrey_interview.html) , and his proposal identifies what he believes to be the seven biological causes of senescence and outlines possible solutions, each with both a research and a clinical component. The clinical component is required because in some of the proposed therapies, feasibility has already been proven, but not completely applied and approved for use by human beings. De Grey believes we will be able to apply these solutions before we completely understand the targeted aging mechanisms, which will take longer.
De Grey claims that the goals work together to eliminate known causes of human senescence, are concrete, seem achievable, and are considered feasible by experts in the applicable fields. The goals were said to be taken from classical literature describing the biological causes of senescence.
| SENS target | Proposed solution |
|---|---|
| Nuclear DNA mutations | Whole-body interdiction of lengthening of telomeres |
| Mitochondrial DNA mutations | Allotopic expression of mitochondrial genes |
| Proliferation of unwanted cells | Whole-body interdiction of lengthening of telomeres |
| Depletion of important cells | Stem cell therapeutics |
| Accumulation of intracellular waste | Xenolysozymes |
| Accumulation of extracellular waste | Immune modulation, synthetic peptide aggregate breakers |
| Accumulation of protein crosslinks | Synthetic peptide crosslink disruptors |
| It has been proposed that Engineered negligible senescence/alternate descriptions be merged and redirected into this article.
This request may be discussed on the article's talk page. |
Escape velocity
De Grey proposes that engineered negligible senescence therapies could extend humans' lives by many centuries or more, as early therapies give them enough time to see more effective therapies later on. De Grey describes an "escape velocity" of life extension, when advances in senescence treatment come rapidly enough to save the lives of the oldest beneficiaries of the previous treatments.
Methuselah Mouse Prize
Main article at Methuselah Mouse Prize
In 2003, De Grey founded the Methuselah Mouse Prize, a prize designed to accelerate research into effective life extension interventions by awarding monetary prizes to researchers who extend the lifespan of mice to unprecedented lengths. Regarding this, De Grey stated in March 2005, "if we are to bring about real regenerative therapies that will benefit not just future generations, but those of us who are alive today, we must encourage scientists to work on the problem of aging." The prize reached $1 million USD in March 2005. De Grey believes that once this objective has been achieved in mice, a large amount of funding will be diverted to this kind of research, which would accelerate progress.
Related articles
External links
- SENS Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (http://admin-sun1.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/) official site
- Aubrey de Grey is also an advisor of The NanoAging Institute (http://www.nanoaging.com)
- Aubrey de Grey is also an advisor of The Singularity Institute (http://www.singinst.org/advisoryboard.html)
- Interview with BBC website, outlining views (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4003063.stm)
- Popular Science article (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/medicine/article/0,20967,929447,00.html)
- Technology Review article (http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/02/issue/feature_aging.asp)
- Hang in There: The 25-Year Wait for Immortality (http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050411_aubrey_interview.html) interview with LiveScience
