The answer may be “Yes!” Who says so? No less an authority than the director of the Harvard Medical School’s Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research.
Says Dr. David Sinclair: “It’s very possible that athe first perdon who will live to 150 has already been born.”
His reasons are outlined in this must-read article from The Harvard Gazette. Dr. Sinclair and research fellow Jae-Hyun Yang, explain their recent successes in “turning the clock back” on laboratory mice by altering their epigenomes.
As the article explains, epigenomes “turn DNA on and off in ways specific to different tissues.” Epigenomes can be altered more easily than the DNA itself, and it’s possible that the alterations can result a a “resetting” of that part of the body to the way it was in a younger state.
According to the article, “the finding raises the prospect of being able to reset the body to fight diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, whose incidences increase as we get older.”
Does it work? Dr. Sinclair: “We’re showing it’s possible to reset the age of the body up to as much as 50 percent. And, when you can reverse aging and not just slow it down, then all bets are off. We now know you can reset the eye multiple times and restore vision in old mice… We’re showing that we can reverse aging in other tissues as well, using the same technology. So, if you can reset the age of the body multiple times, I think it would be dangerous to set an upper limit.”
Will this happen any time soon? “These technologies are developing now,” says Jae-Hyun Yang, “and the speed of development is getting faster and faster. So I don’t think it’s far away that people will live to 150.”
