World science’s greatest challenge: To defy aging

The most sought-after quest for aging adults is to find the fountain of youth.

A pill, a potion or perhaps an injection to modify your genes, but whatever it may be, people are fixated on wanting to live longer with less pain and more mobility.

At the moment the industry is a $110-billion business and by the end of 2025, the Bank of America says it will be close to a $610-billion industry.

Ask anyone over 50 and they will tell you, getting old is not for the faint-hearted.

Your recovery time is longer, your body aches nearly all the time, your skin starts to sag and loses it vibrant elasticity.

Your organs don’t function as fast and efficiently as they used to, your vision, hearing, and mobility deteriorates.

Most importantly, your brain does not function as sharply, memory starts to go, and you are at risk of all the mental illnesses associated with getting old such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, dementia, and the dozens of other illnesses that are knocking on the door.

In fact, there are so many negative factors aging brings, it is no wonder there is a need for a breakthrough in the status quo.

If you are in your 20s reading this, you won’t understand, but if you are in your 60s, there have been more nods to reading above and I am pretty sure you would pay a hefty sum each month to have less pain, feel stronger and add years to your life.

There has been some advertising going around that a person living today, could live up to 150 years.

Scientists and big bio-tech companies are looking into how humans can live longer and more healthily. Picture: iStock

It’s hard to imagine that, but for bio-tech companies, this is a race to get products approved for human trials.

George Church, a Harvard Medical School Professor who started his own bio-tech company called Rejuvenate Bio, is currently working on 60 different age-reversing gene therapies.

Trials have been underway on beagles and Church claims they have reversed the aging in beagles by adding in a DNA instruction into their bodies.

In order to understand what is needed to help you live longer, you have to look at the key factors that happen to your body when you age and then tackle each area separately to reverse the process.

Companies like AgeX have focused their research on stem cells for rejuvenation of tissue and organs.

Stem cells are the body’s raw materials and provide new cells for the body as you grow and replace cells if they are damaged.

There are different cells in your body which have different capabilities.

When you are young, they work well but when you age, the cells and their functionality weaken.

Asking a 70-year-old woman to run like a 16-year-old teen is very unlikely and the same applies to asking the cells in your body to function at the same pace.

Older people are often in need of help, and are required to stay in care homes. Picture: iStock

Bio-tech company AgeX is working on creating new stem cells that will bind to your heart and start repairing the damaged tissue and cells.

If living longer is not your thing then think about what the technology can bring to for instance, a six-year-old child who needs a new liver, lung or heart and is placed on a donor waiting list.

The wait might be in vain but LyGenesis believes growing a new liver is right around the corner.

If they crack this, then millions of lives will be saved each year. Imagine growing a new pancreas for diabetes patients, the world as we know it would change forever, so this is an exciting, scary and exhilarating time we are living in.

If you think and gaze at the stars and visualise where the human race is going, I am pretty sure Elon Musk must be investing heavily by now in bio-tech research.

When we populate Mars with a small colony, there will be no sharing or donating of organs. Instead, everything must be grown and for the survival of the race on Mars, humans would need a little more than the average 80 years of being alive.

Researchers believe strongly that in the next five to 10 years there could be Food and Drug Administration-approved anti-aging treatments and perhaps even organ replacement through lab-grown technology.

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