A Call to Test Combinations of Drugs Shown to Slow Aging in Animal Studies

I expect that little progress towards sizable human life extension will be achieved in the next few decades via pharmaceuticals that slow aging through triggering various stress response mechanisms. This includes calorie restriction mimetics, autophagy enhancers, exercise mimetics, and the like. It may well be the case that researchers come up with a few drugs that, if taken regularly for decades, reliably add a few years to life expectancy and improve health in old age to a degree that is in the same ballpark as the present results of exercise or eating a better diet. Is that worth billions in funding and decades of dedicated time from much of the research community, however? I think not, not when exercise and calorie restriction are free, and there is the much more promising field of rejuvenation research to focus on. Why tinker with slightly slowing the damage that causes aging when it is possible to work towards repair of that damage and thus reverse aging? Still, the institutions focused on pharmaceutical recapture of stress responses are deeply entrenched, currently commandeering the majority of funding and attention. Even in failure, the work will continue out of sheer inertia. One would imagine that, in years ahead, researchers will start to try combinations of drugs that slow aging in mice and did not work out so well in humans, looking for synergies or additive effects. One would hope that at least some instead give up the strategy as a bad deal and turn thei...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs