Towards Harnessing Growth to Create Rejuvenation

A recent pair of open access papers offer an interesting viewpoint on embryonic development, aging, cancer, and possible approaches to rejuvenation in this era of biotechnology. I'm not sure that I agree with more than half of it, but it does make for a good read, even given that the language is somewhat obtuse in places. Tissue growth is the unifying process, wherein: (a) embryonic development is the epitome of regulated, successful, beneficial growth; (b) aging suppresses and damages the shackled processes of growth that are turned to tissue maintenance; (c) cancer is unfettered and uncontrolled growth; and (d) the research community might achieve rejuvenation by finding a way to harness the vigor of cancer and embryonic development in a controlled way. This is of course an ambitious goal, we most likely stand a long way from it, and there are forms of molecular damage, such as accumulation of metabolic waste in long-lived cells of the central nervous system, that can't be addressed by growth. Nonetheless, it seems a valid topic for discussion given the present interest in applying reprogramming technologies to living animals (and perhaps people not too many years from now). Reprogramming in this context is the process of turning normal cells into induced pluripotent stem cells, essentially mimicking embryonic stem cells in their behavior. This reverses epigenetic marks of aging and other changes, such as loss of mitochondrial function. Unexpectedly, delivering the Y...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs