AMPK Activator O304 as an Exercise Mimetic Drug

Most of the work aimed at treating aging as a medical condition is focused on stress response upregulation, finding ways to trigger some of the regulatory pathways and mechanisms involved in beneficial cellular reactions to the mild stresses of exercise, reduced calorie intake, hypoxia, heat, cold, and so forth. Improved cell behavior leads to improved tissue function, which in turn slows the progression of degenerative aging. Many of these pathways converge on autophagy, and evidence from the study of calorie restriction suggests that improved autophagy is the largest contributing factor. Autophagy is the name given to a collection of cellular maintenance processes that remove unwanted or damaged structures and proteins, ensuring that they are broken down in a lysosome and the raw materials returned to the cell for reuse. Autophagy becomes less effective with age, and researchers have in recent years identified a range of age-related defects in the various component parts of the autophagic process. Tracing these issues back to root causes is, as for most of the changes observed in cells in aged tissues, quite challenging and very much a work in progress. Stress response upregulation is much more effective at extending life span in short-lived species than it is in long-lived species. Calorie restriction can increase life span by 40% in mice, but certainly doesn't do that in humans. Stress response upregulation as a strategy for the development of therapies does...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs