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of those therapies has progressed far enough that we have been able to spin the projects out as startup companies, and it’s likely that most of them will be An age-old problem in the clinic within a couple of years. How SENS Research Foundation is looking at Your background lies in computer science. How did you become age-related disease in a new way interested in the field of ? I switched fields because I discovered, pretty much by accident, that hardly Despite time, energy and money being poured into age-related disease research around the world, humans are yet to anyone was working on defeating find cures for illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. SENS Research Foundation believe aging. I had assumed, all my life until this is because current research is approaching the problem from the wrong angle. Research Outreach found out more my late 20s, that it was as obvious from the Foundation’s Chief Science Officer and co-founder Dr . to everyone else as it was to me that aging is the world’s most serious problem and that it can be solved. It erontology is the study of the medicine to age-related disease. In of a middle-aged (or older) person to was only when I met and married a aging process of the body, and this interview with Research Outreach, something like it was when they were a senior biologist, and eventually started Glooks to fully understand all Dr de Grey told us more about the young adult. That amounts to repairing asking questions, that I discovered that factors that contribute to the decline foundation and its research mission. the damage that has accumulated in she and other biologists, and indeed and of all aging creatures. While their bodies as intrinsic side-effects pretty much everyone, viewed aging we might understand death to be the What is the vision of SENS of the body’s normal operation. We as unimportant and uninteresting. I inevitable conclusion of life, some Research Foundation? have known for decades what types was working in scientists believe that the development Our vision is a world in which people of damage there are that eventually research because I wanted to solve of medicines and technologies that do not decline in physical or mental contribute to the health problems of another serious problem facing repair or reverse aging processes in the health as they get older. We believe late life; therefore, all (!) that is needed humanity, the problem that most human body is not out of our grasp. it is possible to create medicines that is to develop damage-repair therapies people have to spend so much of their will restore the molecular and cellular that can eliminate them. And that’s time doing things that they would Dr Aubrey de Grey is the Chief Science structure and composition of the body what we do. The development of some not do unless they were being paid Officer and co-founder of SENS for it, to which the solution is better Research Foundation, a not-for-profit automation. But I always knew that foundation based in California, USA, aging was a far more serious problem that funds innovative gerontology than that, so when I discovered that research around the world, emphasising Our vision is a world in which people it was being neglected I knew I had the application of regenerative do not decline in physical or mental to work on aging instead. I was in the health as they get older. Aubrey de Grey belives it is possible to restore Dr Aubrey de Grey is the Chief Science Officer the body of an older person at the molecular and co-founder of SENS Research Foundation. and cellular level.

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fortunate position to be able to switch which type of damage is more important Your internal laboratory, the SRF and we may have a new project starting when people who were born a long as CRISPR, CAR-T and AlphaFold, that fields easily, so I did. than which other type. The right way Research Center, is at the core of the in a couple of months that will explore time ago are just as functional, both will enormously speed up medical to describe what SENS is is that it foundation’s research efforts. Which the elimination of a particular type of physically and mentally, as young adults research and development generally. Can you tell us more about the is an engineering proposal for how projects are you currently working on? waste product in the brain. – there will be nothing to fear about damage-repair theory the SENS to manipulate nature, rather than a At our Research Center we have two having a lot of such people around. Is there anything else that you would platform is based on? scientific hypothesis for how nature main projects right now. One is devoted Which research projects do you fund? Therefore, the fact that we have a like our readers to know? The first thing I need to explain is that it’s works in the first place. to repairing mutant mitochondria, We fund several projects in universities serious problem of population aging The main thing I want everyone to not a ‘theory’ in the sense that that word by inserting genes into cells that around the world. One of them is today, with social security in many know is that it is time to wake up is normally used. Theories are candidate The Foundation’s strategy to prevent will provide the proteins that the focused on therapy for the countries on the brink of bankruptcy, about aging – to stop being scared explanations for why something in and reverse age-related ill-health is to mitochondria can no longer make. The brain, to treat everything from strokes is really a good thing, because it to get your hopes up. Aging is so nature behaves the way it does. Thus, apply the principles of regenerative other project is exploring two new ways to Alzheimer’s Disease. Another concentrates the minds of politicians on indescribably horrible that most for example, a ‘theory of aging’ is the medicine to repair the damage of aging to eliminate senescent cells, cells that one is looking at the removal of the urgency to accelerate the research people can only handle it by tricking assertion that the main reason we get at the level where it occurs. We are have switched into a damaging state the fluorescent waste products that that will solve the problem. themselves into thinking that it is sick when we get old is that this or developing a new kind of medicine: and that the body wants to kill off but accumulate in the cells of the heart and some sort of blessing in disguise, that particular molecular mechanism regenerative therapies that remove, cannot. We also rent out space to one other tissues. Another one is exploring What, in your opinion, are the biggest as a way to put it out of their minds. generates this or that particular type of repair, replace, or render harmless the of our spin-out companies, Underdog the molecular structure of the bonds challenges that remain for the research That tactic used to be sensible and damage, which accumulates and impairs cellular and molecular damage that has Pharmaceuticals, which is developing a that make our arteries stiffer as we get field, and which technologies are you rational, when there was no prospect the function of the body and eventually accumulated in our tissues with time. By way to extract the oxidised cholesterol older. In general, we fund projects that most excited about? of doing anything about aging in the kills us. Strategies for Engineered reconstructing the structured order of from arteries and thereby revert are using new ideas to repair types There are really no fundamental foreseeable future – but now, it is a Negligible (SENS) is not the living machinery of our tissues, these atherpsclerosis (a disease of the arteries of molecular and cellular damage challenges left: all the necessary areas huge part of the problem, because it such an assertion. SENS relates to all the biotechnologies will restore characterised by the deposition of fatty that most people are ignoring, either of damage repair are moving forward slows down the research and ultimately types of damage we accumulate, and the normal functioning of the body’s material on their inner walls). We are because they don’t realise that the quite encouragingly now. Therefore, costs astronomical numbers of lives. it does not take a position concerning cells and essential biomolecules. always reviewing our range of projects, damage matters or because they don’t the only real need is for more financial see how it could be repaired. resources, to get the research to its conclusion (medicines that work!) as With so many societies rapidly aging, soon as possible. At the moment, how do you feel about the future? progress is still probably only about We fund projects that are using new ideas to repair types Bring it on! The reason people are half as fast as it could be. As for worried about ‘population aging’ is exciting technologies, well, most of of molecular and cellular damage. W: https://www.sens.org/about-us/ because the older you get, the sicker the really exciting ones are not specific you get. When that ceases to be so – to aging – they are technologies such

Spin-off company Underdog The SRF Research Center is at the core of Pharmaceuticals is developing ways to the Foundation’s research efforts. extract cholesterol from arteries. studiovin/Shutterstock.com

SENS Research Foundation funds several projects in universities around the world, from stem cell Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com

therapy to treating Alzheimer’s disease. Designua/Shutterstock.com

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