According to Reuters, Aubrey de Grey a biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research believes the “cure” to aging could be just around the corner. According to de Grey, the first person to live past 150 has already been born.
In order to extend life indefinitely it is necessary to banish diseases that come along with old aging. De Grey told reporters that right now scientists have a 50/50 chance of bringing aging under medical control within the next 25 years.
De Grey believes a time will come whereby people go to the doctor for scheduled “maintenance,” checkups whereby they would receive gene therapies, stem cell therapies, immune stimulation, and other advanced techniques to keep in good shape.
He describes aging as a lifelong accumulation of various types of molecular and cellular damage. Treatment for aging would repair the damage before the levels get to high.
He also believes that an average of three months is being added to life expectancy each year. As of yet, the oldest person to live reached 122. However some researchers believe that the trend toward longer life spans may affected due to the obesity epidemic plaguing richer nations.
De Grey says keeping the killer diseases of old age at bay is the primary objective of his studies. Stem cell therapies are going to be one of the main components of the anti-aging techniques. Cardiovascular diseases are the world’s biggest age-related killers and although he says there is a long way to go in terms of research, the path towards discovery has been found.
De Grey believes that over time ‘cell garbage’ builds up within the body. De Grey and his colleagues are working to identify enzymes in other species that are able to breakdown the garbage and clean the cells.
Although De Grey is yet to release an exact age people will be able to live to in the future, he does say that the first person who will live to 1,000 is likely to be born less than 20 years after the first person to reach 150 years of age.
