Daniel Ganea

We will be able to live to 1.000 By Dr Aubrey de Grey - University of Cambridge

Life expectancy is increasing in the developed world. But Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey believes it will soon extend dramatically to 1,000. Here, he explains why.
Ageing is a physical phenomenon happening to our bodies, so at some point in the future, as medicine becomes more and more powerful, we will inevitably be able to address ageing just as effectively as we address many diseases today.

I claim that we are close to that point because of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project to prevent and cure ageing.

It is not just an idea: it’s a very detailed plan to repair all the types of molecular and cellular damage that happen to us over time.

And each method to do this is either already working in a preliminary form (in clinical trials) or is based on technologies that already exist and just need to be combined.
This means that all parts of the project should be fully working in mice within just 10 years and we might take only another 10 years to get them all working in humans.

When we get these therapies, we will no longer all get frail and decrepit and dependent as we get older, and eventually succumb to the innumerable ghastly progressive diseases of old age.

We will still die, of course - from crossing the road carelessly, being bitten by snakes, catching a new flu variant etcetera - but not in the drawn-out way in which most of us die at present.

So, will this happen in time for some people alive today? Probably. Since these therapies repair accumulated damage, they are applicable to people in middle age or older who have a fair amount of that damage.

I think the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already.

It is very complicated, because ageing is. There are seven major types of molecular and cellular damage that eventually become bad for us - including cells being lost without replacement and mutations in our chromosomes.

Each of these things is potentially fixable by technology that either already exists or is in active development
An old video from youtube july 2005

New flu vaccine now made in Romania at ‘Cantacuzino’

At the beginning of the pandemic new flu the was the possibility to buy the new flu vaccine from other countries,but one that isn’t approved at an international level. We now have one that is made in Romania at The Institute Cantacuzino 250.000 dozes are available for persons from the area most affected, and 400.000 ready to be send in R.Moldova.

Cancer protein ‘can be disarmed’

Scientists have found a way to disarm a protein thought to play a key role in leukaemia and other cancers.

The breakthrough raises hopes of a new type of therapy that could treat cancer and other diseases.

Previous attempts to neutralise the protein had failed, leading experts to conclude it was effectively “undruggable”.

The study, carried out by the US Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, features in the journal Nature.

The protein is one of the body’s transcription factors, which turn genes on or off and set in motion genetic cascades that control how cells grow and develop. They also help fuel the growth of tumours.

The transcription factor targeted in the latest study is a protein called Notch.

The gene responsible for manufacturing the protein is often damaged or mutated in patients with a form of blood cancer known as T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL).
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