Live until you're 150 and go out drinking with your great-grandparents...

Prof Peter Smith, Dean of Medicine at the University of New South Wales, caused a stir in the mainstream media this week when he commented that, due to advances in medicine, lifestyle and public heath, a girl born in Australia today could reasonably expect to live until the age of 100.

Prof Smith also indicated that a number of drugs in the development pipeline would be able to “extend human life by some decades further”, with the aim of people living healthy,  happy and active lives until the ripe old age of 150. Without the degeneration that usually accompanies the aging process.

Live to the age of 150?

Without arthritis.

Without neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons causing you to lose your memory or the control of your limbs.

Is it possible?

Emerging stem cell therapy research holds out hope for the future, and general advances in the science underlying the way we eat and look after ourselves has seen the average life expectancy of the baby boomers and every generation since then march inexorably forward.[1] But a family of proteins known as “sirtuins” may represent the most immediately exciting therapeutic target in the field of ageing science.

What are Sirtuins?

Sirtuins are a family of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD)-dependent deacetyleases that have been shown to regulate mammals’ physiological responses to two of the most important factors in the process of ageing: metabolism and stress.[2]  Specifically, the activation of these molecules has been shown to extend the lifespan of several model organisms by shutting down the expression of certain gene products associated with stress that would otherwise cause organisms to age when those organisms are faced with extreme situations such as food scarcity and a resultant low calorie diet.[3]
To write this as an equation:

↑ STRESS (eg. Due to food scarcity) = ↑ “STRESS GENE PRODUCTS” = ↑ AGEING

BUT

ACTIVATION OF SIRTUINS = ↓ “STRESS GENE PRODUCTS” = ↓ AGEING

So, figuring out how to activate sirtuins is clearly important ;-)...

Where to now? Therapies for the Future...

David Sinclair, an Australian professor based at Harvard University and world leader in ageing science, has demonstrated that resveratrol, a plant -derived sirtuin-activiating compound found in red wine, can increase the life expectancy of yeast, worms, fruit flies and fat mice, by activating sirtuins.[4]

The company he founded was bought by GlaxoSmithKline for US$720 million in 2008.

Clinical trials are currently underway to assess the effects of treating people with a variety of diseases associated with ageing, including type-2 diabetes and Alzheimers Disease, with synthetic sirtuin-activating molecules – some of which are up to 1000 times more potent than resveratrol.  “And [they] are showing early signs of efficacy,” says Prof Sinclair.

What does that mean?

Living until you’re 74 could soon be a thing of the past. 74 might be the age at which you start thinking about your second career. Or the age to take up surfing. People could otherwise go out drinking with their great-grandparents. Now that would be really cool...

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[1] Harvard Medical School. ‘Average Life Expectancy: Measuring Yours.’ Harvard Health Letter: Boston, MA (July 2006). (http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/average-life-expectancy) 

[2] Satoh A, Stein L, Imai S. ‘The role of Mammalian sirtuins in the regulation of metabolism, aging, and longevity.’ Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, 206: 125-62 (2011).

[3] Guarente, L. ‘Sirtuins, Aging, and Medicine.’ New England Journal of Medicine, 364: 2235-2244 (2011).

[4] Guarente, L. ‘Sirtuins, Aging, and Medicine.’ New England Journal of Medicine, 364: 2235-2244 (2011).