They should test these with old volunteers first.<p>Life expectancy of 90-year old is 4-5 years depending on gender. If the drug increases the life quality it's probably worth the risk even if it increases changes of getting some cancers.
Original paper: <a href="http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30246-5" rel="nofollow">http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30246-5</a>
The SENS Research Foundation (<a href="http://www.sens.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sens.org/</a>) has identified the seven ways that the elderly are different from the young, and hypothesizes that the aggregate damage from these seven things is what we call "aging".<p>Essentially, aging is just accumulated damage from these seven processes.<p>One of the seven processes is the accumulation of senescent cells. They clog up the works and also release chemicals that prevent normal cells from functioning at full effectiveness. Normally senescent cells kill themselves and are broken down by the body, but this process gets worse over time and senescent cells multiply.<p>The drug in this story targets and kills these senescent cells selectively. Effectively they are reducing the population of senescent cells in your body from the number you'd find in an 80 year old person so some lesser number (perhaps like a 20-, 30-, 40-, or 60-year old, but human studies would be required to say how effective it is).<p>But that's what aging reversal is. It's taking the seven biomarkers identified by SENS and reverting them from 85-year old levels to 25-year old levels. If all you're biomarkers are the same as a 25-year old, you <i>are</i> 25 in every sense except calendrical.<p>EDIT: typo
Seeing the headline I shrugged and thought to myself, "oh, I bet it's rapamycin again." That and a few other old cancer drugs routinely get studied for antiaging effects- which is cool, but somewhat less than directly applicable because of the side-effects associated with what is essentially chemo.<p>But here the drug is apparently a peptide, so it's presumably somewhat more benign (at least relative, mind you, to chemo.) Also easily synthesizable! I wonder if an amino acid sequence can be patented?
There are lot of buzz since some months about "senolytics".
However I think aging is a complex phenomena, including having social dimensions. It is probably not something that you could solve with a pill.