Strategies for engineered negligible senescence
Strategies for engineered negligible senescence (SENS) is a range of proposed
While some biogerontologists support the SENS program, others contend that the ultimate goals of de Grey's programme are too speculative given the current state of technology.[5][6] The 31-member Research Advisory Board of de Grey's SENS Research Foundation have signed an endorsement of the plausibility of the SENS approach.[7]
Framework
The term "
The ultimate objective of SENS is the eventual elimination of age-related diseases and infirmity by repeatedly reducing the state of senescence in the organism. The SENS project consists in implementing a series of periodic medical interventions designed to repair, prevent or render irrelevant all the types of molecular and cellular damage that cause age-related pathology and degeneration, in order to avoid debilitation and death from age-related causes.[1]
Strategies
As described by SENS, the following table details major ailments and the program's proposed preventative strategies:[11]
Issue | Proposed countermeasures |
---|---|
Extracellular aggregates | Immunotherapeutic clearance |
Accumulation of senescent cells | Senescence marker-targeted toxins, immunotherapy |
Extracellular matrix stiffening | AGE-breaking molecules, tissue engineering |
Intracellular aggregates | Novel lysosomal hydrolases |
Mitochondrial mutations | Allotopic expression of 13 proteins |
Cancerous cells | Removal of telomere-lengthening machinery |
Cell loss, tissue atrophy | Stem cells and tissue engineering |
Scientific reception
While some fields mentioned as branches of SENS are supported by the medical research community, e.g.,
Cancer may deserve special attention as an aging-associated disease, but the SENS claim that nuclear DNA damage only matters for aging because of cancer has been challenged in other literature,[13] as well as by material studying the DNA damage theory of aging. More recently, biogerontologist Marios Kyriazis has criticised the clinical applicability of SENS[14][15] by claiming that such therapies, even if developed in the laboratory, would be practically unusable by the general public.[16] De Grey responded to one such criticism.[further explanation needed][17]
2005 EMBO Reports statement
In November 2005, 28 biogerontologists published a statement of criticism in
Technology Review contest
In February 2005, the MIT
During June 2005, David Gobel, CEO and co-founder of the Methuselah Foundation with de Grey, offered Technology Review $20,000 to fund a prize competition to publicly clarify the viability of the SENS approach. In July 2005, Jason Pontin announced a $20,000 prize, funded 50/50 by Methuselah Foundation and MIT Technology Review. The contest was open to any molecular biologist, with a record of publication in biogerontology, who could prove that the alleged benefits of SENS were "so wrong that it is unworthy of learned debate."[20] Technology Review received five submissions to its challenge. In March 2006, Technology Review announced that it had chosen a panel of judges for the Challenge: Rodney Brooks, Anita Goel, Nathan Myhrvold, Vikram Sheel Kumar, and Craig Venter.[21] Three of the five submissions met the terms of the prize competition. They were published by Technology Review on June 9, 2006. On July 11, 2006, Technology Review published the results of the SENS Challenge.[22]
In the end, no one won the $20,000 prize. The judges felt that no submission met the criterion of the challenge and discredited SENS, although they unanimously agreed that one submission, by Preston Estep and his colleagues, was the most eloquent. Craig Venter succinctly expressed the prevailing opinion: "Estep et al. ... have not demonstrated that SENS is unworthy of discussion, but the proponents of SENS have not made a compelling case for it."[22] Summarizing the judges' deliberations, Pontin wrote in 2006 that SENS is "highly speculative" and that many of its proposals could not be reproduced with current scientific technology. Myhrvold described SENS as belonging to a kind of "antechamber of science" where they wait until technology and scientific knowledge advance to the point where it can be tested.[22][23] Estep and his coauthors challenged the result of the contest by saying both that the judges had ruled "outside their area of expertise" and had failed to consider de Grey's frequent misrepresentations of the scientific literature.[24]
SENS Research Foundation
The SENS Research Foundation is a
See also
- American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine
- Biological immortality
- Calico
- Eternal youth
- Genetics of aging
- Geroprotector
- Indefinite lifespan
- Longevity Escape Velocity
- Maximum life span
- Protoscience
- Rejuvenation Research
- Senolytics
References
- ^ ISBN 0-312-36706-6.
- PMID 16264422.
- S2CID 265127778.
- ^ https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(13)00645-4
- PMID 16264422.
- S2CID 764136.
- ^ "Research Advisory Board". sens.org. Archived from the original on 14 June 2021. Retrieved 15 July 2021.
- ISBN 1-58706-155-4.
- ^ Bulkes, Nyssa (March 6, 2006). "Anti-aging research breakthroughs may add up to 25 years to life Archived 2020-04-02 at the Wayback Machine". The Northern Star. Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, USA).
- ^ . "Age-Related Diseases: Medicine's Final Adversary?". Huffington Post Healthy Living.
- ^ "Intro to SENS Research". SENS Research Foundation. Retrieved 2020-08-18.
- ^ PMID 16264422.
- PMID 19594328.
- PMID 25072550.
- .
- PMID 26135528.
- PMID 25072964.
- ISBN 0-679-41461-4.
- ^ a b Nuland, Sherwin (1 February 2005). "Do You Want to Live Forever?". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 28 April 2021.
- ^ Pontin, Jason (July 28, 2005). "The SENS Challenge Archived 2012-03-16 at the Wayback Machine". Technology Review.
- ^ Pontin, Jason (March 14, 2006). "We've picked the judges for our biogerontology prize Archived 2012-03-16 at the Wayback Machine". Technology Review.
- ^ a b c Pontin, Jason (July 11, 2006). "Is Defeating Aging Only A Dream? Archived 2020-04-02 at the Wayback Machine". Technology Review.
- ^ Garreau, Joel (October 31, 2007). "Invincible Man". Washington Post.
- ^ Estep, Preston W. (11 July 2006). "Preston Estep et al. Dissent". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 28 April 2021.
Further reading
- Fishman, Jennifer R.; Settersten, Richard A. Jr.; Flatt, Michael A. (February 2010). "In the vanguard of biomedicine? The curious and contradictory case of anti-ageing medicine". Sociology of Health & Illness. 32 (2): 197–210. PMID 20003037.
- Isaacson, Betsy (5 March 2015). "Silicon Valley Is Trying to Make Humans Immortal—and Finding Some Success". Newsweek. Retrieved 28 April 2021.
- Mykytyn, Courtney Everts (February 2010). "A history of the future: The emergence of contemporary anti-ageing medicine". Sociology of Health & Illness. 32 (2): 181–196. PMID 20149152.
- S2CID 207588602.