Mice may hold key to longevity

[Guest guest]

http://www.mprize.org/index.php?pagename=newsdetaildisplay & ID=073

 

 

Mice may hold key to longevity

2005-05-31

Posted on : 2005-06-03 17:53:03 by Admin

PermaLink

<http://www.mprize.org/index.php?pagename=newsdetaildisplay & ID=073>

Original <http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/05/31/Vision.spindler/>

Cached <http://www.mprize.orgnews/cachednews/73/cachefile.htm>

*(CNN) -- A scientist awarded a prize for keeping elderly mice alive

beyond their normal life spans believes his work could help slow human

aging and unlock cures for diseases associated with old age, such as

cancer and heart disease. *

 

Stephen Spindler, a professor of biochemistry at the University of

California at Riverside, told CNN that several scientists were working

on ways for humans to live beyond the current record of 122.

 

He said research into increasing longevity was not only about living

longer but also about making life more enjoyable by eliminating diseases

of old age.

 

" We need to convince policy makers that finding the causes of aging is a

reasonable thing to do, " he said.

 

" Some people still consider extending life span as quackery, but like

every other field of medicine, the more we know the more we are able to

reverse things and extend life span, not just the bad years -- but by

slowing down the aging process. "

 

Spindler is the current holder of the Methuselah Mouse Rejuvenation

Prize, or " M Prize. "

 

The M Prize is offered by the Methuselah Project, a privately-funded

foundation created to encourage research into aging in the same way the

Ansari X Prize spurred the development of privately-funded spacecraft

such as SpaceShipOne.

 

The prize has two categories: a longevity prize for research in

developing mice that live much longer; and a rejuvenation prize for

finding ways to extend the life of an adult mouse, which Spindler won.

 

Spindler's award-winning research showed that elderly mice put on a

low-calorie diet lived for around six months longer than a typical life

span of two years. The oldest mouse on record, and current holder of the

longevity prize, lived for nearly five years.

 

Spindler said that when mice reached about 20 months old and humans

about 60 years old, diseases such as cancer in both humans and mice, and

heart disease in humans, became increasingly common.

 

As yet, there was no concrete evidence to suggest that controlling

calorie intake in humans had the same effect, Spindler said.

 

But he claimed that it could be possible in the future to extend human

life spans to 1,000 years.

 

" It sounds crazy, I know, but when I started in research as a graduate

student we didn't really know what a gene looked like, but just in those

intervening years, we're designing drugs to specifically target

specialist genetic problems and they working fairly well, " Spindler said.

 

" The same kind of growth in knowledge could have a dramatic impact on

aging. "

 

He said that whether a person or mouse developed diseases like cancer

and heart disease in their old age depended on their genetic make-up,

but people could still take preventative measures.

 

" If people want to do something for their health right now, they should

quit smoking if they smoke. Eat more fruit and vegetables and less meat

and that will reduce cardiovascular risk by half. Rather than think

about taking supplements there are simpler things they can do to help. "

 

Methuselah Foundation co-founder Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical

gerontologist at Cambridge University in England, told CNN that he

believed human life span could be extended by hundreds of years by the

middle of the 21st century.

 

De Grey said: " People born just 20 years apart, either side of the

escape-velocity cusp, can thus expect life spans differing by many

hundreds of years -- and no one knows when that cusp will arrive. "

(_Full story_

<http://edition.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/05/12/visionary.degrey/index.html>)