Is this post meant to be a provocative start of a discussion or the argument in its entirety? If the latter, it really needs some attempt to be more precise about tractability. How much of the problem will marginal funding solve?
Hey, I’m responding to this comment an extremely long time after you made it — 2 whole years! — but, yes, of course, this is supposed to be just the start of the discussion.
On tractability, unfortunately, it seems really hard to rigorously or precisely estimate the tractability of R&D in new areas of science or technology (or biotechnology).
There is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem where you could maybe show some really promising, exciting results early on — such as rejuvenation results in mice that reverse biological aging on some measure and improve health for middle-aged or elderly mice — but you need funding in order to produce those early results in the first place. Fortunately, there have already been some really intriguing results in mice.
Also fortunately, some of the earliest work in rejuvenation biotechnology is starting to be trialed on humans. The specific intervention is senolytics, a class of drugs that remove senescent cells from the body. Senescent cells are cells that get old and stop functioning, but don’t properly execute their “self-destruct” sequence. As we get older, more and more senescent cells accumulate in the body, and this is theorized to be one of the underlying causes of biological aging. From a February 2025 article in The Guardian:
Based on dozens of preclinical studies in which rodents have been manipulated to develop various chronic diseases before being cured, senolytics are now starting to reach humans. The data so far is limited but clinical trials are under way to see whether dasatinib and quercetin can modulate disease progression in patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, while this same combination has previously been shown to alleviate some physical dysfunction in people with chronic lung disease.
Is this post meant to be a provocative start of a discussion or the argument in its entirety? If the latter, it really needs some attempt to be more precise about tractability. How much of the problem will marginal funding solve?
Hey, I’m responding to this comment an extremely long time after you made it — 2 whole years! — but, yes, of course, this is supposed to be just the start of the discussion.
On tractability, unfortunately, it seems really hard to rigorously or precisely estimate the tractability of R&D in new areas of science or technology (or biotechnology).
There is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem where you could maybe show some really promising, exciting results early on — such as rejuvenation results in mice that reverse biological aging on some measure and improve health for middle-aged or elderly mice — but you need funding in order to produce those early results in the first place. Fortunately, there have already been some really intriguing results in mice.
Also fortunately, some of the earliest work in rejuvenation biotechnology is starting to be trialed on humans. The specific intervention is senolytics, a class of drugs that remove senescent cells from the body. Senescent cells are cells that get old and stop functioning, but don’t properly execute their “self-destruct” sequence. As we get older, more and more senescent cells accumulate in the body, and this is theorized to be one of the underlying causes of biological aging. From a February 2025 article in The Guardian: