Legend has it that Juan Ponce de León, founder of Puerto Rico and the first European to set foot on American territory, set out in 1521 for Florida – for the second time, the first was in 1513 – in search of the fountain of eternal youth. According to what they say, he had heard that somewhere in the current ‘Sunshine State’ there was a spring where Indians from all over the continent came to rejuvenate themselves for several years. Although some link it to a place called Warm Mineral Springs, southeast of where the city of Sarasota is now, official documents from the time do not show any discovery in this regard. Herodotus also mentions a magically rejuvenating fountain in the third book of Histories. In this case, we must go back to the 4th century BC.
The key to eternal life has been one of the desires of humanity in its different times and civilizations. As the years have gone by, and thanks to the incredible development of science in recent times, it seems that the goal of living an endless number of years is no longer as utopian as it seemed. It seems that ‘senolytics’, drugs that destroy dead cells, have begun to position themselves as the best candidates to achieve this. These dead cells are responsible, in addition to aging, for causing terminal diseases such as cancer.
It is no longer just about living longer, but about extending life and doing so with an acceptable quality of life. Until now, only what is known as lifespan was taken into account. That is, the number of years we could live. Recently, the term coined healthspan has begun to take on greater prominence. Its literal translation is “the number of years someone lives or can expect to live in reasonably good health.” This is where the true challenge of today’s science lies.
“The first person to take a pill to age less has already been born.” These words are from Salvador Macip, director of Health Sciences Studies at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and professor of molecular medicine at the University of Leicester. He assists us from his office in the United Kingdom, where he combines part of his research activity with the direction and coordination of master’s and doctoral studies in Barcelona. Although studies on the effectiveness of ‘senolytics’ are still in a very early phase, Macip states that the race to find a drug that slows aging has already begun. And we are closer than we think.
In 2011 it was already shown that ‘senolytics’ had anti-aging effects in mice. Of course: these were genetically modified animals. “In humans we cannot yet make genetic modifications, so the solution lies in finding a drug that is sufficiently advanced to have a similar effect in the body,” says Macip.
When asked if he believes that we will be able to live much longer in the short term, the director of Health Sciences Studies at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) assures that “if we manage to develop these drugs in an optimal way, we will not It is not unreasonable to think that someone could live to be 130 or 140 years old with reasonable health.”
In addition to the success in genetically modified animals, the first drug tests in these same animals were a success. The team of researchers led by James Kirkland, from the prestigious Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minneapolis), saw how the mice that were given the drug lived up to 36% longer compared to those that did not receive it, and with a quality of life more than acceptable. These are the drugs dasatinib and quercetin. According to Macip, for now, “in humans they are only prescribed in combination with other cancer treatments.” The side effects are still too aggressive.
Corina Amor, the young Spanish prodigy of immunology – she is barely 30 years old – is another of the world leaders in the study of the elimination of senescent cells. She works running her own laboratory in New York, and her field of study focuses on finding out if CAR-T cells (a novel cellular immunotherapy procedure indicated in some hematological tumors) can do the same, having so far achieved great results. progress.
Although the elimination of senescent cells is one of the fields in which the most progress has been made to prevent the aging of living beings, the truth is that the science that studies how to extend life is made up of 12 different fields of study, divided into three large groups: primary, antagonistic and integrative. These include epigenetic alterations, possible solutions to stem cell depletion, telomere wear, and even fasting as a way to extend life. “We have discovered, for many years, that stopping eating for prolonged periods can help extend the life of certain animals,” summarizes Macip.
Even, adds the expert from the University of Leicester, there are experiments in which “the mixing of blood between a young animal and an older one helps to rejuvenate the body of the second, and it is possible that one day we will discover something in the blood of the young people who help keep body tissues healthy and strong.”
At the moment, most of these conjectures can hardly be transferred to human beings. In part, because the life of a human being is so long that it is difficult to prove that any of these methods really help to extend the years of life.
“We have two big obstacles. The first is that clinical analyzes of drugs are difficult to design because we currently live for many years. And, the second is that there are no markers to know if they really work. With diseases like diabetes, for example, you have markers like glucose that tell you whether what you are developing is working or not. For aging, for now, we don’t have any.” The solution, he concludes, will only involve a combination, concludes the UOC researcher.
