Research on people’s reaction to life extension is rather rare; this article discusses two such papers.

Two papers by Partridge et al [1, 2], both published in 2009, provide the somewhat rare opportunity to examine some concerns about life extension as formulated by actual people, rather than their general, more abstract forms. As highlighted in the studies, research on the public’s perception of life extension science has been very much neglected; this, in turn, has made it harder to identify the misconceptions and incorrect information fueling some common concerns about life extension and made it even harder to address those very concerns. Needless to say, the more that the public views life extension negatively, the less supportive that it will probably be, which is bad news for researchers.

The papers present the results of several interviews, conducted either in person or on the phone, aimed at understanding what ethical concerns the interviewees had about life extension and what implications they thought extended human lifespans would have for themselves and for society. The research was conducted on a sample of the Australian population only, but the issues they raised were entirely representative of a typical discussion about life extension. In both studies, the interviewees were presented with the general premise of possibly slowing down aging and the onset of age-related diseases in order to greatly extend human healthy lifespan.

We’ll be taking a look at specific claims made or sentiments expressed by different interviewees in both studies.

Who wants to lose weight, feel great, and live a long and healthy life, and what does it take to achieve these goals? Diet and exercise are equally important in long-term health, but let’s look at what recent science is telling us about the healthiest diets.

This article will rely heavily on University of Southern California professor Valter Longo’s work because I consider it to be the gold standard for nutrition research, and his recommendations in his book The Longevity Diet are well-supported with both data and good logic. Longo is the director of the Longevity Institute at USC and the IFOM Program on Longevity and Cancer in Milan.

He comes from an area of Italy known for very long lives, and part of his research focus has been looking at similar areas around the world and why those people live so much longer than normal.

A new finding from the UVA School of Medicine suggests that fatty liver disease and other effects of aging may be the result of our cells’ nuclei getting wrinkly.

An interesting interview with one of the Dog Aging Project’s lead scientists, Dr. Matt Kaeberlein.

As we discussed in a recent article about Prof. George Church’s new startup, endeavors to undo aging aren’t directed exclusively toward human aging; extending the healthy lifespan of our pet dogs and cats is also currently being researched. The Dog Aging Project (DAP) has been around quite a bit longer than Prof. Church’s startup, and today, we have the pleasure to bring you an interview with one of the lead scientists behind it, Dr. Matt Kaeberlein.

In much the same way that other projects are aiming to extend healthy human lifespan, the DAP team intends to do the same, targeting the aging processes directly. Given the rate of progress in geroscience over the past years, Dr. Kaeberlein and his team are optimistic that, in the near future, the interventions that have been shown to slow down aging in mice and rats could do the same in our furry companions.

Besides Dr. Kaeberlein—who is a Professor of Pathology and an Adjunct Professor of both Genome Sciences and Oral Health Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle—the DAP team is comprised of Dr. Daniel Promislow, Professor of the Departments of Pathology and Biology at the University of Washington; Dr. Kate Crevy, Associate Professor of Small Animal Internal Medicine at Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary Medicine; Dr. Tammi Kaeberlein, a research scientist at the Department of Pathology at the University of Washington; Dr. Silvan Urfer, a veterinarian and Senior Fellow of Washington University’s Department of Pathology; and Kelly Jin, a doctoral student currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine and Mechanisms of Disease at the University of Washington.

Professor George Church of Harvard Medical School has co-founded a new startup company, Rejuvenate Bio, which has plans to reverse aging in dogs as a way to market anti-aging therapies for our furry friends before bringing them to us.

Dogs first, humans next

The company has already carried some initial tests on beagles and plans to reverse aging by using gene therapy to add new instructions to their DNA. If it works, the goal is ultimately to try the same approach in people, and George Church may be one the first human volunteers.