The latest anti-aging achievements

The search for the magic "anti-aging pill" has been going on for a long time. The dream of prolonging life and youth can become a reality, which is confirmed by the developments of some pharmaceutical companies.

Retro Biosciences is ready to conduct the first clinical trials of a drug designed to combat Alzheimer's disease. This drug, unlike others, not only slows down the destruction of cognitive functions, but also triggers the process of cellular autophagy.

Autophagy is a natural process of regeneration and purification of the body at the intracellular level, realized by the destruction of its dysfunctional or foreign components by the cell, followed by their processing into chemical components for other purposes.

The first clinical trials will be conducted in Australia, they are scheduled for the end of 2025. 

Interestingly, as part of one of the anti-aging projects, the GPT-4b micro model was developed specifically for Retro, which helped improve the reprogramming of stem cells. 

The next company is biotech giant Altos Labs. The company plans to rejuvenate the body's cells through their reprogramming, based on the method of a Japanese scientist. 

 Shinye Yamanake. He found out that cells can be returned to a state close to the embryonic state with the help of four proteins ("Yamanaki factors"). An experiment conducted on mice clearly showed that some individuals had tissue rejuvenation. 

Yamanaka factors can turn on genes that worked even at the embryonic stage, but it is important that these proteins are present in the cell temporarily, otherwise the cells will not be able to perform their original functions. 

The potential of this development can be realized, for example, in regenerative medicine. Pluripotent cells (capable of differentiating into a specific type of cells from different tissues) can give rise, for example, to skin cells. The efforts of Altos Labs are aimed at solving this problem. If experiments in this area are successful, the company's costs will pay off very quickly – this technology will become a breakthrough in cosmetology.

At the same time, the probability of success is very high. The method already has an indisputable and reproducible effect in laboratory experiments, if applied to individual cells. "You can take a cell from an 80-year-old person and in vitro change the age of the cell to 40 years. There is no other technology that can do this," says Alejandro Ocampo, a professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Another company that also wants to beat aging with stem cells is Agex Therapeutics. The main idea is the repair of damaged cells, the targeted effect of stem cells of a specific type that the patient needs for his body.

Another goal of the company is to learn how to inject stem cell agents into the body, which will cause existing cells in the body to "roll back" to an earlier, close to the stem version. This will restore their ability to repair tissues.   

Russian scientists are also dealing with the problem of aging. For example, the biotech company Gero considers the cause of aging to be the loss of the functional form of the body, which leads to various diseases. Gero has already signed a contract with the Japanese company Chugai (Roche Group) to develop anti-aging products. The company's employees plan to demonstrate the technology of slowing aging in a large mammal (first a dog, then a human) in 10-15 years.  

The company's objectives are ambitious and aimed at doubling human life expectancy.