Anti-ageing drugs ‘just a generation away’
Anti-ageing drugs that can stave off health problems from frailty to cancer are close to fruition after decades of promise, scientists have said.
Patients are already being treated with experimental medicines that clear out the defunct cells blamed for causing disease and fragility as the body ages. One of the field’s leading experts said these therapies could ‘‘transform medicine as we know it’’ in the space of a generation.
Senescent cells, which have lost the ability to divide, leak damaging chemicals into the body and have been linked to many of the chronic conditions associated with old age, from arthritis and osteoporosis to diabetes and dementia.
Over the past five years scientists have identified half a dozen molecules that kill off senescent cells and appear to repair lung function, cardiovascular health, physical resilience and even radiation damage in old rodents.
Such drugs are known as senolytics and one of them is about to go into human clinical trials against a wide range of slowgrowing cancers, including those of the bowel, lung and pancreas. Two more are being tested on human patients with kidney disease.
James Kirkland, director of the Kogod centre on ageing at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, argues that their true value lies in their potential to counteract dozens of illnesses in one go. They may even slow down important parts of the process of ageing itself, he said.
Professor Kirkland’s team have found a new class of drugs, known as HSP90 inhibitors, that prolonged the healthy and active lifespan of mice that had been genetically engineered to age rapidly. Their study is at least the fifth paper in the past two years to show that these treatments keep rodents in a fit state for longer.
A mixture of two other senolytics – dasatinib, an established cancer drug, and quercetin, a polyphenol that occurs in plants – added a quarter to the lives of mice in an experiment that was published last year.
‘‘The emerging repertoire of senolytic drugs shows that they are having an impact on a huge range of diseases,’’ Professor Kirkland said. ‘‘Our goal is to achieve the same success in humans as we have in preclinical animal models in efforts to prevent or delay the conditions associated with ageing.’’
Killing off senescent cells is very unlikely to halt age-related decline on its own. There is, however, growing excitement about the chance that the treatments could buy people a few extra years of good health. At least four new drugs companies have been founded to find ways of eradicating senescent cells. While the nation’s attention has been occupied by political drama and the election campaign, other things – serious things – have been going on almost unnoticed.
Last week, students at Auckland University voted to ‘‘disaffiliate’’ – ‘‘expel’’ would be a more honest word – a students’ anti-abortion group, ProLife Auckland. You don’t have to be opposed to abortion to find this attack on free speech ominous.
A spokeswoman for Auckland Students for Choice, a women’s rights group that pushed for a referendum on the issue, said the pro-lifers were ‘‘an embarrassment’’.
Clearly, groups that campaign to save unborn children are ideologically unfashionable, so must be discouraged by all means possible.
Overseas, this phenomenon is known as ‘‘no platforming’’ – denying a voice to people you disagree with. This is rampant on university campuses in Britain and the United States and it’s lamentable that the practice has shown up here.
But it was probably inevitable, given that universities throughout the western world have been ideologically captured and no longer bother to maintain the pretence that they promote freedom of speech and robust intellectual debate. Yet democracy is built around the contestability of ideas, as the current election campaign reminds us.
The pro-life student group was accused of ‘‘propagating harmful misinformation’’. If this phrase has an uncomfortably familiar ring, it may be because it’s similar to the language used by totalitarian regimes to silence dissidents before packing them off to re-education (read ‘‘punishment’’) camps.
Ironically, if anyone could be accused of propagating misinformation, it was those campaigning to banish the pro-life group.
The debate was misleadingly framed as being about misogyny – a word now used to marginalise anyone who dares to express a view that’s at odds with feminist orthodoxy. But wanting to save unborn children isn’t remotely synonymous with hatred of women. Only a seriously warped ideology could equate the two.
The students’ decision means that while the pro-lifers will theoretically still be able to organise on campus, the referendum result – 1600 in favour of ‘‘disaffiliation’’, 1000 against – tilts the playing field heavily against them by denying them access to funding and resources available to other activist groups through the Auckland University Students’ Association.
But what matters more is the symbolism of the decision and the message it sends. By expelling the group, the association has signalled its willingness to shut out voices deemed ideologically unacceptable.
It is a chilling example of the
Being young, she is consumed by idealism. She will probably have been influenced by politically correct teachers and lecturers. It may not have occurred to her that once a society makes it permissible to suppress views that some people don’t like, the genie is out of the bottle and the power to silence unfashionable opinions can be turned against anyone, depending on whichever ideology happens to be prevalent at the time.
But the Auckland student referendum isn’t the only unsettling thing to have happened in recent weeks. Last month, the Charities Registration Board announced that it was stripping the conservative lobby group Family First of its charitable status, which means donations to the organisation would no longer tax deductible.
The board made this decision on the basis that Family First ‘‘did not advance exclusively charitable purposes’’. This was essentially a re-affirmation of a decision it had made previously, but which it was forced to reconsider following a court ruling.
To be fair, Family First is primarily a lobby group. But hang on a minute, so are the Child Poverty Action Group and Greenpeace, both of which enjoy charitable status.
The same could be said of Oxfam, which has morphed into a political activist organisation, but still qualifies as a charity because it combines its activism with what you might call old-fashioned charitable work.
One rule for groups promoting ‘‘progressive’’ causes, but another for organisations that take a socially conservative position? That’s how it looks to me. What we are witnessing, I believe, is the squeezing out of conservative voices as that monoculture steadily extends its reach.