6 replies to this topic

[richardschueler]

After reading "ending aging" I've found.... Progress is being made every day that fowards sens initiatives.

Vectors to implement gene therapy, people born with mutations in the mitochondrial dna....

I'm about as new to this stuff as one can be.

Moral of the story. SENS IS happening, not so much because of it's tenacity of achievement, but because what makes up SENS is already happening as progress towards other ends.

Which current areas of research are most beneficial towards SENS objectives? I should have jotted down notes as I read the book and cherry picked every instance of progress that Aubrey quoted from current research and trials...

It may be easier to tickle progress where it's already happeneing and beneficial towards SENS initiatives, than to go it alone...

From memory, people who's conditions are genetic, and their repair would be simliar to the repair of people with similar problems from age instead of inborn errors. Gene therapy...

I'm sure there are more than 10 causes out there, which have great merit, and in addition to that merit have simultaneous relevency towards SENS initiatives. I'm sure those more than 10 causes would love to have more support, and would probably be even more excitited to know that progress directly helping them, would result in helping others without the same problems they had.

I guess one good primer question would be, the presenters at SENS, many of them were doing their research before SENS was conceptualized, and all of their research was probably the most relevent research that could be located towards SENS. Is it easier to double the number and/or progress of people who presented at SENS this year? Or is it easier to create new "SENS" reaearchers?

These questions aren't perfect, but they're a good start for a layman.

[John Schloendorn]

Is it easier to double the number and/or progress of people who presented at SENS this year? Or is it easier to create new "SENS" reaearchers?

It's easier to increase the number of people who "accidentally" do relevant stuff. All that takes is money. But it's far more important to have people who actually work *in order to* get aging cured to put the pieces together, and bring them into positions where they can practically, politically and financially do so. Much of SENS is a proposal of how to do exactly this right now, using only existing technology, if only we could get more such people to work.

[kevin]

There is plenty of work going on, just not focused and whose objectives may be less than optimal. The MF and other inititiatives need to act as as lens to focus a spotlight on the research that is going on that show promise for doing something within our lifetimes. This will attract mainstream attention and help other researchers review and reform the work they are doing to better attack aging from an engineering perspective. We don't need more researchers, we need to get the ones currently working to see the potential for their own work in the light of actually doing something.

[maestro949]

A good percentage of all ailments have an aging factor. Even getting existing researchers to ask the question "Is there anything in my particular narrow branch of research that could contribute to slowing or reversing the process?" might incite them to do a little beneficial research on the side. The upstream causes of aging affect just about every subfield of medicine so it really should be a part of every specialist's research effort. With aging populations this is only going to become more apparent and necessary to the future students of medicine and biotech.

[eternaltraveler]

the problem is there is a vanishingly small minority of researchers that see any kind of big picture (or if they can see it, they don't do anything about it).

Increasing the number of broadly focused synthesists could work wonders.

[maestro949]

the problem is there is a vanishingly small minority of researchers that see any kind of big picture (or if they can see it, they don't do anything about it).

The big picture is key but it is extremely tough with the volume of qualitative data flowing out of each field and rapidly advancing tech. It can easily lead to a jack of all trades & master of nothing but we do need more people cross-pollinating across the various subfields and looking for more economical interventions.

Increasing the number of broadly focused synthesists could work wonders.

synthesists = bioinformaticians. We need about 200,000 more working across all of the data sets and building the next generations of engineering, diagnostics and data mining tools. There are at least a million data points that each person (patient) can have collected to know the real-time state of exactly how aging is impacting each person. There's no reason that within a few decades we can't affordably screen the entire population and implement a preventative and personalized aging / disease intervention plan.

[maestro949]

Much of SENS is a proposal of how to do exactly this right now, using only existing technology, if only we could get more such people to work.

The problem with a plan of using only existing technology is that it completely discounts the rapid advancements in high-throughput technology. It's similar to Aubrey's comment regarding "sidestepping our ignorance of metabolic complexity" which we are rapidly untangling and will increasingly do so over time. We need to take these advancements into account because "existing technology" is already obsolete as is our current understanding of biological processes. It changes daily and will be a moving target for quite awhile. Planning accordingly is smart.

We are going to complete the proteomic puzzle and be able to build sophisticated models that will uncover better alternatives to absolutely everything we currently have as current therapeutic interventions and even theoretical interventions.