Finding smthg that preferentially targets scenescent cells may or may not be so hard. Niner proposes a potential approach, that I imagine could be financied by LongeCity:
A senescent cell, by its very nature, is biochemically different than a younger cell. In order to be recognized by the immune system, that difference needs to be expressed on the surface of the cell, which may or may not be the case. If it's not, we could still attack the senescent cells internally, using a small molecule that preferentially kills them. From the sound of it, anything that could preferentially kill them would do, even if it killed some healthy cells in the process, since there's a fairly large excess of healthy cells, and even moderate reductions in senescent cells would be helpful.
Because it's pretty easy to create senescent cells, it should be pretty easy to set up an assay to look at lots of different chemicals in order to find something that would preferentially target the senescent cells. I've heard that there are already people looking at this. It would be really cool if someone did this with all the compounds on the GRAS list, so we could take them without worrying about endless trials and FDA approval. However, there wouldn't be much profit in that, so it probably won't happen. Maybe there's a role for some underground biohacking here...
Niner, how complex do you think this could be 1) at home (...) 2) in a pure cell lab 3) in a rodent+cell lab? How much timeand moneu could it take?
I see it as a problem with three parts. The first part would be getting a "representative" human cell line cultured in two populations: One that was senescent and the other that was mitotically competent. The second part would be developing an assay. This would involve treating both types of cells with a compound at some concentration, and having an easy way to detect some form of lethality. It might be looking for a marker of apoptosis, or it might be an optical method, essentially looking at cells under a microscope. The best thing would be something that was fast and could be automated in a 96 well plate or similar. The third part of the problem would be obtaining the GRAS compounds. Ideally, we'd find someone who already has them in solution, put up on plates, and ready to be loaded onto the screening robot. The worst case scenario would involve purchasing small quantities of a lot (~4000?) of compounds, putting them up in an appropriate solvent like DMSO, and preparing them for screening.
I think part 1 is relatively easy, if you are familiar with cell culture. I might be imagining that, since I'm not a cell biologist. The assay development is kind of a question mark. Maybe easy, maybe hard. (Maybe real hard...) You'd need to know your way around the lab. The last part, obtaining the compounds and setting them up for screening is the real killer. Unless you already had the compounds, it would be very expensive to do them all. It would probably be a couple hundred thousand dollars and months of lab time. It might be reasonable to look at a few hundred though, and choosing them intelligently might be almost as good as blindly screening a lot of them.
Since the idea behind the GRAS compounds is that they are already considered safe for human consumption, it would make sense to test them at a concentration that could be achieved in the body, rather than an artificially high concentration. If you were looking for leads at a pharmaceutical company, you might use a fairly high concentration in order to see if you have any activity, then synthesize analogs to attempt to improve activity.
Probably the best way to go about this would be to find people who already have the expertise and tools, and get them to collaborate. There are probably a lot of academic and industrial labs that could do part 1, a few academic and more industrial labs that could do part 2, and a few industrial labs that would have the GRAS compounds ready to go.
There are contract research labs in various countries that would do at least some if not all phases of this. I don't know what they would charge, but my guess would be "a lot", at least by our standards. It would be less if you already had the assay developed and working reliably. It might be possible to tempt some organization like Isagenix to part with compound samples if they are then allowed to market the results. If you don't expect to make any money with it, it gives you a leg up in terms of bargaining with people who do want the money.
LongeCity
