Ponce de Leon's search for the fountain of eternal youth may be a legend, but the main idea - the search for a cure for old age - is quite real. People have been trying to crack the code of eternal youth almost from the very beginning of humanity.
We tried everything we could imagine, from magical objects and epic travels to sacrifices and blood drinking (we also invented monsters that live forever by drinking blood). It was only a matter of time before science got involved in this search, and, you know, it still managed to take some real steps in this direction.
Scientific quest for immortality
Aging, at the molecular level, makes no sense. Our bodies are constantly creating new cells and restoring our natural defenses, but we are aging anyway. Entropy takes the best of us, and we accept it as inevitable, even though science has taken a huge step forward in increasing our lifespan. Life expectancy has increased over the past century, and people in developed countries can live on the order of 80 years, much more than 47 years in 1900.
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This increase is due in large part to advances in the treatment of childhood illnesses, but it has also led to an increase in chronic illnesses in old age. Heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's are serious problems, and each of them is treated individually or not at all. It would be much easier to just swallow a pill and activate the body's resources.
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Scientists are well aware of these problems and are constantly testing various methods to restore the vitality of the human body. Restoring homeostasis - or the body's ability to self-stabilize its systems in response to stress such as exercise, hot or cold weather, high or low light - is a major focus. The human body is primarily a complex biological machine, and old age is, in fact, a mechanical problem that must be dealt with.
And if the solution to this problem is to keep people healthy and free from disease for as long as possible, then science has a very good chance of coping with this.
The biggest villain that prevents us from living long is the telomerase enzyme. Discovered by Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn (who received the Nobel Prize for her discovery), telomerase repeats DNA sequences at the end of a chain of chromosomes that cover each strand and define the beginning of the next.
It is responsible for telling our cells when to stop growing, and every time it covers the chain, a little bit of the cell's information about how to rearrange is lost. As a result, scientists are looking for ways to prevent the loss or activate telomerase when it fails to combat aging at the molecular level.
However, science did not always know that telomerase was the problem, so other solutions have been proposed throughout scientific history. Aviator Charles Lindbergh has tried to cheat death in search of a way to replace our organs with machines like the ones that doctors use in modern medicine to temporarily replace lungs.
Cloning, cyborgs, nanotechnical cell repair and 3D printed organs are a continuation of Linberg's line of thought, which can hardly be called wrong. In any case, all of these methods rely primarily on the replacement of body parts rather than stop aging.
Science fiction writers often suggest loading the human brain into a computer and thus achieving immortality, and real-world science says this is quite possible. The so-called "whole brain emulation" will allow scientists to move us towards this form of immortality, and in the future to create neural devices that will allow us to work with the human body in the same way as our brains, and thus create an "eternal brain."
Science fiction also gave us the idea of cryogenically preserving the human body by slowing down metabolism and conserving resources - in other words, freezing. But this measure is more defensive than solving the problem.
Current research
Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco have successfully reversed the effects of aging and old age diseases in mice by infusing the blood of young mice into old ones. Specifically, they found that blood from a 3-month-old mouse reversed age-related declines in memory, learning, and brain function in an 18-year-old mouse (equivalent to a 70-year-old human).
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The scientists also found that when they injected only plasma into aged mice, they increased stamina and motor function, becoming one level with their 3-month-old peers.
Scientists have even been able to identify a chemical signal, a specific protein that acts as the main regulator of the brain and whose activity increases with young blood. However, the fact is that there is no specific mechanism or medicine that will solve all the problems with aging - and this is what scientists plan to find when they start experimenting with people.
Silicon Valley is the main focus of research on aging. Google created Calico Labs to tackle reversing aging and creating drugs to help our biology. Human Longevity is focused on building a database of 1 million human genome sequences by 2020 to enhance the fight against aging.
The Palo Alto Longevity Prize awards, each worth $ 500,000, were awarded for "innovation in restoring the body's homeostatic capacity" and "promoting the extension of stable and healthy life." The stated goals of all such companies are to develop specific methods of fighting aging and diseases of old age, but in fact they all bring us closer to immortality.
Why is Silicon Valley involved in this? Aubrey de Gray, one of the industry's pioneers, believes that successful anti-aging medicine has the potential to become "the largest industry ever with major profit opportunities."