The top technology entrepreneurs of our generation are investing billions into reversing aging.
Each is betting that the best way to reverse aging is with cellular reprogramming: the process of resetting cells without changing their identity.
The theory is that aging is partly driven by changes in how cells read and use their DNA, so resetting those instructions could restore function across many tissues at once rather than treating one age-related disease at a time.
But there are significant risks with this approach.
Most cells in the human body are specialized. They have specific jobs: skin cells, muscle cells, and neurons, for example. Fully reprogramming a cell means removing that cell’s specialization. When this happens, the cell abandons its core function and becomes stem cell-like.
But if every cell in a tissue is reset to a stem cell-like state, the tissue can no longer perform its normal function. Full reprogramming can also trigger uncontrolled growth and tumor formation.
Yet within the risks of full reprogramming was a breakthrough that earned stem-cell researcher Shinya Yamanaka the Nobel Prize in 2012.
Yamanaka and his team showed that four proteins, now called Yamanaka factors, when introduced into an adult cell, act as a master reset: they switch off the cell’s specialized identity and return it to the blank, embryonic-like state it started from.
It was later demonstrated that if cells are exposed to these Yamanaka factors for only a short amount of time, they can improve cellular function and tissue repair without erasing their specialization. In other words, an old cell can regain some functions lost with age, with a lower risk of tumor formation.
This is called partial reprogramming.
Animal studies suggest partial reprogramming can speed up muscle regeneration, reduce scar formation, and reduce vision loss once thought permanent.
Partial reprogramming is just one approach within Advanced Bioengineering, itself one of four scientific paths seeking to cure aging (more in our deep dive below).
Every lab, every startup, every person writing a check in longevity biotech, is making one of these four bets. You can sort them with two questions:
1. Does the approach try to buy time, or stop and reverse aging outright?
1. Does the approach require us to understand what causes aging, or can it work without that knowledge?
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