Researchers hope to eliminate aging diseases


What if the key to anti-aging is the removal of certain cells from the body? Will retirement homes and assisted living communities soon have residents living to the age of 200?

According to a group of scientists from the Mayo Clinic, it just might be. As reported in the New York Times, senescent cells are parts of the body which cause aging in many tissues, and they say that if these cells can be ‘cleansed,’ then people may not suffer many of the diseases associated with aging.

“I am very excited by the results,” Dr. Norman Sharpless of the University of North Carolina, an expert in the field of aging, told the news source. “It suggests therapies that might work in real patients.”

The initial research was carried out on mice.

Dr. Judith Campisi of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, told the media outlet that the purpose and goal of such research is not to try and make people live indefinitely, but rather to extend their lives, and more importantly, to make people’s lives, however long, as healthy and illness-free as possible.

Campisi said the new research provides a lot of promise for the future. “But we now know that there are processes that are driving aging, and that those processes can be meddled with,” she said.