What’s the life expectancy for a child born in 2025? Could today’s newborns be climbing mountains or skiing at 80 and perhaps working until their 90th birthdays?
The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas urged us to resist wandering passively into our twilight years. But while he championed the notion that ‘old age should burn and rave at close of day’, the inherent defiance of his verses – ‘do not go gentle into that good night; rage, rage, against the dying of the light’ – contained few clues as to how medical science might help us get there. And the fact that Thomas died at the age of 39 suggests that his rage was all in vain.
However, rapid advances in longevity medicine and research mean that we may be on the cusp of delaying the close of day with far more effective tools than rage or defiance.
With the global population experiencing dramatic milestone ageing in their 40s and 60s, counter-measure intervention to delay or mitigate those milestones could allow future generations to age disgracefully rather than surrender to the dying of the light. A combination of stem-cell research, supplementary medicine and neuro regeneration could conceivably take extended life away from the realms of poetry and science fiction and make healthier, longer lives a viable prospect.
What causes ageing?
Longevity inevitably causes decay; the process of ageing is governed by cellular, molecular and physiological deterioration and neurodegeneration, and because of its non-linear nature, it’s a profoundly complex process. As mentioned above, two significant non-linear milestone events in the ageing of human beings occur during our 40s and 60s, with research showing that biological ageing takes place in fits and starts, and doesn’t follow a predictable trajectory. Indeed, a study from 2024 led by a professor of genetics notes that, “the observation of a non-linear increase in the prevalence of aging-related diseases implies that the process of human aging is not a simple linear trend”.
The researchers of this particular study tracked age-related changes in more than 135,000 different molecules and microbes across an age range spanning 25 to 75, giving them around 250 billion data points. Those molecules and microbiomes – the fungi, bacteria and viruses that our bodies play host to – led researchers to discover a noticeable change in the abundance of molecules and microbes at around the age of 44 and the age of 60. More than 80% of the molecules they studied fluctuated in number in a distinctly non-linear fashion, and the ages of 44 and 60 showed, on average, the greatest signs of rapid change.
The study’s senior author points out that the dramatic changes we see at those specific ages hold true regardless of which class of molecules we’re looking at.
Can we delay the ageing process?
IV drips and supplements
Anti-ageing IV therapy is a popular and quick way to get vitamins and other nutrients directly into the body’s bloodstream, whilst bypassing the traditional metabolism process. And on the basis that IV drips are effective in medical and clinical settings, they can arguably increase the effectiveness of supplements over the digestible varieties, making them more effective. And while Vitamin B complex – comprising Vitamin B1, B2, B5, B6 and B12 – is often marketed as cosmetic dermatological supplements, they support healthy immune and nervous systems, a healthy metabolism, the production of vital haemoglobin, and the ability of cells to grow and divide, especially when combined with Vitamin C and zinc. IV zinc treatments also assist anti-ageing by promoting wound healing and regulating coagulation.
Longevity clinics
Pure Health in Abu Dhabi has established a longevity clinic – the Pura Longevity Clinic – to scientifically address both risk-disease factors and lifestyle choices, with the ultimate aim of prolonging healthy life. This positions the clinic squarely in line with the emirate’s goal of taking a proactive, holistic approach to healthcare, rather than simply treating illness. In fact, representing a world first, Abu Dhabi’s Department of Health (DoH) has established a licensing procedure for Healthy Longevity Medicine Centres (HLMCs) to facilitate the path to achieving longer lives.
Neuroregeneration
One of the world’s pre-eminent neurosurgeons, and the only Emirati with an American board certification in neurosurgery, Dr. Abdul Baker, is using stem cells with his partners at biosciences firm TricelX, to perform neuroregeneration. Whilst its original purpose was to treat spinal-cord injury, research is showing that it can help with cognitive improvement.
Many of the dermatological applications of mesenchymal signalling cell (MSC) therapy have gained headlines for their success as anti-ageing skin therapy, but the science behind the regenerative capabilities of MSC apply as much to biological and neurological ageing and disease as they do to the success of MSC in the re-epithelisation and secretion of the very growth factors that determine dermatological regeneration.
The so-called native, non-expanded mesenchymal signalling cells (nMSC) have been shown to create a holistic healing opportunity through tissue repair and immune-regulation, whilst slowing the process of apoptosis, or cell death, and promoting new blood-vessel growth (angiogenesis) and cell replication (mitosis).
Cellular senescence therapy
Other pioneering treatments include ways to combat cellular senescence, the state in which cells stop dividing but remain in the body. TriCelX sees cellular senescence as the primary cause of age-related decline and physiological impairment. That’s partly because an accumulation of senescent cells – cells that stop dividing, but do not die off – can encourage many age-related pathologies. Treatments to remove non-dividing cells, however, will deliver better regenerative outcomes and help patients live healthier lives far longer into older age.
Along with complementary anti-ageing treatments such as hormone optimisation and peptide therapies, the biosciences firm, under a division known as Juvenex, aims to literally rejuvenate patients with individualised products, evidenced by medical science, that promote healthy cell division, and take advantage of synthetic amino-acid sequences known as peptides to influence desired cellular outcomes.
AI assistance
Diagnostics, research and anti-ageing therapeutics are already benefiting from the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning, and the potential for more rapid research is eye-watering.
Recent breakthroughs have seen vast libraries rapidly screened by AI-assisted drug discovery platforms, by way of the tech’s deep-learning algorithms. This, in turn, has allowed researchers to rapidly design and produce new drugs known as senolytic compounds that target and destroy senescent cells that have stopped dividing, whilst leaving healthy cells alone to continue replicating.
Because of its capability to vastly accelerate the processing and interpretation of data, AI is having a far-reaching effect on simultaneous multi-omics data analysis. With multi-omics, everything from genomics to proteomics and epigenomics can be analysed, on the same biological entity, to give a more rounded and comprehensive analysis of biological systems. Biological-ageing clocks powered by AI can help detect age-related diseases by using multi-omic analysis to finesse assessments of biological age. As such, they can help identify earlier signs of declining health than previously possible. And combined with the opportunity to track our health through medical tech and remote monitoring, ageing populations could find it easier to take action to alter lifestyles and retain good health for longer.
Do not go gentle into that good night…
The prospect of extracting significantly more meaningful years from our minds and bodies is now rooted in medical science rather than science fiction, and that science is firmly set on the road to making 70 the new 50.
As rapid advances in medical research continue to open up new ways of rejuvenating cell production and promoting cognitive regeneration to enable healthier, longer lives, Dylan Thomas’ raging and defiance could be delayed for several decades.
