Lifespan views.

«There are only 3 things which don't age, but live and die - atoms, genes and males».



What is an aging and how can we achieve life extension?
At first sight it seems to be impossible to live for a long time and enjoy your life without unavoidable diseases. Of course,immortality is not meant … Why? Maybe in view of impossibility to overcome the entropic barrier.
Modern people live much longer than their ancestors. But they want to live even longer and they want their life to be active and healthy. Gerontology is trying to answer both questions - how to increase human life expectancy and to reach a really old age, and how to slow down the processes of aging and to avoid age-related diseases.

It is not surprising that senescence is not an attractive process: unpleasant disorders,heart-,kidneys-,lungs - diseases,anchylosis and so on... But what do we mean saying «aging»?So, senescence - is the age related changes leading to death probability increase. The aging process reason, particularly its acceleration or deceleration at some biological species, is the mutation changes existence in the vitally important genes. In other words , aging is a process of the individual development ,is a very complex biological process leading to the progressive structure and function changes in the genetic systems,to the phenotypical plasticity , accumulation of the pathological conditions and then results in the death As to the specific gerontal genes presence, probably it seems to be non — existent.
In order to achieve life extension it is necessary to operate by system approach. One of the main targets in this field is development of the pharmaceutical industry.So,if a person has a headache or pressure rise it is necessary to take a medicine and by that you can stop the disturbance arise. Step by step your organism will adapt to the medicines but the progressive pharmaceutical development is able to solve your health problems and extent your living. So as to make a pharmaceutical product more effective in order to achieve the longevity the essential step in this work is a search of the practical model object. Not yet senescence accelerated mouse(SAM), a murine model of accelerated senescence,was established by Toshio Takeda and colleagues.SAM consists of series of SAMP (prone) and SAMR (resistant) lines. So, all SAMP lines are characterized by accelerated accumulation of senile features,earlier onset and faster progress of age-associated pathological phenotypes,and these SAMP are useful for evaluation of putative anti-aging therapies, for example, SAMP1 line is used to study the anti-aging effect of the antioxidant containing food and various anti-oxidants, such as coenzyme Q10, vitamin C, lycopene. So,the Japanese model SAM evokes a big interest in the global science field owing to the 2 reasons at least. First of all , the senescence acceleration trait is genetically determined and that's why it is passed from one generation to another; secondly,it is a useful mutant model to study aging mechanisms, the process of senescence acceleration and also it is represented as a short-term indicator of the pathological changes.

The next target is associated with the stress-resistance. The stress sensitivity grows very rapidly in adults and the search of the methods to increase the stress-resistance represents as an important step in the life extension achievement.The striking example is the «negligible aging» in the African mole rats, Greenlandic turtles, whales and so on. To their ability to live for a long time the elongated reproductive period,wonderful stress resistance and practically the constant gene expression are added during their life. So,the analysis of their gene profile is able to give a lot of useful information how these living organisms obtain such features.

As a matter of fact to extend your life it is required to speak about healthy lifestyle and ecological factors. What we eat and how we spend our free time – going in for sport or having fallen into the habit of smoking before going to sleep have a great influence on our organism and lead to a disease presence or absence.


The rapidly increasing interest and development of the regenerative medicine shows a great promise in the near future. The cell technology evolution from the embryonic stem cells to the induced pluripotent stem cells speaks for itself. The advanced cell technologies are able to supply the scientific field with the improved stem cells acting as a source in order to grow transplantation material - skin and organs without any disorders in the patients like a graft rejection, etc. By means of stem cell technologies the new opportunities are given,starting from skin rejuvenation and finishing with organ creation.
Striking example of the stem cells abilities and appropriate technologies is a trachea transplantation grown from the patient stem cells. Such wonderful and sophisticated surgery was made by Paolo Macciarini.
Of course,today we don't know so much to be be fully confident in the stem cell properties and the transplanted material destiny. The unanticipated changes and mutations can occur in the grown material which already has remained in the patient leading to the grave health consequences.

To my mind it is necessary to examine a question concerning the lifespan extension in various aspects. I just mean that a long healthy life is a «great pleasure» which can be realized by scientific means. But is there a barest necessity to live for a long a time? It is an open secret that antigerontological actions as the method of the onto genetic disaster overcoming, nulling aging,increasing sexual happiness and living repeatedly (more than 100 years) is an extremely expensive thing requiring big costs and that's why such «life extension» opportunities will be offered only to very rich cohort — millionaires,people, who don't know any troubles in the financial assets.The global implementation of the antigerontological program which is supported by the ideas of aging suppression and «useful death»,on the one hand, and artificial lifespan extension,on the other hand, can destroy world economy and politics in some advanced and developed countries,can disturb traditions,evoke social and moral conflicts, unemployment and generation war. Therefore we should take into account that people may not be ready for such changes and try to solve possible consequences based on long- range guess.