Many scientists now believe that mastering cellular rejuvenation may be the key to transforming how long and how well we live. Some hope that they might eventually be able to harness the process to cure hundreds of diseases, extend life by decades and even fend off aging entirely.
Over the past 20 years, they have learned how to trigger rejuvenation in the lab, achieving a series of breakthroughs that have made that future feel tantalizingly close. Scientists have taken skin cells from 90-year-olds and restored them to youth in a petri dish. They have rejuvenated diseased mice, turning their gray hair back to black and strengthening their muscles. They have taken failing kidneys out of rats, rejuvenated them in a lab and successfully reimplanted them; they are now moving on to pigs. In March, the first safety trials to test rejuvenation therapy on humans began with an attempt to reverse disease in the eyes and cure glaucoma.
Rejuvenation sounds just as sci-fi as any of the ideas coming out of the longevity field, and yet there’s widespread agreement among scientists that the research has extraordinary potential. The most vehement disagreements are not over whether cellular aging can be reversed, but how far scientists can push it. …
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