My Hopes for the Future of Longevity Research | Linus Petersson | TEDxStockholm
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lhIfeeR7KQ Video ID: 0lhIfeeR7KQ ============================================================ What if you could stay young for as long as you'd like? What if you could meet your great great grandchild? What if you didn't have to worry about cancer or dementia? What if we could stop aging? As a teenager, I had an existential crisis. I asked myself, "How does the universe work? What's the meaning of life? Why do my loved ones eventually have to die and leave me? Why can't we all just stay young?" To get answers, I started reading. I read everything. Philosophy, physics, chemistry, and biology. Two things became clear to me. First, there are no laws of nature that makes it impossible to extend the human lifespan indefinitely. That was the good news. And then secondly, the bad news. The aging process is a super complex biological phenomena. And back then, we didn't have a very good scientific description of what what it was. But still at this time I also did a judgment call. I thought I don't think we can do this within my lifetime. And yet I decided there and then to dedicate my life to stopping aging to achieve longevity. This is now over 20 years ago. Time flies. Uh and the picture now is completely changed. We've had scientific breakthroughs like the hallmarks of aging. The hallmarks of aging are a description of what happens in our cells when we age. They're far from perfect, but they're good enough to start developing drugs. We've had the emergence of a longevity industry with over 200 companies and we've had the birth of a global longevity movement of scientists and entrepreneurs. Today, many scientists are convinced that stopping aging is a practical possibility. Over 2500 have signed the Dublin Longevity Declaration. Why is this? Well, let's start from the beginning. When we observe the natural kingdom, we can make the obvious yet fundamental observation that the lifespan between different species differ from minutes to millennia. This indicates that lifespan is a malleable trait. It's something that can be changed. Particularly interesting are species that don't seem to age at all. And we have discovered over two dozen of these species so far. Pretty cool. My favorite example is the giant Galapagus tortoise. These uh large turtles can become over 170 years old. In 1835, Charles Darvin took one of these turtles with him on his ship back to Britain. And this turtle was eventually named Harriet. Now Harriet long outlived Darvin becoming 175 years old and she died just in 2006. Pretty cool. Now Harriet being a member of a non-aging uh species simply became an adult and then stayed healthy. She was just as vibrant and fast when she was 20 as when she was 150. Admittedly, not super fast being a turtle, but you get the idea. So from this, we can conclude that nature has already solve the problem of aging in a way. All we have to do is replicate this in humans. [snorts] Here's a mind twister for you. I invite you to think about how old your parents were when you were born. In my case, they were about 32 years old. Now, here's a fundamental question. How come I wasn't born 32 years old? How come you weren't born the same biological age as your parents? The answer is called cellular reprogramming. This is a fundamental biological mechanism that can reset a cell, making it young again. And the discovery that any type of cell in our body can be reset like this resulted in the Nobel Prize in 2012. This is obviously important if you want to stop aging, but we don't want to go all the way back. [snorts] Traditionally, it was thought that cellular development was onedirectional, going from an undifferiated state like a stem cell to a differentiated state like a heart cell or a liver cell. And this discovery was the 201 uh uh 12 uh Nobel Prize. But we don't want to go all the way back. We only want to go want to go halfway back. Partial reprogramming. The area of partial reprogramming is super hot within the longevity industry. Jeff Bezos has invested $3 billion US in a company called Altos Labs and Sam Alman 180 million in retro biosciences. Now partial reprogramming while cool is but one part of many within the longevity industry and taken together they hold the potential to fix everything that goes wrong in ourselves making us humans young indefinitely. You know, so much has happened since I dedicated my life to longevity those 20 plus years ago. The question today is not if we will stop aging, but when. And the timing here is of course of utmost importance. I mean, doesn't it matter if we do this before rather than after our loved ones perish? before you yourself perish. Luckily, there are things we can do to make this go faster. If we want to accelerate the end of aging, three things are needed. Talent, funding, and a will to do it. In terms of talent, today there are maybe only a few hundred people in the whole world really working on the problem of aging, scientists and entrepreneurs. So if you happen to be in such a position, please consider uh joining or supporting a longevity company or doing aging research. In terms of financing, today only 0.5% of the US federal science budget goes to aging research. And the same basic story is true when it comes to startup capital within biotech. So if you happen to be an investor, please consider investing in the longevity industry. And finally, the most important thing, the will to do it. It all starts here. Technical problems can be solved, scientific discoveries can be made, but only if the public demands it. So when you go home tonight and if you think about this and reach the same conclusion as I have, please tell your friends and family that you think aging should be stopped. You could even multiply your impact by supporting or joining a longevity organization. You know, there's not a single government agency anywhere in the world tasked with stopping aging. It's just us. So, you can really have a outsized important u effect here. In short, I invite you to join the longevity movement. Together, we really can solve humanity's oldest problem. Thank you.