Anti-Aging Breakthrough: Stem Cells Reverse Signs of Aging in Monkeys

When you extend human lifespan long enough, cancer becomes close to inevitable anyway.

If a subset of the population stops dying, and that group grows, you've just invented cancer again on a different scale.

So the best way to get induced pluripotent stem cells is through the Yamanaka factors, which are proteins coded for by genes which are not expressed in mature cells. Using all four Yamanaka factors is a one-way ticket to tumor town. But, as it turns out, using three of the four still gets you IPSCs without the elevated cancer risk.

Personally I’m holding out for something a bit more interesting like some even more macabre Picture of Dorian Gray type thing.

> gotta be cancer

"Notably, none of the cell transplant recipients developed tumors (n = 16)."

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00571-9?_re...

> Monkeys are not humans

The implanted stem cells, however, were human. (The fact that that the treatments did not cause "fever or substantial changes in immune cell levels (lymphocytes, neutrophils, and monocytes), which are commonly monitored for xenograft-related immune responses," is itself surprising.)

> promises of extending life have always fallen short of hype, and odds are this will too

Correct, though I'd say because this is early-stage medical research. Not because it's targeting longevity. I'd be similarly sceptical of an N = 16 early-stage drug trial for the flu.

But they sure ain't mice, either. This is a LOT closer than results in mice.

Is there another, better animal that is used in late stage testing for other drugs you are aware of?

My assumption is, there are lots of rich people who want to live forever and lots of people who want their wealth and breakthroughs with anti ageing were quite rare or rather non existent as far as I know.

When the upside is extraordinary, it’s very reasonable to expect some downside, just based on experience of, like, everything ever.

As well as the undeniable benefit to individuals, a cure for aging would unleash a whole new bunch of problems that have been kept in check through the mechanism of people dying off regularly. A society of immortals could be quite alien to us.

Catch is perhaps a strong word. Trade-off would be more accurate.

Every action in the known universe (and surely in some unknown ones too) results in a trade-off. This is maybe the only precept on software architecture that doesn't "depends" on anything and is closer to natural law.

> There is no inherent reason that there has to be a catch

We are consistently sold ideas that do not meet expectation, the catch is expected.

"Hey everyone we discovered X breakthrough!" It only has Y constrains or consequences which make it not so useful, or at worst, harmful later.

That might not be true, if you look at the paper:

"The super stem cells prevent age-related bone loss while rejuvenating over 50% of the 61 tissues analyzed." (including the brain).

What do people die of when they die of 'old age'? There's the 3 pillars: cancer, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative. These are often (but not always) metabolic diseases; i.e. cardiovascular death often arises from kidney insufficiency. If you can regenerate the liver, kidney, etc. indefinitely, a large vector of metabolic disease is probably diminished or disappears.

In the paper, monkeys restored brain volume. They reduced the levels of senescent cells to youthful levels. They increased bone mass. This reduces or eliminates many of the threats that inflict casualties among the centenarian population.

Sure, something else could come up that the monkeys start dying from instead. But, given the way humans and monkeys die of old age—by reducing or eliminating all known threats—it's hard to see how this wouldn't extend lifespan.

that's one small part of aging

That's why they analyze factors such as memory improvements and bone density.

Where are the stem cells coming from?

The author of that quote only proved that those two qualities aren’t mutually exclusive.

Iiuc it wasn’t a comment about what the perfect lifespan is. It’s expressing a concern about how people in power might apply life extending technologies, like they do many other technologies, to exercise and entrench that power.

Or put differently: it’s a request, given limited resources let’s expend effort on a fairer society, not one with longer lived people.

Life expectancy was shorter a century ago because infant mortality, disease and injury pull the average down. We've done an amazing job of a society pulling up that lower end, but lifespan associated with normal aging is actually fairly stable. For example, Plato lived to be roughly 80 years old.

Uber rich have means of extending their power to the next generation anyway. Look at North Korea. It's stagnant and hardly changed despite changing hand 3 times.

Whereas if you live a super long life, you can't afford to be risk averse and hope for a dictator to die of old age and hope that will somehow magically change thing.

we may alternatively end up with even older elders because of general lifespan increases, it just so happens people with more experience are older, if you think older people being in charge is bad just wait until you see how the younger ones do

This is in reference to recent events: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/05/healthy-living...

> once you can't wait for someone to die, and consequently, you can't expect to die before consequences catch up to you

People will still die, even in a world without ageing, which this treatment doesn't promise.

Without going in to spoilers, the recent season of the Revolutions podcast about a future fictional revolution on Mars touches on this a fair bit. Someone about to die seizes power for himself, but no one cares much because he was already in charge and extending his reign a few more years till he dies was no big deal, until he extends his life and lives another 75 years.

The Altered Carbon universe is a manifestation of this.

As I have gotten older I've slowly realized that waiting for people to die takes a long, long time, and no longer regard it as a good strategy.

> you can't expect to die before consequences catch up to you.

Many of the worst people in humanity, seem(ed) to act like they thought they were immortal.

Even being grazed by a bullet didn't stop Trump praising the second amendment.

(Though I say that as a non-American, and someone for whom the 2nd was part of why I never even considered attempting to migrate to the US; I do recognise the language used to support it as a quasi-religious badge of identity, i.e. hard to shake).

I'm not an expert in psychology, but within a fixed population window, the murder rate will only go up unless there is a limited supply of those who murderers want to murder or unless murderers tend to prefer murdering other murderers, perhaps due to the change in game theory creating a new incentive. As humans would begin to live ever increasingly far away, we may approach a "murder death" condition where no new murders are possible. I will leave alone those who played Among Us until their numbers diminish and there is a better chance of reaching an early asymptote.

cf. Palpatine

Consequences seem to not matter so we’ll just get a bunch of meths like from altered carbon.

If you’re curious about fiction which thinks about this there’s Altered Carbon which is “what if the rich assholes can live forever” and there’s The Postmortal where all assholes get to live forever.

I don't think that the assertions are nonsense, but I don't understand how this works.

I have heard variants on this assertion:

"Two of the most prominent purported underlying causes of aging are chronic inflammation and senescent cells."

One thing that surprises me is that telomeres aren't mentioned.

I also don't understand how this is happening (is apoptosis somehow triggered?):

"Now, the Academy researchers demonstrate that SRCs reduce senescent cells, measured using a blue dye called SA-β-Gal, in multiple organs, including the brain, heart, and lungs."

The main mechanism of action appears to be:

"The therapeutic efficacy of MPCs is largely attributed to their paracrine actions, with exosomes playing a pivotal role in mediating these effects."

The researchers do not appear to fully understand how this is happening:

"Among the diverse geroprotective functions of SRCs in the brain and ovary, the restorative effect of SRC-derived exosomes on aged cells and their surroundings emerges as a key mechanism. Rejuvenation of aged cells by exosomes likely involves multiple pathways and targets."

It really seems like things are heading in that direction :/

Stalin died literally in his bed, secure and surrounded by dozens of protecting bodyguards who ironically were so afraid to bother him that his stroke wen't unattended for hours after he'd had it. And in dying at 74, he enjoyed what despite the hard toll of heavy smoking, drinking, eating richly, and deprivation in his youth, was a pretty decent lifespan by the standards of his time.

Hitler ultimately died from the sheer gambler's recklessness of reaching for far too much that belonged to too many other powers, and being burned by all the consequences. Had he not started a multi-front world war against almost every single one of the world's other major nations, he could have stayed safely in power as Germany's beloved dictator right up until any old age he managed to reach (as Franco pulled off by much more wisely focusing on consolidating domestic power and avoiding wars)

Societies do have ways of dealing with tyrants, yes, and mostly it's just by rewarding them with more. The bad parts mostly happen to utterly foolish tyrants who make tremendous missteps.

Trite, and wrong. Stalin died of a stroke at 74. To take just two more examples, Mao and Franco both died at 82, also of natural causes.

it kinda looks like you've assumed my "ideology", or even a country. Also, to die of natural causes, you know, for some people in some positions is actually a good wish. And we all will be there, I just really hope to outlive particular people.

What, did you read Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time recently?

I wonder if somebody already experiments on altering toxoplasmosis

_

Anti-aging breakthrough: Shower mats increase life expectancy in monkeys

Silver lining? The thousand year olds may actually care a bit about climate change.

Until the AIs otherthrow them.

Watch Babylon 5. Vorlons.

Or Lord of the Rings and Elves.

Immortality likely breeds ossification. Stasis.

It's quite the opposite. Since the end of monarchies we actually don't observe stable autocracies anymore. They used to last for millennia, now they don't even get to a century.

An autocracy is an idea but an autocrat is a human who cares about himself. Anyone capable of carrying the torch is seen as threat and gets exiled, imprisoned or killed. In the end it's scorched earth within the current elites so instead of succession you get revolution with say 40-50% chance. You may get the succession to work once, maybe two-three times if you're lucky, but that's it.

Now contrast it with a world where an autocrat doesn't actually need a successor and can run the country indefinitely.