Aubrey de Grey: Stem Cell & Gene Therapy Breakthroughs a Possibility for 2008
March 04 2008 / by Venessa Posavec
Category: Biotechnology Year: 2008 Rating: 3
Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey is
blazing the path to immortality. He’s identified seven types of
aging damage that need to be resolved before we achieve “engineered
negligible senescence”, a medical goal that could grant an
indefinite lifespan. 
Advanced stem cell therapies and gene therapies will be a
necessity in achieving that end. de Grey, in a recent Future
Blogger interview, predicts that we may see some of those
necessary breakthroughs as early as this year:
“For 2008, I think we’re going to carry on seeing an avalanche of reports of breakthroughs in stem cell therapies. I don’t know exactly whether those breakthroughs will predominantly be on the medical side or on the pre-medical side – in other words, in the laboratory.”
“But, either way, we will begin to appreciate that stem cells are coming into control, we are getting to the point where we can manipulate cells to behave in the way we’d like them to, before putting them into the body, so when we put them in the body they can engage in a much more powerful regenerative process than they would naturally do, than the body naturally undertakes.”
Though research in gene therapies have had a rocky road in the past 15 years, de Grey is confident that all that is soon to change:
“I think we’re coming now to the point where there are sufficiently many good ideas out there that are being followed, that it’s only a matter of time before a really big breakthrough is made with regard to gene therapy that’s really safe and really effective, and 2008 could be the year.”
(The full interview transcript can be found here)
