Centenarian

Why do people over 100 years old age so slowly?  This was the question  of interventional gerontologists at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (La Jolla, CA) and Age X Therapeutics (founded by Dr. Michael West, Alameda, CA) addressed in studying the iPSCs of an 114 year old woman, a healthy 43 years old person, and an eight year old child with progeria (rapid aging). “The researchers found that supercentenarian cells transformed as easily as the cells from the healthy and progeria samples. As expected, telomeres—protective DNA caps that shrink as we age—were also reset. Remarkably, even the telomeres of the supercentenarian iPSCs were reset to youthful levels, akin to going from age 114 to age zero. However, telomere resetting in supercentenarian iPSCs occurred less frequently compared to other samples—indicating extreme aging may have some lasting effects that need to be overcome for more efficient resetting of cellular aging.”  MORE

Image Credit:  Coast Guard Compass