I am a few months late in noting this: videos from last year’s Longevity Forum, one of the events in the Longevity Week held in London in November 2019, in what now seems an entirely different world, were posted online earlier this year. The Longevity Forum is organized by Jim Mellon and allies, a part of his diverse efforts to advance the growth of a longevity-focused medical industry capable of turning back aging and significantly lengthening healthy life spans.
The Forum is focused on non-profits, regulatory concerns, and government policy rather than on industry, but there are nonetheless interesting presentations. The purpose here is to help educate decision makers and the public as to what researchers and the longevity industry is working on, the plausible emergence of much longer lives in the near future, and to suggest that some thought should go into smoothing the path to the clinic ahead of time.
This is a big tent sort of a venture, and you’ll find people working on rejuvenation therapies rubbing shoulders with those who limit their considerations to exercise programs for seniors. Then throw into the mix noted non-profit fundraisers, policy makers, and other interested parties. I’ve noted a couple of the presentation videos; there are others, so by all means take a look at the full list.
Panel: How can the UK add five years of healthy lifespan by 2030
This panel will explore the recent advances in pro-longevity therapies, including small molecules, stem cells, regenerative medicine , microbiome and gene therapy. All of these are, to varying degrees, in human trials and the combination of these exciting developments and the fact that ageing pathways have been proven to be malleable, make the bioengineering of human beings to live longer and more robustly a strong likelihood, rather than an historically improbable aspiration. Indeed, it is clear that the science of biogerontology is rapidly catching up with the desire of most of us to live longer and in better health.
Aubrey de Grey: Scientists, check, Investors, check, Next up, policy makers
Aubrey de Grey delivers a keynote on the next steps for longevity for policy makers. Dr Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist based in Mountain View, California, USA, and is the Chief Science Officer of SENS Research Foundation, a California-based 501(c)(3) biomedical research charity that performs and funds laboratory research dedicated to combating the ageing process.