Jan 17, 2020
Michael D. West, PhD, founder and CEO of AgeX Therapeutics, Inc. (agexinc.com), delivers an insightful overview of the effects of aging and the cellular aging mechanism.
Dr. West received his PhD from Baylor College of Medicine with a concentration in the biology of cellular aging. He has spent the better part of his academic and business career focused on the application of developmental biology to various age-related degenerative diseases.
Dr. West discusses the premise of his company, AgeX Therapeutics. As he explains, aging is a national and international priority. He explains how the post WWII population surge has made chronic degenerative diseases a major focus. And the goal at AgeX Therapeutics is to develop new and innovative therapies to combat these chronic degenerative diseases. AgeX Therapeutics is interested in the development and commercialization of unique therapeutics that will target human aging issues. Working forward from their current proprietary technologies, such as PureStem® and induced Tissue Regeneration (iTR™), Age X Therapeutics seeks to further develop innovative medicines that can have a significant positive impact on the many and various unsolved problems in aging.
Dr. West talks about aging in detail, framing his conversation upon the current information that exists regarding various diseases such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes, etc. He states that as they study the basic clockwork elements that lead to aging in the brain, skin, lungs, etc., they then apply this information and research to the unmet needs in medicine. Dr. West goes on to explain telomerase, an important enzyme that adds nucleotides to telomeres, most especially in cancer cells. He explains how telomerase resets the clock. Further, he talks about some of the information they learned from cloning experiments. The evidence, he states, suggests that by putting an aged cell back into an egg cell, the aging process could be set in reverse. And today, after further experimentation, researchers know this to be true. Telomerase can in fact rewind the clock of cellular aging.
The aging researcher explains how the aging process is the same throughout the body, which is encouraging because having a common mechanism makes the outlook for discovery of treatment and therapies better. Continuing, Dr. West explains how change is observed, discussing the science of aging, and he states that changes seem to be systemic thus far in current experimentation with animals.
In this podcast:
New chronic degenerative disease therapies
How can telomerase reset the clock?
Can aging be reversed at the cellular level?