Putin says organ transplants could grant immortality. Not quite.

This week I am writing from Manchester, where I took part in a conference for aging. Wednesday was full of conversations and presentations of scientists who try to agree to aging-to the molecular level. As soon as we can understand the complex biology of aging, we should be able to slow down or prevent the beginning of age -related diseases. Then my editor continued a video of the leaders of Russia and China, who spoke about immortality. "Nowadays they are still a child at the age of 70," China's Xi Jinping, 72, as according to the film material that CCTV did in several media. "With the developments of biotechnology, human organs can be continuously transplanted, and people can live disciples and younger and even reach immortality," the Russia's Vladimir Putin, also 72, replied. Sergei Bobylev, Sputnik, Kreml Pool Photo About AP There is a striking contrast between this radical perspective and the incremental durability science, which is presented at the meeting. Repeated rounds of the organ transplant surgery will likely help someone soon extend their lifespan radically. First, back to Putin's suggestion: the idea of ​​continuously replacing old organs to stay young. It is a simplified way to think about aging. After all, aging is so complicated that the researchers cannot agree to what it causes, why it occurs or how to define it is "treated". Nevertheless, the idea of ​​repairing worn -out body parts with biological or synthetic spare parts. Replacement therapies - including biogenerateter organs - are developed by several research teams. Some have already been tested in humans. Let's take a look at the idea of ​​replacement therapies this week. Nobody fully understands why our organs fail with age. At first glance, it seems to be a good idea to replace it. After all, we already know how to make organ transplants. They have been part of medicine since the 1950s and have been used to save hundreds of thousands of human lives in the United States alone. And replacing old organs with young people can have more general effects. When a young mouse is sewn on an old one, the older mouse benefits from the agreement and your health seems to improve. The problem is that we don't really know why. We do not know what it is with young body tissues that make it health -promoting. We don't know how long these effects could take in one person. We also do not know how different organ transplants will compare. Could a young heart be more advantageous than a young liver? Nobody knows. And that is before taking into account the practical aspects of the organ transplant. There is already a lack of donor organs - thousands of people die from waiting lists. Transplantation requires a larger operation and typically a lifespan of prescription drugs that make the immune system over there and a person more susceptible to certain infections and illnesses. The idea of ​​repeated organ transplants should not be particularly appealing. "I don't think that will happen soon," says Jesse Poganik, who age in Brigham and in the women's hospital in Boston and is also a meeting in Manchester. Poganik worked together with transplanted surgeons in his own research. "The operations are good, but they are not easy," he tells me. And they come with real risks. His own 24-year-old cousin developed a form of cancer after a liver and heart transplant. She died a few weeks ago, he says. So when it comes to replacing worn organs, scientists are looking for both biological and synthetic alternatives. We have been replacing body parts for centuries. Wood toes were used as early as the 15th century. There have been joint replacement for more than a hundred years. And great innovations in the past 70 years have given us devices such as pacemakers, hearing aids, brain implants and artificial hearts. Scientists also examine other opportunities to produce tissue and organs. There are different approaches here, but they include everything, from the injection of stem cells to the sowing of "scaffolding" with cells in a laboratory. In 1999, researchers used their own cells of the volunteers to sow bladder -shaped collagen scales. The resulting biogenic bubbles were transplanted into seven people in a first attempt. Now scientists are working on more complicated organs. Jean Hébert, program manager of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US government for Health, examined for paths to gradually replace the cells in the brain of a person. The idea is that the recipient will have a young brain at some point. Hébert showed my colleague Antonio Regalado how he removed parts of the brain of the mice in his early experiments and replaced them with embryonic stem cells. This work seems to be a world from the biochemical studies that are presented at the British Society for Research on Aling Annual Meeting in Manchester, where I am now. On Wednesday, a scientist described how he had tested potential longevity medication on the tiny nematoden -worm C. Elegans. These worms only live about 15 to 40 days and his team can carry out tens of thousands of experiments with them. About 40% of the medication that extends the lifespan in C. Elegans also help mice live longer, he told us. For me this is not a amazing hitric. And we don't know how many of these drugs will work in humans. Probably less than 40% of this 40%. Other scientists presented work on chemical reactions at the cellular level. It was deep, fundamental science, and my snack was that many aging researchers still haven't fully understood it. It will take years - if not decades - to make the full image of aging on a molecular level. And when we rely on a number of experiments in worms, then mice and then to humans, it is unlikely that we are making a very long progress. In this context, the idea of ​​replacement therapy feels like an abbreviation. "The replacement is a really exciting way because you don't have to understand the biology of aging so much," says Sierra Lore, who is studying aging at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California. According to Lore, she started her research career with aging on a molecular level, but soon changed the course. She now plans to draw her attention to replacement therapies. "I quickly realized that we were decades away [from understanding the molecular processes that are based]," she says. "Why don't we just take what we already know - explanations - and try to understand and apply it better?" Perhaps Putin's uncomplicated approach to delay aging has a certain earnings. Whether he will grant immortality is another matter. This article first appeared in the study of the weekly biotech newsletters from with Technology Review. To get it every Thursday in your inbox and first read items like this, register here.