永生:人类寿命的逃逸速度 - SENS基金会和科研主题简介
2012-03-03 13:42阅读：
笔者注：
随着科技的发展，人类的平均寿命已经持续的呈现出延长的趋势。学术界有一个“人类寿命的逃逸速度”概念，即：依照目前的医疗保健科技，可以预防治疗部分疾病，延长寿命；然后利用延长出的寿命，研发更先进科技，又可以再次延长健康寿命；以此类推，医疗保健科技的发展终有一天可以达到阻碍衰老的程度，从而为人类争取到足够的时间发展科技实现返老还童。根据剑桥大学教授德·格雷，我们将在25-30年内达到他所谓的“人类寿命的逃逸速度”（Longevity
Escape Velocity）。
* 以下英语部分为SENS基金会简介，中文为笔者译文。转发前请征得笔者同意。
SENS Foundation works to develop, promote and ensure widespread
access to rejuvenation biotechnologies which comprehensively
address the disabilities and diseases of aging.
SENS基金会确保、促进及发展重生生物科技的广泛应用，以此治疗由衰老引起的疾病和残疾。
SENS is an acronym for 'Strategies for Engineered Negligible
Senescence'. It is best defined as an integrated set of medical
techniques designed to restore youthful molecular and cellular
structure to aged tissue
s and organs. Essentially, this involves the application of
regenerative medicine to the problem of age-related
ill-health.
SENS是“掌握可忽略衰老战略”的英语字母简称，可定义该策略为将老化组织和器官恢复到年轻的分子和细胞结构状态的综合性医疗科技。其本质是应用重生医学来解决衰老引起的健康问题。
Currently, SENS comprises seven major types of therapy addressing
seven major categories of aging damage. It is important to
understand that these seven 'planks' are a description of SENS,
rather than a definition, and could, in theory, change or grow as
we progress in our research efforts and deepen our understanding of
the challenges which face us, and their solutions.
目前，SENS应用7种主要的疗法来针对7大类的老化损害。这7类疗法是描述性的，并非精确的定义，并可以随着我们科研进展、对困难了解程度的加深和解决方法升级而改变。
Research Themes
研究主题
Many things go wrong with aging bodies, but only a few of them are
primary changes in the structure of the body itself —that is, aging
damage. Other changes (such as increases in inflammation and
oxidative stress) are the secondary consequences of this primary
change: either the direct results of those damaged components'
inability to carry out their normal role in metabolism, or the
body's adaptive or maladaptive attempts to compensate for those
changes.
身体老化带来许多问题，但是其中只有很少的问题是身体结构的基础性改变，我们可以称之为老化损害。其他的改变（比如炎症和氧化应激的增加）是基础改变导致的次级后果：比如是受损组织无法在新陈代谢过程中实现其正常功能，或者是身体对各种改变做出的适应性和适应不良性的改变。
Thus, by removing, repairing, replacing, or rendering harmless the
damage, we restore the normal functioning of the body's cells and
essential biomolecules, and the secondary changes are given the
chance to return to their normal, youthful baseline.
所以，通过消除、修复、替换或无害化这些老化损害，我们就可以恢复细胞和基本生物分子的正常功能，随之，身体的不良级次反应就可以回归到正常的、年轻的基准。
Scientists have spent decades looking for such changes in aging
bodies, this research has led to the conclusion that there are no
more than seven major classes of such cellular and molecular
damage, shown in the table below.
几十年来，科学家都在探索老化身体中的变化。学科研究已经证实只有7种细胞和分子损害，如下表所示：
Aging
Damage
老化损害
|
Discovery
发现时间
|
SENS
Solution
SENS解决途径
|
Cell loss,
tissue atrophy
细胞损耗，组织萎缩
|
1955
|
Stem cells and
tissue engineering
干细胞和组织工程
|
Nuclear
[epi]mutations
(only
cancer matters)
细胞核突变(癌症)
|
1959,
1982
|
Removal of
telomere-lengthening machinery
阻止端粒无限延长
|
Mutant
mitochondria
线粒体突变
|
1972
|
Allotopic expression
of 13 proteins
13种蛋白质的同素易位
|
Death-resistant
cells
不死有害细胞
|
1965
|
Targeted ablation
靶向切除
|
Tissue
stiffening
组织硬化
|
1958,
1981
|
AGE-breaking
molecules; tissue engineering
破坏糖基化终末产物分子；组织工程
|
Extracellular
aggregates
细胞外聚合
|
1907
|
Immunotherapeutic
clearance
免疫清除
|
Intracellular
aggregates
细胞内聚合
|
1959
|
Novel lysosomal
hydrolases
新型溶酶体水解酶
|
We can be confident that this list is complete, first and
foremost because of fact that scientists have not discovered any
new kinds of aging damage in nearly a generation, despite the facts
that research into aging has been slowly accelerating and that we
have had ever-increasingly powerful tools with which to investigate
the aging body.
我们有信心上表中老化原因已经完整，这主要是因为老化研究在渐渐加速进步，我们也拥有了更强有力的工具来探索老化身体，但最近几十年都没有发现新的老化损害。
The specific metabolic processes that are ultimately
responsible for all of this damage are still poorly understood.
However this ignorance doesn't matter for 'engineering' purposes.
All that matters is our ability to periodically fix the damage, at
the right time: after it has formed, but before it builds up to
levels high enough to interfere with our youthful
functioning.
虽然我们目前无法理解导致所有老化损害的最根本代谢过程到底是什么，但这不妨碍我们的“工程”。因为，我们需要做的就是在合适的时候（在损害产生之后，但在该损害积累到影响身体年轻机能的程度之前），获得解决周期性损害的能力。
The even better news is that we know how to fix all of this damage
today. For each major aging lesion, a SENS solution for its removal
or repair either already exists in prototype form, or is
foreseeable from existing scientific developments.
更好的消息是，在今天，我们已经知道如何修复所有的损害。针对每种主要的老化损害，SENS的解决途径部分已经成型，余下的从目前可预见的科研角度也能够预测。
Within each class of aging damage, SENS will initially target the
specific kinds of damage that make our bodies frail and limit our
healthy lifespan within our first hundred years. This first wave of
therapies will not repair all of the damage of aging, but will
rejuvenate our bodies and add significantly to healthy human
longevity.
在每种老化损害大框架下，SENS会首先将导致身体在100年内功能减退、减少健康寿命的特定损害作为攻克目标。虽然这第一波的治疗方法不能修复所有的老化损害，但是可以让我们的身体重生，达到大幅度延长健康寿命的程度。
Once we have achieved a first generation of SENS therapies, our
next targets will be forms of aging damage that take longer to
cause us problems, renewing the lease on healthy life that the
first wave of therapies gave us.
在完成第一波治疗之后，下一个目标就是解决导致更长期问题的老化损害形式，从而不断延续健康生命。
