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Selling long life

Nature Biotechnology volume 33, pages 31–40 (2015)Cite this article

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An Erratum to this article was published on 12 May 2015

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 06 February 2015

This article has been updated

A new generation of commercial entities is beginning to explore opportunities for new types of interventions and services in a graying world.

Previous attempts to translate aging research from gene discovery to humans using model systems have mostly been a bust. Decades of research and several hundred millions of dollars later, just a few molecules in clinical trials are all there is to show for the effort (Box 1 and Tables 1 and 2). Is there reason to think that recent advances in technology and scientific knowledge will increase the likelihood of developing rigorous anti-aging interventions?

Table 1 Companies commercializing longevity
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Table 2 Anti-aging drugs in clinical trials
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Figure 1: Going to extremes.
Figure 2: Increase in life expectancy at birth with elimination of disease.
Figure 3: Molecular targets for caloric restriction and interventions against premature aging.
Figure 4: The wellderly.

Alamy

Figure 5

Alamy

Change history

  • 14 January 2015

    In the version of this article initially published, the caption for Figure 5 read “Pope Innocent VIII, likely the first patient to undergo parabiosis.” In fact, he did not undergo parabiosis, but a blood transfusion. The caption should have read “Pope Innocent VIII died in a rejuvenation attempt in 1492.” The errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

  • 30 April 2015

    In the version of this article initially published, Retrotope Inc. was included in Table 1 in the “Walking dead” category. Nature Biotechnology has since been informed by Retrotope management that the company raised $10 million in seed funding in 2014. Retrotope has been removed from Table 1. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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  1. Christopher Thomas Scott and Laura DeFrancesco: Christopher Thomas Scott is a Contributing Editor at Nature Biotechnology

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  1. Laura DeFrancesco is a Senior Editor at Nature Biotechnology.,

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Scott, C., DeFrancesco, L. Selling long life. Nat Biotechnol 33, 31–40 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3108

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