In this podcast, Michael D. West, PhD, the CEO and founder of AgeX Therapeutics, Inc., discusses aging, the cellular aging mechanism, and the future of therapeutics.Dr. West holds a PhD from Baylor College of Medicine where he studied aging at the cellular level. His life’s work has been in developmental biology as it pertains to age-related degenerative disease.Dr. West talks about the mission of AgeX Therapeutics. Today, aging is an international priority, and Dr. West explains how post-WWII population increases have elevated chronic degenerative disease study to the forefront of medical research. AgeX Therapeutics seeks to develop new therapies to work against the negative effects of chronic degenerative disease.Dr. West discusses current research on diseases such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes, etc. As they study the basic clockwork elements that lead to aging in the brain, skin, lungs, etc., Dr. West explains that they can apply this newly discovered information to the unique needs in modern medicine. Dr. West provides detailed information on telomerase, which is an enzyme that adds nucleotides to telomeres. Dr. West provides an overview on how telomerase can essentially ‘reset’ the clock—rewinding the clock of cellular aging. Continuing, Dr. West expounds upon what science has learned from recent cloning experiments. And he states that evidence suggests that by placing an aged cell back into an egg cell, the aging process can actually be set in reverse. And after much extensive experimentation in this area, scientific researchers know this to be accurate. Dr. West goes on to detail how the aging process is the same all through the body, which is a great thing because having an understandable common mechanism will make the possibility for discovery of treatment options more attainable. Continuing, Dr. West explains how certain changes seem to be systemic in animal experimentation and what that means for future research.
