Professor Austad, what is the future in anti-aging research? What are the most promising directions you see with your decades of experience?  Dr. Steven Austad, PhD. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. What will we be talking about in the next five to 10 years? Will it be the same - Metformin, rapamycin, caloric restriction? Or would some entirely new directions appear and become very promising? Well, I hope we're not talking about the same thing in five to 10 years because that means the science really will have slowed down. I think there are lots of promising things. So, first of all, I think we know what rapamycin does. We know what it does inside the cell. But it's a kind of a dirty target. Rapamycin targets some things that we would rather it didn't. We will come up with more and better versions of those drugs, more and better versions of Metformin, more and better versions of rapamycin. But there's also a whole new series of advances.  Dr. Steven Austad, PhD. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. 

The senolytics are the new drugs that seem to kill these senescent cells. There's fascinating stuff with blood exchanges. We know from a lot of mouse work now that there are some rejuvenating properties of putting young blood in old animals. And we don't know exactly how that works or what's at the basis of it. But I expect that we're going to figure that out. It may be that how people stay young is that they get an occasional infusion of some chemical. Probably, we could even figure out how to make a pill. So that sort of young blood work, I think, is going to open up a whole new box of possibilities.  Dr. Steven Austad, PhD. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. 

The other thing that's going to open up a box of possibilities is reprogramming our cells. We know how to take an adult cell and turn it back into basically an embryonic stem cell. It is done by activating certain genes. There are going to be ways to partially activate or reactivate those genes that may be rejuvenating, as some of the young blood stuff. I think these are a couple of the things that will develop substantially in the next five to 10 years. But my guess is it will be things that are not even on our radar yet that are going to come out of the avalanche of aging research that is starting to be done. Professor Austad, that is an exciting direction with many intriguing possibilities.  Dr. Steven Austad, PhD. Dr. Anton Titov, MD.