With recent developments in the study of aging, researchers are now looking for treatments that not only target age-related diseases, but the aging process in general. That is where the next big breakthrough in medicine could come from.

How would you define aging?

Prof. Sikora: As far as the human body is concerned, it is a gradual loss of functionality and health caused by the accumulation of senescent cells in the organism.

What aging is?

Prof. Sikora: Previously, we have considered aging as the physiological or pathological process . The physiological aging is what we observe when we study centenarians. The pathological aging is when the elderly suffer from so called age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, cardiovascular disease and many others. It was believed these were two separate processes. But over time, we have learnt that both are caused by the same processes on the molecular and cellular level. Aging can take different trajectories and happen at different rates, but the underlying processes are the same.

Why is that so important?

Prof. Sikora: This is important, as research tells us postponing aging we can avoid age-related diseases. Moreover, it seems that there are some political reasons. The Federal Drugs Administration, which sets the tone of practically all medical research, will never approve clinical trials for something that is not a disease. If aging is not a disease, we cannot test antiaging drugs. But if we can convince the FDA that aging is a disease, or at least that it has the same roots as many diseases, we may be able to test antiaging treatments, such as metformin, which is used in type 2 diabetes, but also has antiaging effects. So scientists started pushing for clinical trials of metformin in antiaging research and succeeded.

Can we treat aging then, just like we treat diseases?

Prof. Sikora: One of the areas of my research also involved curcumin, which influences some cellular processes contributing to aging. It later turned out that curcumin, an extract from turmeric rhizome, has a number of beneficial antiaging and anticancer effects. But at the time I was studying it, most researchers considered natural compounds as unscientific. The incredible renaissance of natural compounds in medicine that we are experiencing today, had yet to come.

Now scientists have embraced them, also due to their pleiotropic nature, which means they can be used for a variety of ailments, not just for one specific purpose. We now believe that this is where the breakthrough in Alzheimer research will come from. Rather than look for one specific compound that eliminates Amyloid beta – the direct cause of Alzheimer’s, researchers are looking for compounds that target aging in general.