延長狗狗生命

Legendary synthetic biologist George Church from Harvard Medical School is working on a start-up called Rejuvenate Bio that wants make dogs younger, and someday, maybe apply the same technology to humans.

來自哈佛醫(yī)學(xué)院的頂級合成生物學(xué)家George Church正在研制一種名為“Rejuvenate Bio”的初創(chuàng)企業(yè)，該公司希望能夠讓狗恢復(fù)年輕，有朝一日，該技術(shù)也許會應(yīng)用于人類。

In a podcast interview, Church revealed that the company has already experimented on mice, and are testing on dogs now. “Dogs are a market in and of themselves,” Church said at a event last week, according to the MIT Technology Review. “It’s not just a big organism close to humans. It’s something people will pay for, and the FDA process is much faster. We’ll do dog trials, and that’ll be a product, and that’ll pay for scaling up in human trials.”

在一次播客采訪中，Church透露他們已經(jīng)在老鼠身上做了實(shí)驗(yàn)，現(xiàn)在正在對狗進(jìn)行測試。據(jù)據(jù)《麻省理工技術(shù)學(xué)報(bào)》報(bào)道，Church在上周的一次活動中說：“狗本身就是市場所在。”“它們不僅僅是與人類相似的大型生物，更重要的是人們愿意為狗花錢，F(xiàn)DA 的相關(guān)流程也會更快。我們在狗身上做實(shí)驗(yàn)，同時(shí)這也可以作為產(chǎn)品，為進(jìn)一步的人體試驗(yàn)提供資金。。”

Previously, age-reversing technology has been tested on worms and flies, whose lifespans can double with a few simple tweaks to their genes. In mammals like mice, blood transfusions from younger mice can restore biomarkers to youthful levels in older mice.

在此之前，已經(jīng)在蠕蟲和蒼蠅身上進(jìn)行了年齡逆轉(zhuǎn)技術(shù)測試，它們的壽命可以通過對其基因進(jìn)行一些簡單的調(diào)整來增加一倍。在像老鼠這樣的哺乳動物中，向年長的老鼠輸入年輕老鼠的血液可以使其生物標(biāo)志恢復(fù)到年輕水平。

Rejuvenate wants to start by extending the lifespans of Cocker spaniels and Doberman pinschers, who are prone to fatal heart diseases like ailment mitral valve disease, which kills about half of Cavalier King Charles spaniels by age 10. Though Rejuvenate hasn’t revealed what exactly its dog therapy involves, it might be similar to a form of gene therapy used to stop heart damage in mice. Church’s Harvard lab has worked through over 60 different therapies to modify two genes that act on four major diseases of aging (heart and kidney disease, obesity, and diabetes). According to Church, the results have been “pretty eye-popping.”

Rejuvenate Bio目的是延長可卡犬和杜賓犬的壽命，這類狗容易患上致命的心臟疾病，比如一種名為“騎士查理王小獵犬”約有一半會在10歲因?yàn)橐环N心臟二尖瓣疾病夭折。Rejuvenate Bio還沒有公開其狗狗治療的具體內(nèi)容，但可能包括類似 Davidsohn 在小鼠身上治療心臟損傷的治療。Church的哈佛實(shí)驗(yàn)室開始研究一系列基因治療，包括超過 60 個(gè)不同的基因，通過修飾 2 個(gè)基因作用于 4 項(xiàng)衰老相關(guān)的疾病：心衰、腎衰、肥胖和糖尿病。據(jù) Church 表示，研究結(jié)果“相當(dāng)令人吃驚”。

What distinguishes disease prevention from age reversal, according to Church, is whether an old dog’s body can heal like a young one. Reversing aging on pets raises lots of ethical questions, of course. What are the ethical boundaries of experimenting on pets? What if a longer life span means other, negative health tradeoffs, or simply unexpected side effects and experiments gone wrong? And what if pets end up outliving their owners? For now, though, Rejuvenate Bio has to prove that it can actually accomplish its lofty (and potentially life-changing) goals.

根據(jù)Church的說法，疾病預(yù)防與年齡逆轉(zhuǎn)的區(qū)別在一只老狗的身體是否能像年輕小狗一樣愈合。當(dāng)然，改變寵物的衰老會引發(fā)很多倫理問題。在寵物身上試驗(yàn)的倫理界限是什么?如果延長壽命意味著其他的、負(fù)面的健康權(quán)衡，或者僅僅是意想不到的副作用抑或是實(shí)驗(yàn)出錯(cuò)了怎么辦?如果寵物最終比它們的主人活得還久又會出現(xiàn)什么問題?不過，就目前而言，Rejuvenate Bio必須證明它確實(shí)能夠?qū)崿F(xiàn)其崇高的(并可能改變?nèi)松?目標(biāo)。