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Will Science Cure Aging?

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Date/Time

April 12, 2007
3-6:00 PM PT

Location

Golden Gate Club in the Presidio, 135 Fisher Loop
San Francisco, CA

Contact

Burrill & Company and the not-for-profit Alliance for Aging Research held a discussion about scientific research that could alter the universal human experience of aging. Recent advances that harness the power of genetics, cell metabolism, nutrition and bioinformatics now make human aging itself a credible target for medical treatments. Whether today’s research succeeds in adding incremental years of health and vitality, or makes a quantum leap in human longevity, many believe that interventions will be deployed against aging in time to benefit current generations.

Will future drugs help protect against heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and other diseases by slowing the rate of aging? How will regulators measure the beneficial effects of age-retarding technologies? Will society readily adapt to medical treatments that improve life by a few years, or even by many years? Who are the scientific pioneers poised today on the leading edge?

Moderators

G. Steven Burrill, Chief Executive Officer, Burrill & Company and

Daniel Perry, Executive Director, Alliance for Aging Research, Washington, DC

Going After the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ of Biological Aging
Dr. Aubrey de Grey, recently of England’s Cambridge University and currently at the Methuselah Foundation, is considered the world’s most provocative and in-demand “interventional gerontologist”. His “Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS)” plan of attack on aging has been featured on CBS 60 Minutes, Bloomberg TV, and in Fortune, Popular Science and MIT Technology Review. He is editor of Rejuvenation Research a unique peer-reviewed scientific journal focused on experimental interventions against aging.

Will Our Genes Show the Way?
Dr. Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads a team of researchers seeking genes and small molecules that slow aging in order to prevent diseases of old age. His research has identified common pathways to aging and its retardation in cell cultures, worms, mice and potentially in humans. Dr. Guarente is the author of Ageless Quest: One Scientist’s Search for Genes That Prolong Youth.

More Than Just a Number – How Research Will Show People Age at Different Speeds
Dr. Karen Bandeen-Roche, a Johns Hopkins University biostatistician and gerontologist is ready to validate a series of physiological, biochemical and behavioral measurements that could be used by the FDA to evaluate and approve a generation of drugs that could postpone some of the most dreaded diseases of old age by slowing the underlying processes of aging.

The Road to Effective Treatments for Aging and Age-Related Diseases
Dr. S. Mitchell Harman is the founding director and president of the Kronos Longevity Research Institute, a not-for-profit organization developing health and prevention strategies to enhance human longevity. Dr. Harman is internationally recognized as an expert on hormone regulation and the use of hormone therapies in older men and women. He will discuss how best to bring anti-aging medicine closer to reality.

This event was supported by a grant from The Glenn Foundation for Medical Research and Kronos Longevity Research Institute.

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