Anti-Aging Prize Tops $1 Million

www.livescience.com...

Maybe you can't put a price on death, but life certainly has its monetary rewards. And for scientists who can put mice on the road to immortality, the purse just reached $1 million.

The growing prize, offered by the Methuselah Foundation, is designed to stimulate anti-aging research with the ultimate goal of making us all live forever.

A cure for human aging, foundation members figure, will only come if more work is done on rodents.

this is a GREAT leap in these times...

is the road to immortality even closer???

The Main Man

"If we are to bring about real regenerative therapies that will benefit not just future generations, but those of us who are alive today, we must encourage scientists to work on the problem of aging," de Grey said Tuesday.

De Grey believes there are exactly seven root causes of aging, all of which are reversible. Among the seven deadly, well, things, are cell atrophy, cell death, and unwanted mutations.

Methuselah was a patriarch in the Bible said to reach 969 years of age.

what do YOU think about all this???

the money alone is worth it

I believe there are other prizes being offered, by the same people who sponsored the X prize. The pot for that competition is 50 million if memory serves, for a proven way to extend life. There are also prizes for a number of other accomplishments.

I'm sure this will stimulate research, but is it really necessary? What researcher couldn't get funding for investigation into this subject? The pharma corps would be beating down their doors to get to them. If you made a signifigant discovery related to telemorase or cellular regeneration you could pretty much name your price.

I think a great deal of advancement has taken place in just the last two years, but due to the enormous potential for profit, there has been a very tight lid on any and all developments. The major players are not so much in competition with each other, as they are in competition with unaligned scientists working for the benefit of all mankind.

You know, it's funny. I always knew I'd live forever, or at least long enough to see the end of mankind. My parents used to shake their heads and sigh, saying things like 'standard male immortality complex, you'll grow out of it.' It appears I may have the last laugh. :LOL:

Here is the website for the actual prize.

www.mprize.org...

they are determinded and already some prizes have been awarded(and promptly donated back into the fund)

www.betterhumans.com...

This is going to be a major trend in the next 20 years. Expect treatments to come on the market the promise to extend life expantancies up to 20% within the next 25 years.

You know, it's funny. I always knew I'd live forever, or at least long enough to see the end of mankind. My parents used to shake their heads and sigh, saying things like 'standard male immortality complex, you'll grow out of it.' It appears I may have the last laugh. :LOL:

Lol my mom says the same things

[edit on 9-3-2005 by sardion2000]

i think this "prize" is for a stimulation...

an example:

if i was a "scientist" or something and i read about this, i would devote alot of my time for this because: its $1,000,000!!!

you are also right though...

i would name my own damn price for it

but remember how successful the x-prize was for spaceflight???

Originally posted by they see ALL
if i was a "scientist" or something and i read about this, i would devote alot of my time for this because: its $1,000,000!!!

With respect you are incorrent. The 1,000,000 $ figure is the total pot size. Here are the rules

Longevity Prize (LP): details

The Longevity Prize is won whenever the world record lifespan for a mouse of the species most commonly used in scientific work, Mus musculus, is exceeded.

The amount won by a winner of PP is in proportion to the size of the fund at that time, but also in proportion to the margin by which the previous record is broken. The precise formula is:

Previous record: X days
New record: X+Y days
LP fund contains: $Z at noon GMT on day of death of record-breaker
Winner receives: $Z x (Y/(X+Y))

Thus, hypothetically, if the new record is twice the previous one, the winner receives half the fund. If the new record is 10% more than the old one, the winner receives 1/11 of the fund. The fund can thus never be exhausted, and the incentive to break the new record remains intact indefinitely. (This is in contrast to a structure that specifies a particular mouse age whose first achiever gets the whole fund.) We believe that this is important, because the public attention will be best maintained if there is a steady stream of record-breaks, showing that scientists are taking progressively better control of the aging process.

The record-breaker will receive prize money every week from the point where they beat the previous record. The amount paid each week will be as if their mouse had just died; the total amount won so far by a living record-breaker will be prominently displayed on the web site.

Rejuvenation Prize (RP): details

The Rejuvenation Prize rewards successful late-onset interventions. There are many ways to structure a prize to achieve this goal. The Rejuvenation Prize has been instituted (in replacement of the Reversal Prize -- see above) so as to satisfy two additional shortcomings of the Longevity Prize: first, that it is of limited scientific value to focus on a single mouse (a statistical outlier), and second, that the most important goal is to promote the development of interventions to restore youthful physiology, not merely to extend life. Thus, the Rejuvenation Prize rules are as follows:

1) The Rejuvenation Prize is awarded not for an individual mouse but for a published study. The study must satisfy the following criteria:

- The treated and control groups must have been at least 20 mice each
.
- The intervention must have been begun at an age at least half of the eventual mean age at death of the longest-lived 10% of the CONTROL group.

- The treated mice must have been assessed for at least five different markers that change significantly with age in the controls, and there must be a statistically significant reversal in the trajectory of those five markers in the treated mice at some (unrestricted) time after treatment began versus some (also unrestricted) time before it began. (It is OK if other markers do not show this.)

2) The record that a new prizewinner has to beat should be the mean age at death of the longest-lived 10% of the treated group.

Conveniently, the Rejuvenation Prize does not require the same rigorous validation procedures as the Longevity Prize, because the age involved is defined to be that reported in the publication of the study.

Source www.mprize.org...

Basically with this setup the Pot will never disappear. And contestants will always be jockeying to leapfrog each other.

[edit on 9-3-2005 by sardion2000]

very good and thank you...

this is a great thing that will lead to great advancements in the future...

Excellent post Sardion, I wasn't aware of the particulars behind the prize.

It's an excellent idea to stimulate research, but the money would be the least of my concerns if I found a repeatable way to extend the life of a rat. I'd be like the mad scientist, injecting himself before it was fully tested...

And I'm already big and green!

Originally posted by WyrdeOne
Excellent post Sardion, I wasn't aware of the particulars behind the prize.

It's an excellent idea to stimulate research, but the money would be the least of my concerns if I found a repeatable way to extend the life of a rat. I'd be like the mad scientist, injecting himself before it was fully tested...

And I'm already big and green!

i would test it out, get the prize money and then hide myself before the government gets it

Anti-ageing is not a good thing. Sure I would like to live a long if not endless life like the next guy. Over population is going to be a big enough problem as it is. Maybe we can set up a law where you can either have children or add 40 years to your life. The way things are going I think our grand children will be or have the ability to be immortal. Sounds great but it is defiantly not a good thing.

Originally posted by Umbrax
Anti-ageing is not a good thing. Sure I would like to live a long if not endless life like the next guy. Over population is going to be a big enough problem as it is. Maybe we can set up a law where you can either have children or add 40 years to your life. The way things are going I think our grand children will be or have the ability to be immortal. Sounds great but it is defiantly not a good thing.

hmmm...

yes...

i would not like to live forever if my body aged and i was really old...

i would like a "drink" that, if i drink it, i would be in my current years (as a teen) forever...

Originally posted by Umbrax
Anti-ageing is not a good thing. Sure I would like to live a long if not endless life like the next guy. Over population is going to be a big enough problem as it is. Maybe we can set up a law where you can either have children or add 40 years to your life. The way things are going I think our grand children will be or have the ability to be immortal. Sounds great but it is defiantly not a good thing.

Well you do know that if we do become immortal it will make interstellar travel that much more attractive eh Lot's of room to spread out in our Solar System and before you bash that idea note that Technology development is speeding up approaching exponantial proportions. If we lived longer we may start to take Climate Change and our effect on the environment much more seriously. In the last 200 years Life Expantancies in the West has more then doubled. I expect the same trend to continue except to get the doubling will take only around 100 years. By then our tech should be good enough to support self-sustaining settlements on other planets. Why do you think the X-Prize sponsored it?

And another thing to note as well is that the richer a country gets the lower birthrates are, look at Europe. It's happening here and it will happen in India and China soon too considering thier growth rate. Try to take the whole picture into consideration.

i would not like to live forever if my body aged and i was really old...

age reversal means just what it says...

[edit on 9-3-2005 by sardion2000]

i thought anti-aging was...

never mind

my mistake...

it is VERY cool though...

Originally posted by sardion2000
Well you do know that if we do become immortal it will make interstellar travel that much more attractive eh

Lot's of room to spread out in our Solar System and before you bash that idea note that Technology development is speeding up approaching exponantial proportions.

Why would I bash that idea?
I think it would be great. Take a hand full of people, give them immortality and send them out into deep space. That would be much more practical than reproducing in space. However, even with our rate of advancement we would still have to break the speed of light to go anywhere interesting out side our own solar system. Even if we match the speed of light could still take us hundreds of years to get somewhere of any use (ie. livable planet). The space craft would have to be very entertaining for me to want to spend a hundred years on it.


Over population is a very serious problem. Right now about 9 people die for every 1000 born. The world population is estimated to increase around 2 billion more people by 2036. By 2050 there will likely be 9 billion people on this Earth. These numbers are based on our current mortality rate, and 2036 is well with in our own life time. I will be 57. I can't imagine what the difference will be if our life span sees an explosive increased.

By 2050 there will likely be 9 billion people on this Earth.

Well it depends on what study you go on. I've seen projections as low as 7.8 Billion people and those reports seemed alarmed about a future Population crash if we continue down the road we are going.

I do not think we will achieve Immortality immediatly. In fact that may be impossible. But by say 2050 we could concevably be in the beginning stages of colonizing off planet. Personally I still think mass immortality would be a good thing in the long run. Who knows even if we do not colonize the solar system in the next 50 years(which would be stupid IMO) we could start to colonize the Ocean in the so-called "Dead Zones"(and also Subterrainian as well). Recent evidance has shown that such colonies if built properly could actually revive these parts of the planet.

Anyway it's not as if this stuff is going to be for the common man at first. The rich will have access to it first(and they do not really contribute to population growth all that much), then the middle class(same goes for them as well now it's cost effective to have only 1 or 2 children nowadays) and eventually the poor, and by that time however long it takes we could have technology to deal with some of the major problems with society, one of the biggest being Population I agree, but It seems like the problem may become moot as both China and India continue to modernize. I know I seem to be jumping around but I hope I've made my case. Near Immortality would definately change the nature of what it means to be Human.

The one major benefit I can see from a big increase in life span is retaining knowledge. If we had more older and wiser people around I think will help the world. Imagine all the things one person can learn if they lived to be 200. What if Einstein lived to be 176 instead of 76? What would a old man teach his Great great grandchild?

We will probably prolong life with better vaccinations and stem-cell research to regenerate us; but oxygen causes us all to age and we need oxygen so I don't think anti-aging can be achieved.

Originally posted by Charlie Murphy
We will probably prolong life with better vaccinations and stem-cell research to regenerate us; but oxygen causes us all to age and we need oxygen so I don't think anti-aging can be achieved.

Thing is they already have done so in Mice. In Middle-Aged mice to boot. If they can scale up then who knows what will happen.