It’s the Diseases We Get As We Age That Kill Us | Breakthrough

researchers at the buck Institute in
Northern California are looking for ways
to prevent the many diseases associated
with aging by slowing the aging process
itself to discover drugs that will one
day increase health and human beings
researchers start much lower on the
evolutionary ladder with single-cell
organisms the nice thing about yeast is
that we can keep billions of them in the
laboratory very easily if we’re testing
drugs we can look at 20 or 30 drugs in a
single week so so fast if a chemical
compound works in yeast they test it in
more complex organisms conditions seen
in aging animals like worms have
surprising similarities to serious
diseases seen in ageing humans we’ve
shown recently that during normal aging
in worms there is an accumulation of
insoluble proteins and we believe this
material is toxic and lo and behold
that’s exactly what many people in the
Alzheimer’s field have been thinking
about for years the sticky stuff that we
find in the brains of Alzheimer’s
patients the compounds that extend
lifespan also reduce Alzheimer’s disease
proteins Parkinson’s disease proteins if
you target an aging process and you slow
down aging then you slow down all the
diseases in the pathology of Aging as
well