On this episode of Lifespan News, Ryan O’Shea discusses a new video in which Life Noggin and SENS have partnered to inform the public about rejuvenation biotechnology.
When you think longevity research, your first thought might not be “Zombie Attacks” – unless, of course, you’ve watched the new video from the popular YouTube channel Life Noggin. Created in partnership with the SENS Research Foundation, this video and others like it could broaden and strengthen the life extension community and hopefully help speed up the development of lifespan and healthspan extending technologies.
The acronym SENS stands for Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, and while those working in geroscience are likely to understand what that means and what it is referring to, it’s important that we as a community are able to translate this science into something digestible and exciting for the general public. This will help more people understand that halting or reversing the aging process is no longer the domain of science fiction, and that we can and should be allocating more time, attention, and resources to solving these problems.
That is exactly what partnerships like the one that the SENS Research Foundation recently formed with Life Noggin could help accomplish. Life Noggin, which like Lifespan News is owned by the 501(c)(3) non profit organization, Lifespan.io, is a popular animated edutainment YouTube channel that has amassed well over 3 million subscribers.
The video itself teaches viewers about senescent cells – which are portrayed as “zombie cells” – and describes how their presence can lead to damage, and ultimately perhaps to age-related disorders like cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, osteoporosis, and metabolic diseases. The video also examines three methods currently being explored to address this damage accumulation: senolytics, drugs that target and kill senescent cells; senomorphics, which inhibit the secretion of the SASP; and immunosurveillance, which strengthens the immune system so it can recognize and eliminate senescent cells.
The life extension community is very knowledgeable and passionate, and is dedicated to doing what it takes to make lifespan and healthspan extending technologies available as soon as possible. Much of that work takes place in science labs and healthcare settings, but we should never overlook the importance of the work that takes place on video streaming sites and social media platforms. Our collective outreach and communication efforts have the potential to bring in even more funding, support, and resources to this cause, and it’s time we leverage the audiences and platforms available to make that happen. It’s spreading, and these are the new paths for longevity messaging.