Meeting on aging research in Monaco

An interesting selection of people met up at the Novotel Monte-Carlo in Monaco recently to hear about the latest progress on anti-aging from Dr Aubrey de Grey of Sens Research Foundation. The meeting was organized by Oliver Rowland (member of ILA and HEALES).

People from diverse organisations and backgrounds were there to find out about how science and business are moving into a faster gear recently with regard to prospects for longevity.

Aubrey recapped about how he has been working to forward the engineering approach to anti-aging for some two decades and how his ideas were at first greeted with scepticism but are now increasingly mainstream and picked up in highly-cited research papers (though not necessarily giving him the credit that would be deserved).

He told us notably how there are now many spin-off companies using ideas developed at SRF, including AgeX that just went public and is working on stem cell therapies, or Arigos Biomedical that is developing new organ preservation methods to keep organs for transplants, potentially also with applications for improved cryonics.

He also told us how investment funds are now increasingly willing to donate generously to SRF so as to have his advice on developments in the field. He stayed late in the bar explaining things further and making contacts, which was great.

If some interesting project comes out of it, that would be fantastic, but I hope it helped create some links that might bear some fruit one way or another to help SRF and longevity research generally.