Futurist Ray Kurzweil says scientists have the opportunity to work on the fundamental structure of the body in the same way that an engineer can develop software.

SENS Research Foundation shares Kurzweil’s optimism about longevity. Kurzweil says breakthroughs will accelerate, “because biotechnologies are doubling in capability each year. They are now a thousand times more powerful than when the genome project completed in 2003, and will be a thousand times more powerful in a decade, a million times more powerful in twenty years.”

Kurzweil believes the next 10 years will produce achievements before believed to be impossible. […]

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SENS Research Foundation | Reversing heart disease. Narrated by actor Edward James Olmos, video describes the process causing heart disease and highlights a promising intervention that the foundation funding. Begins with an explanation of cholesterol particles that can become trapped in blood vessels, and the patrolling macrophages that normally remove them.

However, the macrophages struggle to process oxidized cholesterol. This problem causes the macrophages to die, and the resulting foam cells form atherosclerotic plaques, which ultimately cause heart attacks and strokes. The foundation is funding research into an enzyme that would enable macrophages to degrade these oxidized cholesterol particles, rescuing the macrophages, preventing plaque build-up, and possibly reversing the atherosclerotic process.

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SENS Research Foundation | Introduction to the SENS damage repair model. A visual overview of the relationship between metabolism, damage, and pathology. Metabolism is a complex pathway that involves an array of steps and long list of molecules to produce energy for our cells.

Unfortunately, as a result of this process, cellular and molecular damage accumulates on an ongoing basis. This damage causes countless age related pathologies, such as heart disease and cancer. The molecular and cellular damage can be grouped into seven categories. Given sufficient research to comprehensively repair each category of damage, the foundation believes we can truly prevent age related diseases.