Rarely are great achievements made without careful planning, and the Longevity Biotechnology Fellowship (LBF) plans to solve aging. The LBF is a community of self-proclaimed Longevity Accelerationists — forward-thinking scientists, engineers, investors, and luminaries with a common vision: 

“Accelerate humanity’s transition to a post-aging future. Where healthy lifespan, of unlimited length, is available to all.” 

Their plan is to focus on technology that will extend the human lifespan to its limits using three parallel strategies: 

  • Replacement: replacing the body
  • Biostasis: preserving the body
  • Advanced Bioengineering: genetically engineering the body 

According to the founders, Replacement and Advanced Bioengineering are trusted to solve aging completely, while Biostasis is seen as a backup plan. These strategies are in contrast to current age-slowing strategies, namely anti-aging compounds (e.g. NMN, rapamycin) and lifestyle interventions (e.g. diet, sleep, exercise), which, even if fully optimized, may only prolong lifespan by about 10 years. 

Replacement: $3.6B

(Image: therazorback.blogspot.com) A scene from the 2005 action/sci-fi film The Island shows clones being grown. The movie portrays a scenario in the future where the existence of sentient clones may not be the best idea.

“Replacement” involves replacing an aged body with a lab-grown younger one. With this strategy, a “brainless” clone will be generated using genetic modifications that stop the brain from fully developing. Due to the clone lacking a functional brain, regulatory complications associated with sentience can be avoided. This whole-body cloning technique will first be tested in monkeys with a timeline of 5-10 years and an estimated cost of $60 million. 

Hypothetically, once a human clone has fully matured and the donor’s body has aged sufficiently, the donor’s aged head can be transplanted onto the clone’s younger body, which will require reconnecting the spinal cord. Such a radical surgery, which is ultimately intended to be automated, is estimated to take about a decade of research and $500 million of funding.

Once a donor’s head has been successfully transplanted onto their clone’s body, the last step will be to replace the donor’s brain. Since full brain replacement could lead to memory loss and other complications, the brain will be gradually replaced using stem cell technology. Research on this progressive brain replacement will be done in monkeys and is expected to take about 10 years and cost $3 billion. In total, whole-body cloning, head transplantation, and brain replacement should cost about $3.6 billion. 

Biostasis: ~$2.4B

(Image: qz.com) Cryopreservation tanks at Alcor, a company that has already preserved 225 patients.

Some animals can tolerate environmental changes without adapting to them — biostasis. This includes Alaskan Wood Frogs, a cold-blooded animal that, without dying, freezes in the winter and thaws in the spring. Based on this idea, the LBF hopes to find ways to make this sort of biostasis a reality for humans, either through freezing (cryopreservation) or chemical preservation. 

One problem with freezing is ice formation, which can damage tissues. To prevent ice formation, chemicals called cryoprotectants can be used, but these can have toxic effects if used in high amounts. Thus, finding the perfect cryoprotectant is necessary and, in animals, is predicted to take 10 years and cost $130 million. Additionally, adapting preservation techniques and cryoprotectants to humans is expected to cost $700 million over 10 years. 

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to overcome with cryopreservation is rewarming. Warming must be rapid and even to prevent tissue damage. The cost of rapid rewarming technology is estimated to be $1.5 billion and the time taken to develop such technology may be about 15 years. If successful, biostasis can be used as a backup plan for when Replacement and Advanced Bioengineering take longer than expected.  

Advanced Bioengineering: $250B

“Advanced Bioengineering” entails a full characterization of biological aging with the help of artificial intelligence. With a complete understanding of how our genes contribute to aging, gene editing can be used to engineer our biology so that we live longer. Current methods for understanding aging are too slow and we will need new measuring tools coupled with massive levels of data collection to accelerate the progress of this strategy. Optimistically, achieving Advanced Bioengineering will take at least 20 years and cost $250 billion.

Is Aging Really a Problem?

Some may believe that aging is inescapable and that defying death is impossible. Scientists like Leonard Hayflick have said the probable cause of aging is the second law of thermodynamics, which says that the degree of disorder (entropy) increases with time within a closed system. In other words, entropy underlies the aging process by causing the body to become disordered. However, the LBF says, 

“Entropy can be kept at bay while free energy is available, curing aging doesn’t break the laws of physics.” 

Those who wish to follow the roadmap can join the LBF.