44 Min.
Coleen Murphy: The Science of Aging and Longevity Ground Truths
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- Biowissenschaften
“A few years ago, I might have chuckled at the naiveté of this question, but now it's not so crazy to think that we will be able to take some sort of medicine to extend our healthy lifespans in the foreseeable future.”—Coleen Murphy
Transcript with external links
Eric Topol (00:06):
Hello, this is Eric Topol from Ground Truths, and I'm just so delighted to have with me Professor Coleen Murphy, who has written this exceptional book, How We Age: The Science of Longevity. It is a phenomenal book and I'm very eager to discuss it with you, Coleen.
Coleen Murphy (00:25):
Thanks for having me on.
Eric Topol (00:27):
Oh yeah. Well, just so everyone who doesn't know Professor Murphy, she's at Princeton. She's the Richard Fisher Preceptor in Integrative Genomics, the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton, and director of the Paul Glenn Laboratories for Aging Research. Well, obviously you've been in this field for decades now, even though you're still very young. The classic paper that I can go back to would be in Nature 2003 with the DAF-16 and doubling the lifespan of C. elegans or better known as a roundworm. Would that be the first major entry you had?
Coleen Murphy (01:17):
Yeah, that was my postdoctoral work with Cynthia Kenyon.
Eric Topol (01:20):
Right, and you haven't stopped since you've been on a tear and you’ve put together a book which has a hundred pages of references in a small font. I don't know what the total number is, but it must be a thousand or something.
Coleen Murphy (01:35):
Actually, it's just under a thousand. That's right.
Eric Topol (01:37):
That's a good guess.
Coleen Murphy (01:38):
Good guess. Yeah.
Eric Topol (01:39):
So, because I too have a great interest in this area, I found just the resource that you've put together as extraordinary in terms of the science and all the work you've put together. What I was hoping to do today is to kind of take us through some of the real exciting pathways because there's a sentence in your book, which I thought was really kind of nailed it, and it actually is aligned with my sense. Obviously don't have the expertise by any means that you do here but it says, “A few years ago, I might have chuckled at the naivety of this question, but now it's not so crazy to think that we will be able to take some sort of medicine to extend our healthy lifespans in the foreseeable future.” That's a pretty strong statement for a person who's deep into the science. First I thought we'd explore healthy aging health span versus lifespan. Can you differentiate that as to your expectations?
Coleen Murphy (02:54):
So, I think most people would agree that they don't want to live necessary super long. What they really want to do is live a healthy life as long as they can. I think that a lot of people also have this fear that when we talk about extending lifespan, that we're ignoring that part. And I do want to assure everyone that the people in the researchers in the aging field are very much aware of this issue and have, especially in the past decade, I think put a real emphasis on this idea of quality of life and health span. What's reassuring is actually that many of the mechanisms that extend lifespan in all these model organisms also extend health span as well and so I don't think we're going to, they're not diametrically opposed, like we'll get to a healthier quality of life, I think in these efforts to extend lifespan as well.
Eric Topol (03:50):
Yeah, I think that's important that you're bringing that up, which is there's this overlap, like a Venn diagram where things that do help with longevity should help with health span, and we don't necessarily have to follow as you call them the immoralists, as far as living to 190 or whatever year. Now, one of the pathways that's been of course a big one for years and studied in multiple species has been caloric restriction. I wonder if you could talk to that and obviously there's now mimetics that could s
“A few years ago, I might have chuckled at the naiveté of this question, but now it's not so crazy to think that we will be able to take some sort of medicine to extend our healthy lifespans in the foreseeable future.”—Coleen Murphy
Transcript with external links
Eric Topol (00:06):
Hello, this is Eric Topol from Ground Truths, and I'm just so delighted to have with me Professor Coleen Murphy, who has written this exceptional book, How We Age: The Science of Longevity. It is a phenomenal book and I'm very eager to discuss it with you, Coleen.
Coleen Murphy (00:25):
Thanks for having me on.
Eric Topol (00:27):
Oh yeah. Well, just so everyone who doesn't know Professor Murphy, she's at Princeton. She's the Richard Fisher Preceptor in Integrative Genomics, the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton, and director of the Paul Glenn Laboratories for Aging Research. Well, obviously you've been in this field for decades now, even though you're still very young. The classic paper that I can go back to would be in Nature 2003 with the DAF-16 and doubling the lifespan of C. elegans or better known as a roundworm. Would that be the first major entry you had?
Coleen Murphy (01:17):
Yeah, that was my postdoctoral work with Cynthia Kenyon.
Eric Topol (01:20):
Right, and you haven't stopped since you've been on a tear and you’ve put together a book which has a hundred pages of references in a small font. I don't know what the total number is, but it must be a thousand or something.
Coleen Murphy (01:35):
Actually, it's just under a thousand. That's right.
Eric Topol (01:37):
That's a good guess.
Coleen Murphy (01:38):
Good guess. Yeah.
Eric Topol (01:39):
So, because I too have a great interest in this area, I found just the resource that you've put together as extraordinary in terms of the science and all the work you've put together. What I was hoping to do today is to kind of take us through some of the real exciting pathways because there's a sentence in your book, which I thought was really kind of nailed it, and it actually is aligned with my sense. Obviously don't have the expertise by any means that you do here but it says, “A few years ago, I might have chuckled at the naivety of this question, but now it's not so crazy to think that we will be able to take some sort of medicine to extend our healthy lifespans in the foreseeable future.” That's a pretty strong statement for a person who's deep into the science. First I thought we'd explore healthy aging health span versus lifespan. Can you differentiate that as to your expectations?
Coleen Murphy (02:54):
So, I think most people would agree that they don't want to live necessary super long. What they really want to do is live a healthy life as long as they can. I think that a lot of people also have this fear that when we talk about extending lifespan, that we're ignoring that part. And I do want to assure everyone that the people in the researchers in the aging field are very much aware of this issue and have, especially in the past decade, I think put a real emphasis on this idea of quality of life and health span. What's reassuring is actually that many of the mechanisms that extend lifespan in all these model organisms also extend health span as well and so I don't think we're going to, they're not diametrically opposed, like we'll get to a healthier quality of life, I think in these efforts to extend lifespan as well.
Eric Topol (03:50):
Yeah, I think that's important that you're bringing that up, which is there's this overlap, like a Venn diagram where things that do help with longevity should help with health span, and we don't necessarily have to follow as you call them the immoralists, as far as living to 190 or whatever year. Now, one of the pathways that's been of course a big one for years and studied in multiple species has been caloric restriction. I wonder if you could talk to that and obviously there's now mimetics that could s
44 Min.