How close are we to finding a cure for ageing?

Scientists said they have invented a new drug that raises the "tantalising" prospect of increasing human lifespan by up to 25%.

The breakthrough is particularly arresting as it speaks to the quest for a longer life which is "woven through human history", said the BBC. But how close are we to finding a cure for ageing – and do we necessarily even want to?

What did the commentators say?

Middle-aged lab mice, known as "supermodel grannies" because of their youthful appearance, enjoyed an increased lifespan of nearly 25% after scientists found that switching off a protein called IL-11 prevented cancer, boosted vision and hearing, and improved metabolism, lung health and muscle function.

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The finding of the anti-IL-11 therapy "opens up" the possibility of taking the therapy to humans, Prof Stuart Cook, from the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Medical Science, at Imperial College told The Telegraph. The aim is that "one day", it will be "used as widely as possible, so that people the world over can lead healthier lives for longer".

"Eternal youth" is the "stuff of religion and mythology", wrote Helen Pilcher for BBC Science Focus, and it "sounds like snake oil", but there's a "growing body of research that's betting on making it a reality".

To be clear, the science is "not about achieving immortality", but about improving what scientists call the "healthspan", or "the number of years that people can live well without disease".

Further animal studies have shown that senolytic drugs can delay, prevent or ease more than 40 diseases, including cancers and various disorders of the heart, liver, kidney, lung, eye and brain.

New technologies could also play a part. Bio-tech firm Insilico Medicine "wants to cure diseases and slow ageing, with the help of AI", wrote Reed Albergotti on Semafor. They hope that AI will "enable so much precision" that pills will be able to "target the specific cells in our body that make us get older", and "human lifespans will increase drastically".

"I'm sure it would be great for humanity if the number of years people live goes up", wrote Reed, "but it could also mean wealthy people live even longer than their less fortunate counterparts, further destabilising society".

The "beguiling" prospect "raises a number of ethical questions", said Andrew Steele on Polytechnique Insights, because eliminating old age as a potential cause of death would mean that the planet's population could increase by about 16% by 2050.

But this might not be the "inevitable environmental catastrophe it sounds like it could be at first", because people could cut their carbon footprint in return for a longer life.

Some have argued that death brings meaning to life, but "even if we were to completely cure ageing", people would "still die" because "there would still be buses to be hit by, infectious diseases to catch", and cancer and heart disease.

If there was a drug that "adds even one or two healthy years onto the lifespan", Jim Mellon, chairman of the longevity company Juvenescence, told Pilcher, it would have "trillions of dollars of effect on the world economy". People would be "productive for longer and they wouldn't have all these morbidities that cost our healthcare systems so much".

What next?

The trouble is that although ageing has never looked so "treatable", clinical trials "don't come cheap, so the question is, who pays?" Government funding agencies "seemingly aren't keen to invest in the anti-ageing area", regulators "don't tend to fund studies of drugs that are already on the market", and the pharmaceutical industry "won't cough up for trials of drugs that are generic, cheap or off-patent, with no profit margin".

So, miraculous anti-ageing pills are not immediately near the shelves but the prospect has taken an important step closer. Anti-IL-11 treatments are currently in human clinical trials for other conditions, "potentially providing exciting opportunities to study its effects in ageing humans in the future", said Cook.