By Dr. Mercola

Since time immemorial, man has searched for the Fountain of Youth. Nothing has changed in that regard, but the methods of inquiry and discovery have certainly progressed.

Some of these ideas rival even the most outlandish sci-fi scenarios imaginable, up to and including the transfer of your consciousness into a bionic body.1 Personally, I dont want to veer too far from the natural order of things.

But the technology and science enthusiast in me cant help but be intrigued by the ideas and radical advances in the field of extreme life extension. One of the most promising techniques in this field, from my perspective, revolves around the use of adult stem cells.

Adult stem cells are undifferentiated cells found throughout your body. They multiply and replace cells as needed, in order to regenerate damaged tissues. Their value, in terms of anti-aging and life extension, centers around their ability to self-renew indefinitely, and their ability to generate every type of cell needed for the organ from which it originates.

Dr. Bryant Villeponteau, author of Decoding Longevity, is a leading researcher in novel anti-aging therapies involving stem cells. Hes been a pioneer in this area for over three decades.

Personally, I believe that stem cell technology could have a dramatic influence on our ability to live longer and replace some of our failing parts, which is the inevitable result of the aging process. With an interest in aging and longevity, Dr. Villeponteau started out by studying developmental biology.

If we could understand development, we could understand aging, he says.

Later, his interest turned more toward the gene regulation aspects. While working as a professor at the University of Michigan at the Institute of Gerontology, he received, and accepted, a job offer from Geron Corporationa Bay Area startup, in the early 90s.

They were working on telomerase, which I was pretty excited about at the time. I joined them when they first started, he says. We had an all-out engagement there to clone human telomerase. It had been cloned in other animals but not in humans or mammals.

Excerpt from:
Adult Stem Cells' Role in Disease Management and Anti-Aging