Engineering Longer Lives

The solution to aging? The UK has decided to put its pounds behind biomedical engineering.

The country announced a five-year, £50 million ($82 million) program Tuesday that it hopes will eventually allow the elderly to buy "spare parts" à la carte – and even regenerate their own damaged joints, ligaments and hearts. The advances would help people live an active life beyond age 50, and well into their 100s. (We recently reported that more than half of babies born in first world countries such as the UK will celebrate birthdays beyond 100.)

The University of Leeds’ Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering is taking the lead on the project, focusing on 10 challenges that will allow people "50 active years after 50," the school said in a press release.

Among the projects: regenerating heart valves, creating vein repair patches as well as new ligaments and cartilage, plus spare skin and replacement joints that won’t give out. Scientists hope to do most of this by 2015. 

How do you create, say, heart valves that regenerate? Scientists clean a donor’s valve of all living cells to create a "shell" that won’t be rejected by the recipient’s body. They then insert the valve into the patient, whose own body will naturally invade the shell and replace the missing cells with cells of its own.

"We are all living longer," Professor John Fisher, who is overseeing the project, told the UK’s The Telegraph. "But our bodies are wearing out at the same rate. We now want a more active lifestyle in our old age."

Talk about better living through science.

Photo courtesy jeremyfoo via Flickr.