Strategies For Engineered Negligible Senescence

Strategies For Engineered Negligible Senescence

Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) is the term coined by British biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey for the diverse range of regenerative medical therapies, either planned or currently in development, for the periodical repair of all age-related damage to human tissue with the ultimate purpose of maintaining a state of negligible senescence in the patient, thereby postponing age-associated disease for as long as the therapies are reapplied.

The term "negligible senescence" was first used in the early 1990s by professor Caleb Finch to describe organisms such as lobsters and hydras, which do not show symptoms of aging. The term "engineered negligible senescence" first appeared in print in Aubrey de Grey's 1999 book The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging, and was later prefaced with the term "strategies" in the article Time to Talk SENS: Critiquing the Immutability of Human Aging De Grey called SENS a "goal-directed rather than curiosity-driven" approach to the science of aging, and "an effort to expand regenerative medicine into the territory of aging". To this end, SENS identifies seven categories of "damage" and a specific regenerative medical proposal for treating each.

While many biogerontologists find it "worthy of discussion" and SENS conferences feature important research in the field, some contend that the alleged benefits of de Grey's programme are too speculative given the current state of technology, referring to it as "fantasy rather than science".