Nucleic acid therapy for lifespan prolongation: present and future.

Lifespan prolongation is a common desire of the human race. With advances in biotechnology, the mechanism of aging has been gradually unraveled, laying the theoretical basis of nucleic acid therapy for lifespan prolongation. Regretfully, clinically applicable interventions do not exist without the efforts of converting theory into action, and it is the latter that has been far from adequately addressed at the moment. This was demonstrated by a database search on PubMed and Web of Science, from which only seven studies published between 2000 and 2010 were found to directly touch on the development of nucleic acid therapy for anti-aging and/or longevity enhancing purposes. In light of this, the objective of this article is to overview the current understanding of the intimate association between genes and longevity, and to bring the prospect of nucleic acid therapy for lifespan prolongation to light.