ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to understand the origin of the Gompertz law and the dynamics of anti-aging interventions. The saturating removal model thus analytically reproduces the Gompertz law, including the deceleration at old ages. Omer Karin scanned a wide class of models and found that the essential features that a model needs to explain the senescent-cell dynamics are precisely the truck model. A good description of human hazard curves, corrected for extrinsic mortality, is provided by the same parameters as in mice, except for a 60-fold slower increase in senescent-cell production rate, the slope of senescent-cell production with age. One of the effects of increased blood vessels is more roads for the trucks – access for the immune cells that remove senescent cells, thus potentially increasing their removal rate and explaining the steeper survival curves. The chapter concludes with ways in which the saturating removal model conceptualizes approaches to slow down aging.
