Genetic engineering and the quest for longevity

According to Reddit (yes, we unashamedly love exploring Reddit to find out what people think of emerging tech), one of the best fields in terms of potential for human advancement is genetic engineering – and specifically, the elimination of ageing. 

Reddit is full of variations on that theme. A user in one thread about longevity pictured a world where ageing fades into the background, and it’s other risks that do real damage to people (accidents, violence, sheer bad luck). Another imagined what life might be like if ageing becomes optional by 2040. And a (very long) thread explored what courts might do with sentencing criminals, if lifespans stretch into centuries. 

It’s all speculative, and sometimes whimsical (although often totally sincere) – and we’re embracing it as a snapshot of how real people are thinking about our fast-moving scientific frontier. 

What scientists and technologists have told us at LEAP

When we asked Marco Quarta (Co-founder and CEO of Rubedo Life Sciences) why he’s devoted his life to ageing research, he said: “I had my first inspiration when I was five years old – that’s when I decided I wanted to study ageing and find a way to change how we age.” His focus today is cellular senescence (the stubborn cells that drive tissue decline and chronic inflammation) and building tools to target them.

Noah Davidsohn (CSO at Rejuvenate Bio) described how epigenetics drew him in: “I was particularly drawn to epigenetics for its potential to create a significant impact on the entire status of the cell, aiming to reset cells to a younger state.” He also highlighted a recent pre-IND milestone and preclinical work on age reversal in very old mice. 

Both of those interviews grounded the longevity dream: the goal is to extend healthy years, push back the diseases that come with older age, and build advanced therapies that people can easily access.

Where does the field stand today? 

Reddit’s energy is backed by fresh numbers and peer-reviewed progress. In early 2024, genome editing crossed a historic threshold. Casgevy (exagamglogene autotemcel) became the first CRISPR-based therapy to secure EU-wide conditional marketing authorisation (approved on 9 February 2024 for sickle-cell disease and transfusion-dependent β-thalassaemia) following earlier UK and US decisions. It showed that gene editing had moved from trial promise to standard clinical practice for specific indications.

Since then, clinical activity has accelerated. The Innovative Genomics Institute’s 2025 update maps a widening CRISPR trial landscape across phases I–III and across disease areas, tracking where dosing, safety and efficacy now stand. CRISPR Medicine News estimates around 250 gene-editing clinical trials in the global pipeline as of February 2025, with 150+ active – spanning rare blood disorders, inherited eye diseases, oncology and more.

Sector snapshots from the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine in Q1 and H1 2025 highlight momentum on both evidence and capital. They capture programme readouts (including in Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene therapy), financing trends, and trial starts that show where investment and data are concentrating.

At the same time, the editing toolkit is maturing beyond CRISPR-Cas9. Reviews in Nature describe how prime editing can correct single-base changes and small insertions/deletions without double-strand breaks, with analyses indicating up to 16,000 ClinVar small deletions could, in principle, be addressable by prime editing as the methods improve in precision and efficiency. 

And the nervous system is coming more clearly into view: a 2025 Nature news feature tracks ‘CRISPR 2.0’ tools that are heading toward trials, and highlights gene-silencing approaches for severe brain disorders; which suggests that delivery and specificity for hard-to-reach tissues are improving.

Early clinical-style breakthroughs hint at bespoke, rapid-response medicine. At CHOP/Penn Medicine, for example, clinicians delivered a personalised in vivo CRISPR therapy via lipid nanoparticles to the liver for an infant with lethal CPS1 deficiency. As detailed by the Wall Street Journal, they reported improved biomarkers and reduced medication dependence – an attention-grabbing proof of concept for urgent, made-to-measure editing. 

And researchers are also testing evolution-inspired fixes: in 2025, a team revived a lost human uricase pathway in lab-grown liver spheroids using CRISPR, reducing uric acid and fat build-up – and pointing toward future gout therapies that might avoid immune issues seen with enzyme replacement.

Taken together, all of this shows that genetic engineering has shifted many potential therapies and use cases from ‘if’ to ‘when and how’. Bespoke interventions are taking cautious steps from concept to clinic – and there’s real potential for gene therapies to become more accessible to the general public in the coming years. 

Back to the public imagination

The layperson’s perspective matters. One comment thread on the r/Futurology subreddit cheered senolytics and the idea of pruning bad actors at cellular scale – a nod to the same biology Quarta talked about. Another thread asked how society would absorb ultra-long lives: work, pensions, and even criminal sentencing norms would have to change. A post from r/AskScience pulled in concrete numbers on death rates in a world without disease. These are the right questions to ask. 

So let’s honour the dreamers while we keep our eye on evidence. And let’s follow the people building tools that translate the vision of longevity into living healthily and happily for longer.