Dr Cherry Lo, longevity advisor to supplement brand Manapura shares her thoughts with Agetech World in our on-going “Living Forever” series
“When Elon Musk speaks of ‘reprogramming,’ he is essentially identifying ageing as a solvable engineering issue. He believes we can overcome the fatal biological breakdowns by delivering biological ‘OTA updates’.
To understand why the ‘system’ eventually crashes, we must look at the gradient specific failures in the biological perspective.
Collectively, ageing involves the three-stage hallways. The first stage is epigenetic drift, which acts as the ‘glitch’ of the cell.
Over time, epigenetic biomarkers and histone modifications that keep our DNA organised begin to shift due to the inconsistent and poor performance for repairing.
Cells confuse their transcriptional orders; genes that should be down-regulated are accidentally up-regulated, like CD38, and eventually cells fail their target function.
For instance, myeloid biasing; hematopoietic stem cells failing to divide into balanced ratio of red blood cells and white blood cells, is the central hallmark of ageing.
The ‘glitch’ leads to mitochondrial dysfunction, the ‘power failure’ of the system.
Declining NAD+ and other coenzyme levels lead to insufficient ATP (adenosine triphosphate) production, which causes metabolic impairment.
The battery management system is failing; the outpower cannot sufficiently support the car operation and the cells in the fatal stage are also releasing reactive oxygen species – essentially metabolic toxic waste – which causes further damage.
Eventually, the cell enters permanent energy bankruptcy and this simply leads to organ failure.
The final ‘clash’ is the transition into cellular senescence. When a cell becomes too damaged to function but refuse to undergo programmed death (apoptosis), and turn into a ‘zombie’, or senescent cell.
These cells stay active, but their function changes entirely: they begin secreting pro-inflammatory signals to construct cytokine storms.
In my work on arthritis, I see this as the ultimate system failure; these senescent cells cause systematic inflammation, leading to the rapid, synchronized breakdown of the entire joint-tissue matrix.
Reprogramming humans to achieve longer lifespan and healthspan simply cannot be done by writing lines of code with a keyboard; rather, we must reprogram our mindset to accommodate the latest geroscience-based prevention.
The passive sick-cure model is outdated – we do not wish to wait for the system to crash.
For living over 150 years, the golden code is to ensure our body’s regeneration pace remains significantly faster and more reliable than the dysfunction rate.
In my career as a pathologist, I’ve seen first-hand that ageing and illnesses are not mankind’s final destination; it is a fall behind race against a clash of genetic instability, viral infection and daily environmental challenges.
To navigate this, modern diagnostic technologies including gene mapping and liquid biopsies are important guidelines, however, we need to act active.
From my perspective, the most critical ‘system update’; we can perform today is the stabilization of our bioenergetic and genetic regeneration supply chain.
At the heart of my clinical protocol is NMN, which I view as our most efficient NAD+ booster.
Maintaining stable NAD level provides the necessary substrate for Sirtuin repair enzymes to outpace the rate of DNA damage, and more than that, NAD is the essential coenzymes that regulate energy metabolism, effectively preventing the mitochondrial power failure.
The decline of NAD level is proportionally co-related to the ageing process, which is caused by the insufficient ability of cells to produce this critical compound from simple sugars and amino acids, and the hyper-activation of CD38 which actively degrade NAD rather than inactive proteins.
NMN is the most direct precursor of NAD, which gives us the most efficient way to boost the NAD levels – efficiency and directness are the keys to win the race.
We also look for metabolic regulators that maintain structural integrity against external challenges.
I prioritize Spermidine to induce autophagy, which I consider our internal ‘system cleanup’ utility – ensuring the pace of protein recycling stays ahead of the accumulation of senescent cells.
To stabilize the system’s performance, I implement Berberine for glycemic management, preventing the metabolic spikes that age our vasculature, alongside comprehensive probiotics which function as a ‘biological firewall’ on the gut, which makes sure our nutrient intake process is optimized.
Living styles are also important, choosing the best exercise for yourself, consuming more natural and healthy food, and taking enough high quality protein daily, best for plant-based protein, is essential.
This comprehensive approach ensures that our cells maintain their lineage fidelity, specifically preventing the miscommunication and resource shortage leading to snowball effect.
I believe the breakthrough in epigenetic reprogramming can bring us to and beyond 150 years life span.
Fortunately, it is not a fiction story anymore. In February 2026, the FDA cleared the first-ever human clinical trial for gene therapy from David Sinclair’s research.
This therapy utilizes cocktails of Yamanaka factors (OSK) to physically reset the DNA methylation patterns from glaucoma in order to restore the vision.
If the clinical trial is successful, this will be the first time we ‘re-programme’ ourselves, bringing us back to the last checkpoint as we head for a 150th birthday party.”
