Centenarians with the bodies of 50-year-olds will one day be a realistic possibility, say scientists.

科学家称，百岁老人拥有50岁的身体在将来某天可能成为现实。

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Replacement body parts could last much longer in the future

Half of babies now born in the UK will reach 100, thanks to higher living standards, but our bodies are wearing out at the same rate.

To achieve "50 active years after 50", experts at Leeds University are spending £50m over five years looking at innovative² solutions.

They plan to provide pensioners³ with own-grown tissues and durable⁴ implants（深植，灌输）.

New hips⁶, knees and heart valves are the starting points, but eventually they envisage⁷（面对，正视） most of the body parts that flounder（挣扎，折腾） with age could be upgraded.

New lease of life

The university's Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering has already made a hip⁵ transplant that should last for life, rather than the 20 years maximum expected from current artificial hips.

The combination of a durable cobalt（钴）-chrome（铬） metal alloy⁸（合金） socket⁹ and a ceramic¹⁰（陶器的） ball or "head" means the joint¹¹ should easily withstand the 100 million steps that a 50-year-old can be expected to take by their 100th birthday, says investigator¹² Professor John Fisher.

Meanwhile, colleague Professor Eileen Ingham and her team have developed a unique way to allow the body to enhance itself.

The concept is to make transplantable tissues, and eventually organs, that the body can make its own, getting round the problem of rejection¹³.

So far they have managed to make fully¹⁴ functioning heart valves using the technique.

It involves taking a healthy donor¹⁵ heart valve - from a human or a suitable animal, such as a pig - and gently stripping away its cells using a cocktail¹⁶ of enzymes¹⁷（酵素） and detergents（清洗剂，洗涤剂）.

The inert¹⁸ scaffold（脚手架） left can be transplanted into the patient without any fear of rejection - the main reason why normal transplants wear out and fail.

Proof of concept

Once transplanted, the body takes over and repopulates the scaffold with cells.

Trials in animals and on 40 patients in Brazil have shown promising¹⁹ results, says Prof Ingham.

They have licensed²⁰ the technology to the NHS National Blood and Transplant Tissue Services so it can be used on any UK donated human tissue in the future.

The NHS is already looking into using the method on donor skin for burns patients.

Professor Christina Doyle of Xeno Medical, the medical device company that is developing the technologies, said the holy grail was to remove the heavy reliance on donor organs.

"That's where the technology will lead us eventually."

But she said: "To replace all donor tissue using this technology will take 30 to 50 years. Each single product will need to be designed and tested individually."

Prof Doyle said experts elsewhere were also working on similar regenerative therapies, but grown entirely²¹ outside of the body, to ensure that people can continue being as active during their second half-century as they were in their first.