00:00Today, on Tuesday, December 9th, how two Russian scientists transformed global understanding of
00:05aging and cancer. A deep dive into the hidden legacy behind modern geroscience.
00:11In a powerful new essay, researchers are shedding light on how two Russian scientists working
00:15decades apart but connected by shared intellectual roots help reshape the world's understanding of
00:20aging, disease, and cancer biology. Their ideas, once overlooked, are now recognized as foundational
00:27pillars of modern aging science. A father-son legacy that rewrote aging science.
00:33For years, biogerontologist Mikhail Blagosklani has argued that aging isn't a slow breakdown of
00:38biological systems its biology stuck in overdrive. But as new scholarship reveals, this groundbreaking
00:44viewpoint can be traced back to the pioneering work of another scientist, his own father, Vladimir
00:50Dillman. In a reflective article published in Aging, researcher Alexei G. Golubev explores how
00:55Dillman's neuroendocrine theories anticipated many of today's central ideas in geroscience,
01:00ultimately influencing Blagosklani's globally influential hyperfunction theory.
01:05Golubev emphasizes an important point, today's modern theories often rise from forgotten Soviet
01:10era research that never received proper recognition due to language barriers, limited indexing,
01:15and Cold War isolation.
01:17Aging, not decline but dangerous overactivity.
01:20For decades, the traditional view of aging has been simple, systems weaken, damage accumulates,
01:26functions fail, and the body declines.
01:29Dillman and Blagosklani turned this idea upside down.
01:32Dillman's Elevation Theory
01:33When the Brain Overdrives the Body
01:35Dillman argued that aging begins when the hypothalamus the brain's hormonal control center loses
01:40sensitivity to feedback signals.
01:43To compensate, the body elevates hormones and metabolites, pushing the system into chronic
01:48metabolic overactivity.
01:50This overdrive, he believed, fuels age-related disorders, cancer risk, and metabolic diseases.
01:57Blagosklani's Hyperfunction Theory
01:58Growth Pathways That Won't Switch Off
02:01Decades later, Blagosklani expanded this idea on a molecular level.
02:06His hyperfunction theory argues that pathways like MTO are designed to drive growth in youth
02:11continue working excessively in adulthood.
02:12The result
02:14Cells and tissues begin to overfunction, causing
02:17Hypertension
02:19Organ Enlargement
02:21Fibrosis
02:22Increased Cancer Risk
02:24Goliabef notes that Blagosklani essentially identified MTOR as a molecular hypothalamus as
02:30central regulator whose overactivity drives aging, echoing Dillman's earlier logic.
02:34Both scientists redefined aging as too much of a good thing, rather than system failure.
02:40Rediscovering the Overlooked Foundations of Modern Geroscience
02:43Goliabef highlights that many now-mainstream ideas such as metabolic syndromes linked to cancer,
02:49insulin resistance, the concept of metabolic immunodepression, and the potential anti-aging
02:54effects of biguanide drugs like metformin were studied in Dillman's Soviet laboratory long
02:58before they appeared in Western scientific discourse.
03:01When later discoveries revealed that biguanides and rapamycin act by influencing MTOR signaling,
03:06it connected Dillman's early work to Blagosklani's modern framework closing as scientific
03:11loop decades in the making.
03:13Yet much of this research remains underscited simply because it was published in Russian
03:17at a time when digital archives and global indexing did not exist.
03:21Goliabef warns that forgetting such contributions risks causing the scientific world to recycle
03:25ideas without acknowledging their origins or learning from early insights.
03:30Reference
03:30Alexei Goliabef, on the intergenerational transfer of ideas in aging and cancer research,
03:36from the hypothalamus according to V.M.
03:39Dillman to the MTOR protein complex according to MV.
03:43Blagosklani, aging, November 19, 2025.
03:47Thanks for watching and following.
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