Comment on reddit(old stuff) antiaging cancer related

It is not immortal according to layman, some cells are considered potentially immortal by the neuroscientists themselves, neuroscientists that have worked with them and transplanted them to longer living organisms, seeing them live over twice as long as the original organism from which the cells came.   Limited only by the new hosts lifespan and considered that they may live even longer potentially indefinitely depending on the host.  Bowhead whale neurons live over 2 centuries, and are not fundamentally different in terms of repair and maintenance.  It appears it is the decay of the surrounding aging support tissue and vasculature that causes failure of these cells.

As for cancer, there has been research on immunity and cancer.  A small fraction of humans are highly resistant to diverse types of cancers, even aggressive metastatic cancers cannot overcome their immune system.

That is how you get someone eating heavily burnt meat, and smoking two packs a day and living decade after decade often over a century without getting treated for cancer.  They got the cancerous cells, of course, so many carcinogens did generate such cells, but their immune system fought them off.

>"Spring 1999. “Professor Cui, this mouse didn’t get cancer. Should I get rid of him?” It was a standard experiment in Zheng Cui’s lab at Wake Forest University, North Carolina: Inject inbred mice with cancer cells, not to study cancer, but to produce antibodies for a lipid experiment. “There must have been a mistake,” said Cui, “Inject him again.” Two weeks later, still no cancer. “Try again with a higher dose!” Still no cancer. No cancer even at a million times the lethal dose. Cui decided to breed the mutant mouse."-huffingtonpost

The mouse was found immune to aggresive cancer cells that would kill all other mice.   Research in humans revealed similar anticancer immunity capability exists in a fraction of humans.

>"The bad news: His wife was diagnosed with stage IV squamous cell carcinoma with massive metastases to all her major organs (lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys) and was given months to live. She had run out of conventional treatment options after partial surgery and chemotherapy. But he planned to take her to China for treatment at his other trial site in March 2013. Two months ago, good news and bad news again. Good news: we met with Cui and his wife. She looked terrific. To the astonishment of her doctors, her condition appears completely stable after 14 months, with no further treatment of any sort. She told us the transfusions gave her a high fever, but no other side effects.-huffingtonpost

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-manning-cleveland/the-mouse-that-wouldnt-di_b_5472369.html

The immune system's abilities go down with aging, even someone who was immune to cancer, could potentially get cancer if their immune system doesn't exhibit resilient aging.

Of course cheap therapies that can't be patented and could potentially destroy multibillion industries are bound to get scant funding.