I don't have a subscription to Barron's, so I couldn't access the article I noticed in the recent issue, but a friend sent me the text. It mentions de Grey and Kurzweil, and a quote from Robert Freitas:

"There are many, many different components of aging and we are chipping away at all of them," insists Robert Freitas, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, a nonprofit, nanotechnology group in Palo Alto, Calif. "It will take time and, if you put it in terms of the big developments of modern technology, say the telephone, we are still about 10 years off from Alexander Graham Bell shouting to his assistant through that first device. Still, in the near future, say the next two-to-four decades, the disease of aging will be cured."

Right now, the rewards are still too distant for many private companies to openly join in the hunt for giant gains in longevity. "Anti-aging is just too far out for the stock market, too wacko," said an executive at one major biotech firm, who feared being associated with the topic publicly.

Just wacko enough for uglychart.com

Hundreds of companies of all sizes are in the hunt for genetic breakthroughs relating to particular diseases of aging. Many are focusing specifically on therapies involving stem cells, the basic cells of life, each of which is capable of growing into any type of cell. Giants like Amgen (ticker: AMGN) and Genentech (DNA), along with smaller companies like Geron (GERN) and and a number of private outfits, are all taking a crack at this approach. Though controversial, stem-cell work is considered perhaps the most promising avenue the anti-aging field.

As we age, damage results from chemical reactions that allow so-called cross-links to form among proteins that were previously able to slide across or along each other. De Grey notes it is possible to identify chemicals that can break these links. Alteon (ALT), a small biotech company in Parsippany, N.J., is testing a drug that may do just that.