Start tucking away cash now - you might just live to be 120

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

One of the world's biggest companies forecasts that medical advances will extend the average human lifespan to 120 during the next 20 years.

Yoshio Matsumi, the general manager of innovative technology for Japan's Itochu group, told an Apec science conference in Christchurch yesterday that the earth was on the brink of "a new industrial revolution" based on computers, biotechnology and nanotechnology.

New, personalised health care would become possible based on understanding each person's genetic makeup, and gene therapies would help the body to heal itself.

"The life span of a human being could reach 120 years, probably around the year 2025," he said.

Gene therapy involves treating patients by replacing faulty genes or giving them new genes to prevent disease.

Despite more than a decade of experiments, gene therapy has failed to live up to the early hype, but work with animals is showing promise.

Itochu, formerly C. Itoh, is ranked 14th on the Fortune list of the world's top 500 companies.

It has offices in 76 countries, including one in Auckland, and its annual sales of US$87 billion ($130 billion) are three times New Zealand's annual overseas earnings.

Mr Matsumi said Itochu regularly visited universities and research laboratories around the world to gather ideas for new products and services.

It had a joint venture with a United States Government laboratory to develop a way to detect salmonella in raw eggs without cracking them.

It was also working with an organisation in Oceania to develop "health food ingredients with a new functionality to improve the cholesterol level of the Japanese people".

He would not elaborate on this, but he said that Itochu had a research alliance with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

It does not have research alliances with New Zealand organisations, but at least one of them approached Mr Matsumi after his speech.

He predicted that the value of the Japanese biotechnology industry would explode from about US$12 billion ($18 billion) now to US$250 billion by the end of this decade, driven by both biomedical advances and new foods with health properties.

Japan's nascent nanotechnology sector, manipulating matter at the level of nanometres or individual atoms, would grow even more spectacularly from virtually nothing at present to US$270 billion by 2010.

Itochu has invested in an Osaka firm called Cluster Technology, which is developing new materials built from atoms up.

Mr Matsumi also predicted atomic-scale developments in electronics, lasers, vision-based sciences ranging from contact lenses to astronomy, and in the crossover field of "nano-biotechnology".

About 400 research managers and business leaders and officials from the 21 Apec countries are in Christchurch for the event.