Researchers at the Josep Carreras Institute describe for the first time the delicate balance of longevity

An international team of researchers led by Dr Manel Esteller, head of the Cancer Epigenetics Group at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, has just published the most comprehensive analysis to date of the longest-lived person ever recorded, the Catalan woman Maria Branyas, who passed away at the end of 2024 at the age of 117. The peer-reviewed study, published in the prestigious international journal Cell Reports Medicine, concludes that the biology of supercentenarians is more complex than previously thought, and that the key may lie in a delicate balance between opposing forces.