Lifeboat Foundation

👏😄We are rapidly approaching — from multiple directions of attack (pharmaceutical, nanotechnology, gene manipulation, etc) — the end of all forms of cancer, inherited diseases, even aging itself. It’s a great time to be alive IF you can live long enough to live forever(ish)! Which makes EVERY death that occurs in the meantime to be all the more of a punch to the gut and slap to the face. PARTICULARLY the 600 000 + people here in the US alone! It’s also another reason t… See More.

If the gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 continues to show such promise it will herald a new era for the treatment of many genetic diseases.

In August last year, Unity released interim results showing that its drug was probably ineffective in treating study patients suffering from osteoarthritis.

Its stock price plummeted as a consequence, but Dr de Grey remains hopeful that “soon we might have drugs that actively cause these cells to die”.

While Dr de Grey is excited to see much of the life extension research he helped develop come to fruition, some thinkers are raising concerns about the implications of an extended human lifespan.

Mesenchymal stem cells derived from adipose tissue appear to reverse some effects of aging in nearby somatic cells.

A new study published in the FASEB Journal shows how mesenchymal stem cells derived from adipose tissue (ADSCs) reverse some effects of aging in nearby cells.

It’s not the cells themselves, it’s what they secrete

Continue reading “How Stem Cells Promote the Health of Nearby Cells” »

Loyal founder Celine Halioua talks about the inspiration behind her journey into aging science and why dog longevity has relevance in humans.

To understand how the clones can create millions of copies of themselves and yet remain functional, Oldroyd and his team compared the genomes of Cape honeybee workers with those of their queen and her offspring.

After forcing the Cape queen to reproduce asexually by fitting her with surgical tape that prevented her from mating, the team examined certain DNA sequences of both the Cape queen and the 25 larvae she produced. Then, they did the same for four Cape honeybee workers and their 63 larvae.

The team discovered that the asexually reproduced offspring of the queen had levels of recombination (DNA mixing) 100 times greater than the genetically identical cloned offspring of the workers — a finding that suggests the Cape worker bees have evolved a mutation that prevents recombination. Without the risk of a one-third loss of genetic material caused by the asexual reshuffling process, the workers are free to continually create perfect copies of themselves.

“At first, we had a hard time believing the results. Many of these genes are classical hallmarks of aging and yet our results suggested that their activity is more a function of the presence of bacteria rather than the aging process,” said Dr. Shukla.

Notably, this included genes that control stress and immunity. The researchers tested the impact that the antibiotics had on these genes by starving some flies or infecting others with harmful bacteria and found no clear trend. At some ages, the antibiotics helped flies survive starvation or infection longer than normal whereas at other ages the drugs either had no effect or reduced the chances of survival.

NIH scientists discover that bacteria may drive activity of many hallmark aging genes in flies.

Continue reading “Study suggests scientists may need to rethink which genes control aging” »

First look at the complete lobster genome might also shed light on human aging.

Scientists are befuddled.

To better understand the role of bacteria in health and disease, National Institutes of Health researchers fed fruit flies antibiotics and monitored the lifetime activity of hundreds of genes that scientists have traditionally thought control aging. To their surprise, the antibiotics not only extended the lives of the flies but also dramatically changed the activity of many of these genes. Their results suggested that only about 30% of the genes traditionally associated with aging set an animal’s internal clock while the rest reflect the body’s response to bacteria.

“For decades scientists have been developing a hit list of common aging genes. These genes are thought to control the aging process throughout the animal kingdom, from worms to mice to humans,” said Edward Giniger, Ph.D., senior investigator, at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the senior author of the study published in iScience. “We were shocked to find that only about 30% of these genes may be directly involved in the aging process. We hope that these results will help medical researchers better understand the forces that underlie several age-related disorders.”

The results happened by accident. Dr. Giniger’s team studies the genetics of aging in a type of fruit fly called Drosophila. Previously, the team showed how a hyperactive immune system may play a critical role in the neural damage that underlies several aging brain disorders. However, that study did not examine the role that bacteria may have in this process.