Lifeboat Foundation

Last year, resTORbio announced the positive results of its phase 2b human trial, which targeted the aging immune system with an immune system-boosting drug. Now, the company has announced the news that its therapy is moving to a phase 3 study later this year after successful negotiation with the FDA.

Targeting the mTOR pathway of aging

ResTORbio is a biopharmaceutical company that is developing therapies that directly target the aging processes in order to prevent or cure age-related diseases. Its primary candidate drug is RTB101, which targets part of the mTOR pathway, one of the pathways involved in aging.

The skin is our first line of defense against invading pathogens, and scientists at UC San Francisco and the San Francisco Veterans Administration (VA) Health Care System believe that it may be a cause of inflammaging, the age-related chronic inflammation that encourages a number of age-related diseases to develop.

As we age, we generally experience a rise in this low-grade chronic inflammation, thus increasing our risk for developing a variety of age-related diseases. There are a number of proposed sources of inflammaging, including senescent cell accumulation, cell debris, immunosenescence, and increasing bacterial burden.

In a previous article, we talked about the potential role of bacterial burden in relation to the microbiota of the gut and the age-related failure of the gut membrane, which allows bacterial contamination to invade the body and increase bacterial burden and inflammation. The gut microbiota has been proposed to be an origin point of inflammaging, and researchers suggest that the skin could be another.

Continue reading “A Restorative Skin Cream May Reduce Inflammaging” »

Text by Anton Zeldin, source: https://varlamov.ru/3352253.htmlTranslated by Alexey Turchin with the help of Google translate.

I started to date Valya in 2011 after the championship in “crocodile” — a game in which you need to portray words with the help of pantomime and guess them. For several years we communicated in very different ways, either parting or renewing relations, and only in 2016 we finally engaged. I realized that everything that I like to do in life, with this person I like even more. On both sides there was a confidence that no matter how we quarrel, nothing will change. We felt that a large concrete slab was laid at the base of our relationship.

In May 2017, we got married and started thinking about moving to Moscow. We worked together a lot — we made a discussion club and a telegram training game. It seemed to us that for the development of the latter it was important to be in the capital. We moved in mid-October, and lived in Moscow for almost a year. September 2, 2018 Valya shot down.

Continue reading “Cryopreservation of Valia Zeldin” »

In February, a group of 16 researchers from Harvard, MIT, and other institutions around the U.S. and Europe launched the nonprofit Academy for Health and Lifespan Research to promote future work, ease collaborations between scientists, and ensure that governments and corporations are making decisions based on the latest facts instead of rumor, speculation, or hype.

Research into extending humanity’s healthy lifespan has been progressing rapidly in recent years. In February, a group of aging and longevity scientists founded a nonprofit to foster the work and serve as a resource for governments and businesses looking to understand the potentially far-reaching implications of a population that lives significantly longer, healthier lives.

I wonder, if you can turn a 65 year old into a 40 year old, could you not turn around and give that 40 year old another treatment so they rejuvenate to an even younger state?

It is an interesting question because I might be getting near there myself! Anyway, let’s assume we develop sufficiently robust rejuvenation therapies within 20 years that they can effectively reset the clock by say 25 years with the result that a person who is chronologically 65 could be restored to a point where biologically they are 40 it begs the question could an 80 year old be effectively restored to the physiology of a 55 year old? My feeling is that the first generation treatments will in all probability be quite aggressive and invasive involving stem cell therapies, gene therapies and possibly surgical interventions to replace organs created through tissue engineering. So my concern is that whilst a 65 year old or even a fit 70 year old might easily withstand the rigours of these interventions I can’t see this applying to the average person in their 80s, whilst we are not yet at the stage where we have developed all the comprehensive therapies needed we should nevertheless keep in mind we are close and some are already approaching implementation see Suicide of aging cells prolongs life span in mice and also the video below from a few weeks back and it’s clear we are moving fast and might only be 10 to 15 years out if we keep up the current pace.

My concern is that with the senescent cell clearance a large percentage of cells in an 80 year old will be senescent so complete removal were it possible could kill them.

My thought is we might need to consider whether a less comprehensive and aggressive SENS therapy which perhaps for the sake of argument we could call MiniSENS might be useful to pull octogenarians back from the edge, perhaps by say by 10 years at which point they might be strong enough after a period of time to recover that they could handle a more intensive treatment which would yield further long term health benefits. It is just a thought but it might be something we need to think about because it would extend the age range of the people who could benefit from SENS strategies.

Continue reading “Would someone who is 80 benefit from SENS therapies or is it too old to rejuvenate them?” »

Humans have long envied animals that are able to regenerate parts of their bodies. Arms, legs, tails, even whole chunks of the organism. Yet despite all the technology and best efforts, humans don’t have this ability. However, this could all change. Harvard University uncovered the DNA switch that controls genes for whole body regeneration. This means that one day, humans may be able to grow back lost limbs!

Many people know that certain animals are able to achieve extraordinary feats of repair, such as salamanders which grow back legs, or geckos which can shed their tails to escape predators and then form new ones in just two months. It doesn’t stop there either. Planarian worms, jellyfish, and sea anemones take this regeneration to a whole new level and can actually regenerate their entire bodies after being cut in half.

Continue reading “Harvard Scientists Have Discovered The DNA Switch That Controls Whole-Body Regeneration” »

Researchers are shedding new light on how animals perform whole-body regeneration, and uncovered a number of DNA switches that appear to control genes used in the process.

A new clock that analyzes the age of the immune system may be the next big thing in aging biomarkers.

Measuring the age of your immune system

As we age, our immune systems begin to decline due to many factors, including the thymus shrinking and producing ever-fewer T cells, the ever-increasing chronic inflammation called “inflammaging”, dysfunctional immune cells doing more harm than good, and a lifetime of microbial burden taking its toll. This gradual decline of the immune system is known as immunosenescence.

Continue reading “An Immune System Clock to Predict Health and Longevity” »