Lifeboat Foundation

A British woman has become the first person in the world to undergo gene therapy for the most common cause of sight loss.

Surgeons at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford inserted a synthetic gene into the left eye of Janet Osborne, 80, who suffers from age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Around 600,000 people in the UK are affected by AMD, which affects the central part of a patient’s vision with gaps or ‘smudges’, making everyday activities like reading and recognising faces difficult.

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Liz talking about Rutgers, Integrated Health Systems, anti-aging vaccine(couple of years of gathering data), $75,000 single organ treatment, and potential for very affordable whole body treatment. Q&A at 32 minutes.

Liz Parrish | BioViva, presents at People Unlimited’s Ageless Education, about Gene Therapy Advancements.

Continue reading “Liz Parrish : Gene therapy advancements | BioViva | People Unlimited” »

UC San Francisco scientists have used the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system to create the first pluripotent stem cells that are functionally “invisible” to the immune system, a feat of biological engineering that, in laboratory studies, prevented rejection of stem cell transplants. Because these “universal” stem cells can be manufactured more efficiently than stem cells tailor-made for each patient—the individualized approach that dominated earlier efforts—they bring the promise of regenerative medicine a step closer to reality.

“Scientists often tout the therapeutic potential of pluripotent stem cells, which can mature into any adult tissue, but the immune system has been a major impediment to safe and effective stem cell therapies,” said Tobias Deuse, MD, the Julien I.E. Hoffman, MD, Endowed Chair in Cardiac Surgery at UCSF and lead author of the new study, published Feb. 18 in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

The immune system is unforgiving. It’s programmed to eradicate anything it perceives as alien, which protects the body against infectious agents and other invaders that could wreak havoc if given free rein. But this also means that transplanted organs, tissues or cells are seen as a potentially dangerous foreign incursion, which invariably provokes a vigorous immune response leading to transplant rejection. When this occurs, donor and recipient are said to be—in medical parlance—” histocompatibility mismatched.”

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Are tired-out cells what make people old? A new generation of drugs is designed to wipe them out.

The Longevity Therapeutics Summit was focused on therapeutics that target aging, rather than basic research or theory.

This was the first year for the Longevity Therapeutics Summit in San Francisco, California. Ably organized by Hanson Wade, with John Lewis, CEO of Oisín Biotechnologies, as program chair, the conference focused on senolytics for senescent cell clearance, big data and AI in finding new drugs (“in silico” testing), delivery systems for therapeutics like senolytics, TORC1 drugs, and biomarkers of aging, and the challenges of clinical trial development and FDA approval.

The conference featured a smorgasbord of cutting-edge longevity research, and, as the name implies, the general focus was on therapeutics that target aging, rather than basic research or theory.

Continue reading “A Report from the Longevity Therapeutics Summit” »

The derivation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and the stunning discovery that somatic cells can be reprogrammed into human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) holds the promise to revolutionize biomedical research and regenerative medicine. In this Review, we focus on disorders of the central nervous system and explore how advances in human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) coincide with evolutions in genome engineering and genomic technologies to provide realistic opportunities to tackle some of the most devastating complex disorders.

Advances in stem cell biology are paving new paths toward their use in the clinic, especially toward understanding and treating neurological and neurodegenerative disease.

Cancer cells are, in some respects, impressive: They can grow relentlessly, sidestep the aging process by becoming immortal, and evade the immune system’s persistent attacks. But in the process of acquiring such superpowers, the cells must occasionally relinquish other, more mundane skills—including the ability to produce certain nutrients.

Researchers at The Rockefeller University now announce the discovery of a rare tumor type that is unable to synthesize cholesterol, a molecule without which cells can’t survive.

“These cells become dependent on taking up cholesterol from their environment, and we can use this dependency to design therapies that block cholesterol uptake,” says Kivanç Birsoy, the Chapman Perelman Assistant Professor, who reports the findings in Nature.

Continue reading “Researchers discover a weakness in a rare cancer that could be exploited with drugs” »

Over the course of three weeks, the patients took nine doses of a leukemia drug called dasatinib and quercetin, a supplement. By the end of the trial, the patients were reportedly able to walk farther than they could previously in the same amount of time and other signs of improved well being — all without any serious side effects.

“Though small, this pilot study marks a major breakthrough in how we treat age-related diseases such as IPF,” researcher Jamie Justice said in a press release. “Here, we’ve therapeutically targeted a fundamental biological hallmark of aging that is implicated in IPF, and we show early but promising results for the first time in human patients.”

Be excited! Technology is rapidly advancing to eliminate age related sickness and death.

Imagine a world where aging will be reversed and people can remain young and in good health. Dr. Aubrey de Gray and others are working on therapies in making this a reality.

Continue reading “Ending Aging. Be Excited!” »