Lifeboat Foundation

Everyone can find plenty of examples from his or her own life of what aging is doing to us all.

A few days ago, I wrote an article while on a plane. I’m an expat, and I was flying back to my home country. I’m now in my hometown, where I lived until I was 18. I come back here only seldom, and the last time I visited was four years ago.

For the vast majority of the time I lived at my parents’ house, I was a child. My most vivid memories of the place are from my childhood, when everything looked so much larger. So, even though I did live here as a grown-up as well, every time I come back here after years of absence, every room in the house looks far less spacious. Things have changed a bit since I left. Furniture has changed place and function; ornaments and knick-knacks have been moved, added, or removed; predictably, even the town has changed somewhat over the years.

Continue reading “Our Families Succumb” »

When skeletal defects are unable to heal on their own, bone tissue engineering (BTE), a developing field in orthopedics can combine materials science, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine to facilitate bone repair. Materials scientists aim to engineer an ideal biomaterial that can mimic natural bone with cost-effective manufacturing techniques to provide a framework that offers support and biodegrades as new bone forms. Since applications in BTE to restore large bone defects are yet to cross over from the laboratory bench to clinical practice, the field is active with burgeoning research efforts and pioneering technology.

Cost-effective three-dimensional (3D) printing (additive manufacturing) combines economical techniques to create scaffolds with bioinks. Bioengineers at the Pennsylvania State University recently developed a composite ink made of three materials to 3D print porous, bone-like constructs. The core materials, polycaprolactone (PCL) and poly (D, L-lactic-co-glycolide) acid (PLGA), are two of the most commonly used synthetic, biocompatible biomaterials in BTE. Now published in the Journal of Materials Research, the materials showed biologically favorable interactions in the laboratory, followed by positive outcomes of bone regeneration in an animal model in vivo.

Since bone is a complex structure, Moncal et al. developed a bioink made of biocompatible PCL, PLGA and hydroxyapatite (HAps) particles, combining the properties of bone-like mechanical strength, biodegradation and guided reparative growth (osteoconduction) for assisted natural bone repair. They then engineered a new custom-designed mechanical extrusion system, which was mounted on the Multi-Arm Bioprinter (MABP), previously developed by the same group, to manufacture the 3D constructs.

Aging is a battle that humans have known they can’t win since the beginning of history. We can hate it or (eventually) accept it but ultimately we can’t avoid growing old. However, over the years scientists have been trying to pinpoint the roots of this biological process and work out if there is any way to stop or reverse it. There have been some minor successes along the way and a new study adds to these.

The researchers were able to reverse the aging process of some old human cells by delivering a specific molecule to their mitochondria, the structures within cells where energy is produced. This approach stops the cells from becoming senescent, a point at which they can no longer duplicate. Some researchers believe that the accumulation of these cells in organs is key to the aging process.

“We still don’t fully understand why cells become senescent as we age, but damage to DNA, exposure to inflammation and damage to the protective molecules at the end of the chromosomes – the telomeres – have all been suggested,” the authors wrote in a post on The Conversation. “More recently, people have suggested that one driver of senescence may be loss of our ability to turn genes on and off at the right time and in the right place.”

Continue reading “Scientists Have Successfully Reversed The Aging Of Human Cells In The Lab” »

Recently, we’ve published an article explaining why life extension is not a selfish endeavor. As a matter of fact, life extension is a rather altruistic endeavor, though this depends on your interpretation of the definition. Let’s dig deeper.

What is altruism?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, altruism is disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others. Thus, one is altruistic when his or her actions are done for the benefit of others, without placing any importance on his or her own benefit.

To learn more about the conference and see more talks like this please visit us at: https://www.leafscience.org/ending-age-related-diseases-2018/

As our organization grows and we are doing more and more things, there is an ever greater need for specialist knowledge and guidance to help inform our decisions as a company. We rely on the advice and expertize of both our scientific and business advisors and we have added to them this week with two new experts joining us.

We are delighted to announce that Steven A. Garan has joined our scientific advisory board. Steven is the Director of Bioinformatics at the Center for Research & Education on Aging (CREA) and serves on its advisory board, and he is a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. While at the University of California, Berkeley, he played a major role in the invention and the development of the Automated Imaging Microscope System (AIMS), and he collaborated for many years with a group from Paola S. Timiras’ lab, researching the role that caloric restriction plays in maintaining estrogen receptor-alpha and IGH-1 receptor immunoreactivity in various nuclei of the mouse hypothalamus.

Steven was also the director of the Aging Research Center and is a leading scientist in the field of aging research. His numerous publications include articles on systems biology, the effects of caloric restriction on the mouse hypothalamus, and the AIMS. He is best known for coining the word “Phenomics”, which was defined in “Phenomics: a new direction for the study of neuroendocrine aging”, an abstract published in the journal Experimental Gerontology.

Aging (Albany NY). 2018 Jul 19;10:1666–1681. doi: 10.18632/aging.101500.

Latorre E, Torregrossa R, Wood ME, Whiteman M, Harries LW.

1University of Exeter Medical School, University of Exeter, UK.2College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK.

#mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) Inhibiting TORC1 has been shown to increase lifespan.

Today, we are pleased to announce that the results are in from a human trial that targets the aging immune system and that an immune system-boosting drug appears to be effective.

Targeting TORC1 to boost the immune system

Continue reading “ResTORbio Announces Results in Phase 2b Human Trial” »

Dr. Aubrey de Grey gives his keynote speech at the Ending Age-Related Diseases 2018 conference in NYC. This was our first conference and we will be back every year from now on.

To learn more about the event check out the conference page here:
https://www.leafscience.org/ending-age-related-diseases-2018/