Lifeboat Foundation

Today, we were pleased to hear that Samumed, a San Diego-based biotech company working on regenerative medicine, has just raised $438 million towards developing anti-aging therapies.

SAN DIEGO – August 6, 2018 – Samumed, LLC, announced today that it has closed its A-6 Round of equity issuance with $438 million, bringing its total equity raised to date to more than $650 million. The pre-money valuation for the round was $12 billion.

“We appreciate the strong support from our investors,” said Osman Kibar, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Samumed, “and we are now in a fortunate position to both move our later stage programs to commercialization, as well as expand on our earlier stage science and clinical portfolio.”

Ichor Therapeutics, a life science company in Lafayette, New York, is one of the big players in the world of rejuvenation biotechnologies. Since its founding in 2013, it has been growing and expanding its portfolio of companies working on therapies against the diseases of aging; on August 1, 2018, Ichor announced the formation of its strategic fund, Grapeseed.bio.

What is Grapeseed.bio

This new fund and accelerator program is meant to provide young life science startups with seed funding up to $100,000, technical training, mentorship, and full access to Ichor’s large research laboratory.

http://grapeseed.bio/uncategorized/ichor-announces-1m-life-s…-syracuse/

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Today, we wanted to draw your attention to a review of aging and the role that the gut microbiome plays in it.

There is an increasing amount of evidence for the contribution of microbial burden in the chronic, age-related background of inflammation known as “inflammaging”. There are a number of proposed sources of inflammaging, including senescent cells, immunosenescence, cell debris, and microbial burden.

We have delved into the topic of the gut microbiome in the past and its possible role as the origin point of inflammaging in a previous article, but we wanted to highlight this publication for people interested in reading further about this rapidly evolving area of aging research [1].

For centuries humans have sought the ‘elixir of life’ – a mythical potion that supposedly would grant the drinker eternal life.

Now Exeter scientists believe they may have found the secret to a longer, healthier life.

New compounds developed and tested at the University of Exeter have brought the dream a step closer and paved the way for “anti-degeneration” drugs that could not only extend life, but also extend health and may help treat age-related diseases like cancer, dementia and diabetes.

Continue reading “Exeter University boffins have discovered ‘elixir of life’” »

The compounds — AP39, AP123 and RT01 — have been designed to selectively deliver minute quantities of the gas hydrogen sulphide to the mitochondria in cells and help the old or damaged cells to generate the ‘energy’ needed for survival and to reduce senescence.

In the samples used, the number of senescent cells — older cells that have deteriorated and stopped dividing — was reduced by up to 50 per cent.

The team also identified two splicing factors — a component of cells — that play a key role in when and how endothelial cells become senescent.

Continue reading “Compounds AP39, AP123, RT01 may reverse ageing in human cell: Study” »

A team of researchers from several institutions in Iceland and the U.S. has conducted a unique blood serum investigation and discovered multiple protein networks that are involved in the aging process. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study and what they found.

Prior research has shown that when older mice have their blood systems connected to younger mice, the older mice experience improvements in age-related organ deterioration. This finding has led scientists to suspect that aging might be caused by something in the blood. In this new effort, the researchers sought to test this idea by studying proteins in the circulatory system.

The study consisted of analyzing blood samples from 5,457 people living in Iceland, all of whom were over the age of 65 and who were participants in an ongoing study called Age, Gene/Environment Susceptibility. The volunteers had also been chosen specifically to represent a cross section of the people living in Iceland. The major part of the blood analysis involved creating a panel of DNA aptamers (short sequences that bind to proteins) that could be used to recognize proteins, both known and unknown. Blood serum from the volunteers was then compared against the panels and the results were analyzed by a computer looking for patterns.

Continue reading “Blood serum study reveals networks of proteins that impact aging” »

There is a 3-day conference in Brussels on November 8–10 for those of you in Europe interested in aging research.

The Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing (EHA) is an international event that provides a unique opportunity for researchers, government officials, biotech executives, entrepreneurs, and non-governmental institutions from around the world to meet, network, and forge new scientific collaborations.

Check out Synthego’s blog post to explore the possibility of CRISPR aided anti-aging solutions. #aging #genomics #GenomeEngineering https://buff.ly/2Ohmj2F