Lifeboat Foundation

This is a fair enough article, though I believe I’m more Libertarian than it paints me. I think a lot of people forget or simply don’t know my book The Transhumanist Wager (how I started my futurist career back in 2009) is known by many as transhumanist libertarian manifesto. Also, ideas from my past political campaign do not always correspond to my current gubernatorial run:

Like many libertarians, I was initially excited when Zoltan Istvan announced his candidacy for Governor of California.

Istvan is the founder of the Transhumanist Party and author of “The Transhumanist Wager,” which is considered a manifesto on transhumanist philosophy. The basic premise of transhumanism is that the next step in human evolution will be to improve our bodies and expand our lifespan with radical technology, eventually leading towards immortality. While he still needs to obtain the nomination, having someone announce their intents this early gave me hope that maybe the party would have a shot at making an impact in the California mid-terms.

Continue reading “Is Zoltan Istvan a Libertarian?” »

A rebuttal of the ‘only for the rich’ objection often raised against the development of rejuvenation biotechnologies.

Some people are worried that rejuvenation might be a privilege accorded only to the rich. It’s okay to be concerned that this might happen, because if enough people are concerned about it, it’s more likely that we will actually do what it takes prevent this from happening. However, some people aren’t just concerned about it; they are argue that, to forestall the risk that rejuvenation may be something only few can afford, it should be never developed in the first place. This is an extremely flawed line of reasoning, for several reasons.

Live enough to live for ever…

The super rich are investing in new ways to make death optional.

The fountain of youth isn’t so far off.

Scientists have discovered a revolutionary molecule that could be crucial to the health and survival of Mars astronauts – and crucial to helping us look young forever.

Our cells have the ability to repair themselves, but that declines with age – and scientists finally discovered why. The breakthrough comes after six years of DNA research from scientists at Harvard Medical School and University of New South Wales. Their findings were published Friday in Science.

Continue reading “This scientific breakthrough could reverse the aging process” »

Wednesday, March 1st Baltimore, MD — In March 2016 Insilico Medicine initiated a research collaboration with Life Extension to apply advanced bioinformatic methods and deep learning algorithms to screen for naturally occurring compounds that may slow down or even reverse the cellular and molecular mechanisms of aging. Today Life Extension (LE) launched a new line of nutraceuticals called GEROPROTECT^TM, and the first product in the series called Ageless Cell^TM combines some of the natural compounds that were shortlisted by Insilico Medicine’s algorithms and are generally recognized as safe (GRAS).

The first research results on human biomarkers of aging and the product will be presented at the Re-Work Deep Learning in Healthcare Summit in London 28.02−01.03, 2017, one of the popular multidisciplinary conferences focusing on the emerging area of deep learning and machine intelligence.

“We salute Life Extension on the launch of GEROPROTECT^TM: Ageless Cell, the first combination of nutraceuticals developed using our artificial intelligence algorithms. We share the common passion for extending human productive longevity and investing every quantum of our energy and resources to identify novel ways to prevent age-related decline and diseases. Partnering with Life Extension has multiple advantages. LE has spent the past 37 years educating consumers on the latest in nutritional therapies for optimal health and anti-aging and is an industry leader and a premium brand in the supplement industry. Also, LE also has a unique mail order blood test service that allows US customers to perform comprehensive blood tests to help identify potential health concerns and to track the effects of the nutraceutical products,” said Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, CEO of Insilico Medicine, Inc.

Continue reading “Artificial intelligence enters the nutraceutical industry” »

It’s now out in print. It’s great to see my past presidential campaign for the Transhumanist Party getting this type of formal recognition. The Transhumanist Bill of Rights, the Transhumanist Wager concept, Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson considering me as a running mate, Immortality Bus, and my #libertarianism are all mentioned. http://www.academia.edu/32185481/Does_this_pro-science_party_deserve_our_votes

A new powerful drug reverses ageing in mice.

Another biomarker of senescent cells could be p16, a protein whose levels increase when cells stop dividing if old and also a protein whose gene is turned off in many human cancers.

Coming back to our topic – designing senolytics that avoid the apoptosis of young, healthy cells – the ideal senolytic should accomplish two things: –turn on p53 at increased levels to determine stubborn, senescent cells to commit suicide –do that on senescent cells only.

And in order to accomplish the second part, such a drug should be ‘programmed’ to only act on those cells where it recognizes senescence-associated biomarkers. There is no single biomarker today that stains positive or negative on all types of senescence cells, but increased levels of beta-galactosidase and p16 proteins could be a welcome start to identify old cells in vivo when designing such a drug.

Continue reading “How to avoid the adverse reactions of senolytics through better design” »

Genomic instability (mutations) has been suggested as being one of the primary hallmarks of aging and this research might support that idea. Researchers at John Hopkins report that around 66% of mutations in cancer cells are due to random errors with environment/lifestyle contributing 29% and 5% inherited.

“That finding challenges the common wisdom that cancer is the product of heredity and the environment. “There’s a third cause and this cause of mutations is a major cause,” says cancer geneticist Bert Vogelstein.”

“Such random mutations build up over time and help explain why cancer strikes older people more often. Knowing that the enemy will strike from within even when people protect themselves against external threats indicates that early cancer detection and treatment deserve greater attention than they have previously gotten, Vogelstein says.”

Continue reading “Random mutations play large role in cancer, study finds” »