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Category: life extension – Page 214

AI tools better at predicting heart transplant rejection than standard clinical method, finds study

More than 4,500 heart transplants were performed in the U.S. in 2023. While the lifesaving operation improves the quality of life and longevity for most recipients, organ rejection remains a risk, with acute rejection occurring in up to 32% of recipients within the first year.

A team of researchers from Emory University, Case Western Reserve University and the University of Pennsylvania developed artificial intelligence tools to examine cardiac biopsy images to improve the prediction of rejection, helping to ensure patients receive the best possible post-transplant treatment.

Currently, clinicians rely on histologic grading of cardiac biopsies to diagnose . However, there are limitations to the method, which assigns International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) histologic grades corresponding to no, mild, moderate and severe rejection.

Brain Mapping With Novel Rabies Viral Vectors

Summary: Researchers developed 20 novel recombinant rabies viral vectors that present unparalleled advantages for neural circuit mapping in aging and Alzheimer’s disease studies. These vectors are engineered to highlight microstructural changes in brain neurons through enhanced fluorescent proteins, offering insights into neural networks at both micro and macro scales.

The vectors’ unique ability to target specific neuron components and perform live imaging makes them potent tools for dissecting neural circuitry in healthy and diseased states. This innovation opens new pathways for targeted treatment strategies and will be shared with the neuroscience community through UCI’s Center for Neural Circuit Mapping.

Scientists discover evidence of time being reversed in historic study

The notion of time travel has fascinated humans for thousands of years, but it’s always been a work of fiction – until now.

Scientists have discovered evidence of time travel for real, albeit at a microscopic level. Till Bohmer and Thomas Blochowicz are the lead authors of a new study, Time reversibility during the ageing of materials, which is published in Nature Physics.

The research from the two researchers at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany focuses on time effectively ‘shuffling’ in the structure of certain materials like glass.

Ultrasound Reverses Senescence in Cells

A new study claims that low-frequency ultrasound can reverse aspects of replicative and chemically induced senescence in vitro [1].

The age-related increase in senescent cell burden is thought to contribute to many processes of aging. Most of the attempts to deal with it involve senolytics: drugs that eliminate senescent cells.

However, it may be possible to re-educate them instead. Senomorphics are compounds that change senescent cells in a way that renders them benign, but they are much less common. The authors of this new pre-print study (it has not yet been peer-reviewed) claim to have found an even more impressive way to solve the senescent cell problem: by rejuvenating them with ultrasound.

Faulty DNA disposal system found to cause inflammation

Cells in the human body contain power-generating mitochondria, each with their own mtDNA—a unique set of genetic instructions entirely separate from the cell’s nuclear DNA that mitochondria use to create life-giving energy. When mtDNA remains where it belongs (inside of mitochondria), it sustains both mitochondrial and cellular health—but when it goes where it doesn’t belong, it can initiate an immune response that promotes inflammation.

Now, Salk scientists and collaborators at UC San Diego have discovered a novel mechanism used to remove improperly functioning mtDNA from inside to outside the mitochondria. When this happens, the mtDNA gets flagged as foreign DNA and activates a normally used to promote to rid the cell of pathogens, like viruses.

The findings, published in Nature Cell Biology, offer many new targets for therapeutics to disrupt the inflammatory pathway and therefore mitigate inflammation during aging and diseases, like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.

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