Lifeboat Foundation

Aging is a universal experience, evident through changes like wrinkles and graying hair. However, aging goes beyond the surface; it begins within our cells. Over time, our cells gradually lose their ability to perform essential functions, leading to a decline that affects every part of our bodies, from our cognitive abilities to our immune health.

To understand how cellular changes lead to age-related disorders, Calico scientists are using advanced RNA sequencing to map molecular changes in individual cells over time in the roundworm, C. elegans. Much like mapping networks of roads and landscapes, we’re charting the complexities of our biology. These atlases uncover cell characteristics, functions, and interactions, providing deeper insights into how our bodies age.

In the early 1990s, Cynthia Kenyon, Vice President of Aging Research at Calico, and her former team at UCSF discovered genes in C. elegans that control lifespan; these genes, which influence IGF1 signaling, function similarly to extend lifespan in many other organisms, including mammals. The genetic similarities between this tiny worm and more complex animals make it a useful model for studying the aging process. In work published in Cell Reports last year, our researchers created a detailed map of gene activity in every cell of the body of C. elegans throughout its development, providing a comprehensive blueprint of its cellular diversity and functions. They found that aging is an organized process, not merely random deterioration. Each cell type follows its own aging path, with many activating cell-specific protective gene expression pathways, and with some cell types aging faster than others. Even within the same cell type, the rate of aging can vary.

Drugs that selectively kill senescent cells may benefit otherwise healthy older women but are not a “one-size-fits-all” remedy, Mayo Clinic researchers have found. Specifically, these drugs may only benefit people with a high number of senescent cells, according to findings publishing July 2 in Nature Medicine.

Senescent cells are malfunctioning cells in the body that lapse into a state of dormancy. These cells, also known as “zombie cells,” can’t divide but can drive chronic inflammation and tissue dysfunction linked to aging and chronic diseases. Senolytic drugs clear tissues of senescent cells.

In the 20-week, phase 2 randomized controlled trial, 60 healthy women past menopause intermittently received a senolytic combination composed of FDA-approved dasatinib and quercetin, a natural product found in some foods. It is the first randomized controlled trial of intermittent senolytic treatment in healthy aging women, and the investigators used bone metabolism as a marker for efficacy.

July 17, 2024 – The changes can begin in middle age, but they’re not usually noticeable until decades later. By age 60 and beyond, the changes can pick up speed and may become obvious.

“As we get older, our brain actually starts to shrink and lose mass,” said Marc Milstein, PhD, a Los Angeles brain health researcher. The start of that shrinkage, as well as the path it takes, can vary, said Milstein, who wrote The Age-Proof Brain.

“Starting at 40, our overall brain volume can start shrinking about 5% every 10 years,” he said. “Our brain has connections where our memories are stored, and as we age, we lose some of these connections. That can make it challenging to remember and to learn new information.”

The idea of the brain as a computer is everywhere. So much so we have forgotten it is a model and not the reality. It’s a metaphor that has lead some to believe that in the future they’ll be uploaded to the digital ether and thereby achieve immortality. It’s also a metaphor that garners billions of dollars in research funding every year. Yet researchers argue that when we dig down into our grey matter our biology is anything but algorithmic. And increasingly, critics contend that the model of the brain as computer is sending scientists (and their resources) nowhere fast. Is our attraction to the idea of the brain as computer an accident of current human technology? Can we find a better metaphor that might lead to a new paradigm?

If there’s one phrase the June 2024 U.S. presidential debate may entirely eliminate from the English vocabulary it’s that age is a meaningless number. Often attributed to boxer Muhammad Ali, who grudgingly retired at age 39, this centuries-old idea has had far-reaching consequences in global politics, as life expectancy more than doubled since the start of the 20th century, and presidents’ ages shifted upwards. We say “age is what we make of it” to ourselves and to policymakers, and think it’s a harmless way to dignify the aged. But how true is it? And if it isn’t true, why would we lie?

For centuries, we have confused our narrative of what aging should be with what its ruthless biology is. Yet pretending that biological age does not matter is at best myopic, and at worst, it’s a dangerous story to our governments, families, and economies. In just 11 years — between 2018 and 2029 — U.S. spending on Social Security and Medicare will more than double, from $1.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion per year. As we age, our odds of getting sick and dying by basically anything go up exponentially. If smoking increases our chances of getting cancer by a factor of 15, aging does so 100-fold. At age 65, less than 5% of people are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Beyond age 85, nearly half the population has some form of dementia. Biological aging is the biggest risk factor for most chronic diseases; it’s a neglected factor in global pandemics; and it even plays a role in rare diseases.

This explains why in hospitals, if there’s one marker next to a patient’s name, it’s their age. How many birthday candles we have blown out is an archaic surrogate marker of biological aging. Yet it’s the best we have. Chronological age is so telling of overall health that physicians everywhere rely on it for life-or-death decisions, from evaluating the risks of cancer screening to rationing hospital beds.

Analyzed the global trends in this area of neuroscience. To identify and further facilitate the development of cerebral organoids, we utilized bibliometrics and visualization methods to analyze the global trends and evolution of brain organoids in the last 10 years. First, annual publications, countries/regions, organizations, journals, authors, co-citations, and keywords relating to brain organoids were identified. The hotspots in this field were also systematically identified. Subsequently, current applications for brain organoids in neuroscience, including human neural development, neural disorders, infectious diseases, regenerative medicine, drug discovery, and toxicity assessment studies, are comprehensively discussed.

The American public intellectual and creator of the television series Closer to Truth, Robert Lawrence Kuhn has written perhaps the most comprehensive article on the landscape of theories of consciousness in recent memory. In this review of the consciousness landscape, Àlex Gómez-MarÃn celebrates Robert Kuhn €™s rejection of the monopoly of materialism and uncovers the radical implications of these new accounts of consciousness for meaning, artificial intelligence, and human immortality.

The scientific study of consciousness was not sanctioned by the mainstream until the nineties. Let us not forget that science stands on the shoulders of giants but also on the three-legged stool of data, theory, and socio-political wants. Thirty years later, the field has grown into a vibrant milieu of approaches blessed and burdened by covert assumptions, contradictory results, and conflicting implications. If the study of behaviour and cognition has become the Urban East, consciousness studies are the current Wild West of science and philosophy.

In this episode of In Conversation, we turn the focus to all things extreme exercise and longevity. Based on the findings of a recent study, which found that a select group of elite runners could live around five years longer on average than the general population, Medical News Today editors Maria Cohut and Yasemin Nicola Sakay discuss the probable biological mechanisms behind how more extreme forms of exercise, such as 4-minute mile running, affect longevity with an expert in cardiology.

Joining the conversation is Michael Papadakis, president of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology (EAPC), professor of cardiology at St George’s, University of London, honorary consultant cardiologist at St George’s University Hospitals National Health Service Foundation Trust, and consultant cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic London in the United Kingdom.

Papadakis shares easy-to-follow advice on how to incorporate more physical activity into our daily lives while discussing the potential health risks and benefits of running and similar forms of professional athletic performance.

The famed futurist remains inhumanly optimistic about the world and his own fate—and thinks the singularity is minutes away.