Lifeboat Foundation

Monash researchers have unlocked a key process in all human cells that contributes to diseases like cancer and neurodegenerative diseases as well as ageing. The discovery reveals how cells efficiently get rid of cellular junk, which when it accumulates, can trigger death and the health problems associated with getting older.

Autophagy is the ‘clean-up crew’ of the cell—used by cells to break-down debris like broken proteins, bits of cell membrane, viruses or bacteria. To capture this trash, cells use specialised membranes to trap the cargo for recycling into new parts and energy. Without efficient autophagy cells become choked by their own damaged components, which can contribute to the development of a range of diseases, including diabetes, muscular dystrophy, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Michael Lazarou’s laboratory from the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute have today published data in Nature Communications that debunks previously held beliefs about how cells target their trash. Cells target different types of cargo by using ‘autophagy receptors’, which can bind the cargo as well as the ensnaring membranes. Until recently these autophagy receptors were thought to recruit the membranes to the cargo, but research led by Dr. Benjamin Padman from the Lazarou lab now shows that this is not the case.

Continue reading “Teaching human cells to clean house to delay aging and fight neurodegeneration” »

GDF11 is an endogenous (meaning it’s natural, and you have it in you) signaling molecule whose primary mechanism of action is stem cell DNA repair. Most of the aging is likely caused by the atrophy of your stem cell populations due to declining GDF11 levels, and many believe this is natural selection’s way of programming lifespan. Fortunately, adding exogenous GDF11 can generally repair enough of senescent stem cells to reverse your age 5 to 10 years.

Steve will take some time providing information on the topic and answering questions.

Continue reading “Steve Perry presents GDF11 with an Age Reversal update” »

Artificial intelligence, or AI is something we hear a lot about today. In this interview with Life.

Extension’s Michael A. Smith, MD, Kristen Willeumier, PhD, provides some insight into AI technology and its relationship with psychiatry which, along with neurology, studies and treats diseases of the brain. Dr. Smith predicts that AI will soon be an important part of how we understand and treat disease. According to Dr. Willeumier, some of that technology is now “ready for prime time.” Download this Live Foreverish podcast episode for FREE on iTunes!

Artificial intelligence is, simply, the intelligence of machines as opposed to human or animal intelligence. According to the New World Encyclopedia™, “Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science and engineering that deals with intelligent behavior, learning, and adaptation in machines. John McCarthy coined the term to mean ‘the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.’”.

Continue reading “Machine Learning and Medicine: Is AI the Future of Psychiatry?” »

Many people are at the very least iffy about the idea of extending human healthy lifespan through medical biotechnologies that prevent age-related diseases essentially by rejuvenating the body. Even people who accept the possibility that such therapies can be developed are not convinced that developing them is a good idea, and there are only a few arguments that most people use. These arguments can actually be easily adapted to make a case against the medicine that already exists, which the vast majority of people on the planet currently benefit from—and the consensus is virtually universal that people who do not yet benefit from it should be given this opportunity as soon as possible.

The question is: would people who accept these arguments as valid objections to rejuvenation accept them also as valid objections against “normal” medicine? For example, how many present-day people would agree with what these two people from the 1600s are talking about?

A – Did you hear about John’s son?

This is a timeline of cryonics.

Cryonics is the attempt to preserve a human or non-human animal using low-temperature with the hope that partial or complete resuscitation may be possible in the future.

While cryonics is currently the most popular brain preservation method, other methods are being used and developed, notably plastination. This page treats about all brain preservation methods.

Men and women who use cigarettes are twice as old as non smokers — biologically, say scientists.

Just as plastic tips protect the ends of shoelaces and keep them from fraying when we tie them, molecular tips called telomeres protect the ends of chromosomes and keep them from fusing when cells continually divide and duplicate their DNA. But while losing the plastic tips may lead to messy laces, telomere loss may lead to cancer.

Salk Institute scientists studying the relationship of telomeres to cancer made a surprising discovery: a cellular recycling process called autophagy—generally thought of as a survival mechanism—actually promotes the death of cells, thereby preventing cancer initiation.

The work, which appeared in the journal Nature on January 23, 2019, reveals autophagy to be a completely novel tumor-suppressing pathway and suggests that treatments to block the process in an effort to curb cancer may unintentionally promote it very early on.

Continue reading “In surprising reversal, scientists find a cellular process that stops cancer before it starts” »

A new study has outlined the age-related changes of the gut microbiome, showing a correlation between the microbiome’s composition and overall health.

The gut microbiome

The microbiome describes a varied community of bacteria, archaea, eukarya, and viruses that inhabit our gut. The four bacterial phyla of Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, and Actinobacteria comprise 98% of the intestinal microbiome.

Continue reading “The Gut Microbiome of Healthy, Long-Lived People” »

With the dramatic demonetization of genome reading and editing over the past decade, and Big Pharma, startups, and the FDA starting to face aging as a disease, we are starting to turn those answers into practical ways to extend our healthspan.

Here, in Part 2 of a series of blogs on Longevity & Vitality, I explore how genome sequencing and editing, along with new classes of anti-aging drugs, are augmenting our biology to further extend our healthy lives.

In this blog I’ll cover two classes of emerging technologies:

Continue reading “Longevity & Vitality Part 2: A Renaissance of Drugs and Genomics” »