Lifeboat Foundation

NANOG. I just like the sound of it.

In the biology lab-based equivalent of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, researchers from the University at Buffalo have uncovered the human body’s internal fountain of eternal youth, in the form of a gene called NANOG. When expressing this gene in aged stem cells, the team found that it reactivated certain processes that had become exhausted, restoring their ability to develop into fully functioning muscle cells.

As we go about our lives, wear and tear causes the body’s cells to die via a process called senescence. When this occurs, new cells are created from stem cells in order to replace those that have become senescent, although when we hit old age our stem cells become depleted or unable to develop.

Continue reading “There’s A Gene That Reverses Cellular Aging, And Now We Know How” »

Sure, chatbots are useful for service industries like hospitality and food delivery, but in health care? Some groups are testing the use of chatbots to retrieve medical information from within a messaging app. At first glance, that seems a bit impersonal, but a closer look reveals a wide range of use cases where bots could make your next visit to the hospital, doctor’s office, or pharmacy faster and more effective.

Let’s run this back a bit. If you’re not familiar with bots, here’s a brief explanation. Bots are software applications that run automated tasks or scripts that serve as shortcuts for completing a certain job, but they do it faster (a lot faster) and with verve. And in health care, we spend a lot of time spent generating and retrieving information.

By putting a trained army of bots inside an application — smartphone, desktop, whatever-top — health care workers can rapidly improve throughput by simply cutting out a bunch of steps. That’s something most care providers today would welcome, especially with millions of new people entering the system as a result of the Affordable Care Act and the aging of baby boomers. With the crush of increased data entry and new regulations, costs and rote work are skyrocketing.

Continue reading “How the most connected hospitals will use chatbots” »

A new Aubrey de Grey podcast about the work SENS RF is conducting to cure age related diseases.

On today’s episode of Bulletproof Radio Dave and aging expert Aubrey de Grey talk about the 7 aging causes, morbidity & the ethics of immortality. Enjoy!

The future of regenerative medicine may be plants.

Website: http://sensproject21.org/

Building the bridge to human clinical trials for rejuvenation biotechnologies.

Continue reading “Project | 21 — We Can End Aging” »

Awesome! Just imagine all the benefits that we will see through this research. Not only will we figure out more on the root cause of gene mutations, and cures including CRISPR; but also we will be more effective in mimicking the human system in synthetic systems, synthetic cell or gene circuitry, humanoids, synthetic immune systems, combat aging more effectively, etc.

With more data, a pioneer of gene sequencing hopes to unlock the connections between DNA and illness.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — July 11, 2016 — SENS Research Foundation today announced its Project|21 campaign to secure $50 million in private support from individual donors, foundations, and corporations. The goal of Project|21 is for SRF to partner with a new generation of visionary philanthropists, build the Rejuvenation Biotechnology industry, and bridge the most challenging gulf between research and treatment by enabling human clinical trials by 2021.

Aubrey de Grey, founder and chief science officer of SENS Research Foundation said, “Ending aging will require large-scale investment to flow into a globally-recognized industry for rejuvenation biotechnology. Since we began in 2009, SENS Research Foundation has been putting all the pieces in place — core research groups, key players, shared knowledge, underlying tools — for the creation of this industry. The key programs funded by Project|21 can create an environment where the first damage repair interventions addressing specific age-related diseases will be brought to human clinical trials within five years.”

The programs funded under Project|21 focus on three major barriers to the development of truly effective rejuvenation therapies. First, funding to convert promising basic research programs into solid investment candidates remains far too scarce. Second, there are too few opportunities for dynamic collaborations with mainstream regenerative medicine. Finally, there is little understanding of the regulatory pathways and clinical infrastructure these technologies will require. Project|21 addresses these three areas by creating a $15 million bridge fund to support promising early stage technologies; a center of excellence to deliver better opportunities for collaborative development of early stage programs; and a Rejuvenation Biotechnology Alliance Program to address challenges in regulation, manufacturing, and investment.

Continue reading “Project|21 SENS Research Foundation | Building the Bridge to Human Clinical Trials for Rejuvenation Biotechnologies” »

Will we live longer lives in the future? According to Ray Kurzweil, it’s only a matter of time until technology begins successfully tackling age-related disease—and life expectancy grows longer and longer. At some point, technology will annually add more than a year to our life expectancy—allowing us to indefinitely increase lifespans, and perhaps eventually live as long as we want.

“We will get to a point where our longevity, our remaining life expectancy is moving on away from us. The sands of time will run in rather than run out,” Kurzweil says.

Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil Outlines the Coming Biomedical Revolution [Video]” »

A new finding in experiments studying the dry preservation of living cells — a potentially revolutionary alternative to cryopreservation — has defined a clear limit where continuing dehydration kills cells. The data, combined with molecular dynamics simulations, provides insight into an important processing factor that has limited recent attempts at dry preservation.

“What we have done is identified what appears to be a materials constraint in our method of dry preservation. I think this new understanding suggests some interesting avenues to pursue in developing a successful process,” said Gloria Elliott, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, one of the study’s authors.

The findings, reported in the July 8 issue of Scientific Reports, analyzes changes in the molecular arrangements of trehalose (a sugar) and water molecules during a typical dehydration process that they use to immobilize cells in a stable trehalose glass for long-term storage.

Continue reading “Study shows continuous dehydration kills cells during dry preservation” »