Lifeboat Foundation

Immune system decline one of the hallmarks of aging and something that we should be concerned about addressing.

The age associated decline in immune function is preceded in mammals by a reduction in thymic output. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence of a link between immune competence and lifespan. One approach to determining thymic output is to quantify signal joint T cell receptor excision circles (sj-TRECs), a method which has been developed and used in several mammalian species. Life expectancy and the rate of aging vary in dogs depending upon their breed. In this study, we quantified sj-TRECs in blood samples from dogs of selected breeds to determine whether there was a relationship between longevity and thymic output. In Labrador retrievers, a breed with a median expected lifespan of 11 years, there was an age-associated decline in sj-TREC values, with the greatest decline occurring before 5 years of age, but with sj-TREC still detectable in some geriatric animals, over 13 years of age. In large short-lived breeds (Burnese mountain dogs, Great Danes and Dogue de Bordeaux), the decline in sj-TREC values began earlier in life, compared with small long-lived breeds (Jack Russell terriers and Yorkshire terriers), and the presence of animals with undetectable sj-TRECs occurred at a younger age in the short-lived breeds. The study findings suggest that age-associated changes in canine sj-TRECs are related to breed differences in longevity, and this research highlights the use of dogs as a potential model of immunosenescence.

Citation: Holder A, Mella S, Palmer DB, Aspinall R, Catchpole B (2016) An Age-Associated Decline in Thymic Output Differs in Dog Breeds According to Their Longevity. PLoS ONE 11(11): e0165968. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0165968

Continue reading “An Age-Associated Decline in Thymic Output Differs in Dog Breeds According to Their Longevity” »

Time to hit the gym as part of your personal longevity plan.

WHO fact sheet on physical activity provides key facts and information on benefits, risks of inactivity, reasons for physical inactivity and how to increase physical activity, WHO response.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears…in…rain. Time to die.” — Roy Batty, Blade Runner

Artificial intelligence has fascinated mankind for more than half a century, with the first public mention of computer intelligence recorded during a London lecture by Alan Turing in 1947. More recently, the public has been exposed to headlines that have increasingly contained references to the growing power of AI, whether that’s been AlphaGo’s defeat of legendary Go player Lee Se-dol, Microsoft’s racist AI bot named Tay or any other number of new developments in the machine learning field. Once a plot device for science-fiction tales, AI is becoming real — and human beings are going to have to define their relationship with it sooner rather than later.

Peter Diamandis, co-founder and vice-chairman at Human Longevity, Inc., touches on that relationship in a post he authored on LinkedIn, titled “The next sexual revolution will be digitized.” Diamandis points to recent reports showing that the Japanese are increasingly abandoning sex and relationships, while a growing subset of men report that they prefer to have virtual girlfriends over real ones.

Continue reading “Defining our relationship with early AI” »

More commentary about the Steve Aoki Party for Science and the Aoki Foundation.

Music business entrepreneur Steve Aoki has been a supporter of the SENS rejuvenation research programs for a while now. I’m always pleased to see successful people being vocal about their support for SENS, putting it front and center when talking to their audiences. Placing this important scientific work — as well as the prospects for near future therapies, and the need for philanthropic funding — in front of a bigger audience is a vital to the continued growth of our community and continued progress towards the medical control of aging. We need to reach out to entirely new networks of people, those who would never seek out the longevity science community on their own, as among their numbers are many who will be turn out to be interested, pleasantly surprised, and enthusiastic. Today, I’d wager, a large fraction of those people who will go on to be significant advocates and philanthropic donors of the late 2020s have no idea that we even exist, or that bringing an end to age-related disease, frailty, and suffering is possible outside the realm of science fiction.

Bootstrapping a cause never stops being hard. It was hard when small groups were striving to raise a few thousand dollars for SENS advocacy here and there, when having regular research programs and a million dollar fund looked to be an impossible distance away. It is hard today, when the SENS Research Foundation is trying to make the leap from a few million dollars in yearly research budgets to something ten times that size. Building greater public awareness and enthusiasm for the medical science of human rejuvenation is a very necessary part of that work. The sooner we collectively manage to change the zeitgeist to one in which charitable support for rejuvenation research is just as normal and lauded as support for cancer research, the better off we all are, and the more money that can be raised for scientific projects. So thanks are due to Steve Aoki for stepping up to the plate and taking a swing at this.

Continue reading “The Work of the Aoki Foundation to Support SENS Rejuvenation Research” »

More reasons for supporting scientific research and how your money fuels real and tangible progress.

Become a SENS patron, and we’ll match a year of your donations

The 2016 year end SENS rejuvenation research fundraiser started on November 1st. This year we’re trying something a little different, with a longer term view. This is the time for it! Newly formed companies are now working on the first SENS therapies, and longer-term non-profit research projects are also underway. These initiatives will come to fruition some years from now: the SENS Research Foundation recently launched Project|21 with a five year timeline, for example. So this year we’re looking for more members of our community to become SENS Patrons for the long term, by signing up for a recurring monthly donation to the SENS Research Foundation, and then keeping that going until the job is done and the first rejuvenation therapies are deployed. As an encouragement, we will match the next year of donations for anyone who signs up before the end of 2016, from a fund of $24,000 provided by Josh Triplett and Fight Aging!

Party for Science with Steve Aoki and help raise awareness and funds for the SENS Research Foundation.

Hang with DJ Steve Aoki at a nightclub and you can expect an earful of his electronic bangers and confetti in your hair. Cozy up to Steve Aoki at Brooklyn Bowl on November 15 and you’ll get to hit pins alongside neuroscientists, bid on one-of-a-kind experiences in live and silent auctions (think jumping into the foam pit at Aoki’s Las Vegas “playhouse”) and catch him outside the booth as he hosts the Aoki Foundation’s Bowling for Brains fundraiser. The inaugural event supports the Buck Institute on Aging, SENS Research Foundation and Las Vegas’ own Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, continuing the foundation’s ongoing support of regenerative science.

Aubrey de Grey and Brian Kennedy debate the motion that “Lifespans are long enough” at Intelligence2. This was a great show and the results speak for themselves as do the convincing arguments presented by Brian and Aubrey. If you missed it first time around earlier this year you should watch it now.

“What if we didn’t have to grow old and die? The average American can expect to live for 78.8 years, an improvement over the days before clean water and vaccines, when life expectancy was closer to 50, but still not long enough for most of us. So researchers around the world have been working on arresting the process of aging through biotechnology and finding cures to diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer. What are the ethical and social consequences of radically increasing lifespans? Should we accept a “natural” end, or should we find a cure to aging?”

On February 3rd, 2016, SRF’s Chief Science Officer Aubrey de Grey joined forces with Buck Institute for Research on Aging President/CEO Brian Kennedy to oppose the motion that “Lifespans Are Long Enough”, in a debate hosted at New York’s Kaufman Center by Intelligence² Debates. The team proposing the motion comprised Paul Root Wolpe, Director of the Emory Center for Ethics, and Ian Ground of the UK’s Newcastle University.

Continue reading “Lifespans Are (Not) Long Enough” »

One of the highlights this year was the SENS RB2016 conference which was live streamed and is available to watch right now if you missed if the first time around. Three days of exciting biotechnology smile

Although the event itself was invitation-only, our free live stream allowed viewers from 62 countries to enjoy a broad range of presentations on the emerging rejuvenation biotechnology industry and SRF’s critical role in driving forward the clinical translation of truly effective medicine for age-related disease.

Don’t worry if you missed it, though — the streamed videos remain available here!

Continue reading “Rejuvenation Biotechnology 2016” »

Mitochondria — the structures within cells mostly known for converting nutrients into usable energy — may play a larger and more direct role in the aging process than previously thought, according to USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology Assistant Professor David Lee.

In addition to powering cells, mitochondria serve important roles in coordinating metabolism, Lee said. And evidence has shown that mitochondria — which have their own smaller genome separate from the larger collection of genes in a cell’s nucleus — lose function and accrue DNA damage during the aging process, reflecting a role in aging.

In trying to determine how the mitochondria are involved in aging, many researchers have studied the signals sent from the nucleus to the mitochondria and how they change with age. However, Lee theorizes that communication between the cell’s powerhouse and its control center may be taking place in both directions, with signaling molecules originally coded in the mitochondrial DNA regulating the nucleus and causing changes that affect key cellular factors of aging, such as metabolism.