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Archive for the ‘life extension’ category: Page 6

Sep 10, 2024

Decoding Aging: The Science Of Cellular Rejuvenation With Dr. Vittorio Sebastiano

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, science

It was a career-defining (and perhaps life changing) moment when Dr. Vittorio Sebastiano, a reproductive biologist by training, realized that because we are able to create life, that same body of information could be harnessed to create youth — that is, radically reverse our biological aging process to a younger time point without losing cellular identity.

In 2014, he and his lab began unpacking this epiphany. They made the radical decision to conduct their investigations in human cells and tissue rather than in rodents, with the expectation that such a start would be a better bridge to human clinical trials.

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Sep 10, 2024

A comprehensive map of the aging blood methylome in humans

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

During aging, the human methylome undergoes both differential and variable shifts, accompanied by increased entropy. The distinction between variably methylated positions (VMPs) and differentially methylated positions (DMPs), their contribution to epigenetic age, and the role of cell type heterogeneity remain unclear.

We conduct a comprehensive analysis of 32,000 human blood methylomes from 56 datasets (age range = 6–101 years). We find a significant proportion of the blood methylome that is differentially methylated with age (48% DMPs; FDR 0.005) and variably methylated with age (37% VMPs; FDR 0.005), with considerable overlap between the two groups (59% of DMPs are VMPs). Bivalent and Polycomb regions become increasingly methylated and divergent between individuals, while quiescent regions lose methylation more uniformly. Both chronological and biological clocks, but not pace-of-aging clocks, show a strong enrichment for CpGs undergoing both mean and variance changes during aging. The accumulation of DMPs shifting towards a methylation fraction of 50% drives the increase in entropy, smoothening the epigenetic landscape. However, approximately a quarter of DMPs exhibit anti-entropic effects, opposing this direction of change.

Sep 10, 2024

Cleaning up the aging brain

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, life extension, neuroscience

Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurological disorders can be seen as “dirty brain” diseases, where the brain struggles to clear out harmful waste. Aging is a key risk factor because, as we grow older, our brain’s ability to remove toxic buildup slows down. However, new research in mice demonstrates that it’s possible to reverse age-related effects and restore the brain’s waste-clearing process.

“This research shows that restoring cervical lymph vessel function can substantially rescue the slower removal of waste from the brain associated with age,” says Douglas Kelley, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Rochester. “Moreover, this was accomplished with a drug already being used clinically, offering a potential treatment strategy.”

Kelley is one of the lead authors of the study, which appears in the journal Nature Aging, along with Maiken Nedergaard, codirector the University’s Center for Translational Neuromedicine. The study is one of many collaborations carried out by researchers at Rochester’s Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences and the Medical Center.

Sep 10, 2024

NASA and ISS National Lab Choose WFIRM for Innovative Cancer Study

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

“This selection underscores WFIRM’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of scientific research and finding innovative solutions to some of the world’s most challenging health issues,” said Dr. Anthony Atala.


How can microgravity help advance cancer research? This is what an upcoming grant-awarded project sponsored by the International Space Station (ISS) National Lab hopes to address as a team of researchers from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) have been selected to send samples to the ISS with the goal of observing how microgravity influences cancer growth and their responses to treatment. This project holds the potential to help scientists and cancer researchers develop new methods for combating cancer here on Earth.

“Being selected for this project is an incredible honor and opportunity for our team at WFIRM,” said Dr. Shay Soker, who is the project lead and a professor in the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. “The microgravity environment of the ISS provides a unique setting to study cancer in ways that are not possible on Earth. This research has the potential to unlock new understandings of cancer behavior and lead to more effective treatments.”

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Sep 10, 2024

James Earl Jones’ Darth Vader Has Already Been Immortalized With AI

Posted by in categories: life extension, robotics/AI

James Earl Jones died Monday at the age of 93. But long before he did, he gave Lucasfilm permission to recreate his iconic Darth Vader voice for shows like “Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Sep 10, 2024

Aging is the inflation of life. An emerging crop of longevity biotech companies needs investment to beat it

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, robotics/AI

Despite the initial excitement and flashy headlines, all of these early ventures failed or switched focus away from aging. Most of these companies and their backers underestimated the complexity, costs, and time it would take to discover and develop a drug. Recent estimates suggest that developing a new drug takes over https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359644623002428” rel=“noopener”>10 years and costs upwards of $6.1 billion and the failure rates exceed 90%. This figure reflects the immense difficulty of identifying therapeutic targets, conducting preclinical and clinical trials, and navigating the regulatory landscape. When it comes to developing a drug specifically for aging, the challenges multiply, making it much more difficult to design effective interventions and demonstrate their efficacy in clinical trials.

Fast forward to today, and a new generation of longevity biotechnology companies with a more conservative approach than their predecessors has emerged. Companies like http://www.bioagelabs.com” rel=“noopener”>BioAge Labs and http://www.insilico.com” rel=“noopener”>Insilico Medicine are using artificial intelligence (AI) to discover drugs that target specific chronic diseases or biological processes closely associated with aging. Instead of trying to develop therapies for aging directly, these companies focus on conditions that are closely linked to the aging process like obesity, muscle wasting, fibrosis, anemia, and even cancer… The strategy is to develop drugs for these diseases that could later be repurposed to address aging more broadly. And while in the technology industry we try to focus on moving very fast to win, here we prepare to play a very long game and focus on resilience and novelty rather than putting all eggs in one basket and failing miserably like dozens of companies in the past three decades.

Sep 9, 2024

Newly Discovered Gene Could Be the Secret to Longevity

Posted by in category: life extension

A new study from the University of Copenhagen reveals that a specific gene plays a significant role in determining longevity, potentially opening the door to new treatments.

Sleep, fasting, exercise, green porridge, black coffee, a healthy social life…

There is an abundance of advice out there on how to live a good, long life. Researchers are working hard to determine why some people live longer than others, and how we get the most out of our increasingly long lives.

Sep 9, 2024

Insidious chromatin change with a propensity to exhaust intestinal stem cells during aging

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Molecular biology; Cell biology; Omics; Transcriptomics.

Sep 9, 2024

T cells can be reprogrammed to slow down aging, researchers say

Posted by in category: life extension

Researchers have discovered that T cells in the body can be reprogrammed to slow down and even reverse aging. Using a mouse model, scientists found T cells can be used to fight off another type of cell that contributes to the aging process.

Sep 9, 2024

Genetic associations with human longevity are enriched for oncogenic genes

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

Human lifespan is shaped by both genetic and environmental exposures and their interaction. To enable precision health, it is essential to understand how genetic variants contribute to earlier death or prolonged survival. In this study, we tested the association of common genetic variants and the burden of rare non-synonymous variants in a survival analysis, using age-at-death (N = 35,551, median [min, max] = 72.4 [40.9, 85.2]), and last-known-age (N = 358,282, median [min, max] = 71.9 [52.6, 88.7]), in European ancestry participants of the UK Biobank. The associations we identified seemed predominantly driven by cancer, likely due to the age range of the cohort. Common variant analysis highlighted three longevity-associated loci: APOE, ZSCAN23, and MUC5B. We identified six genes whose burden of loss-of-function variants is significantly associated with reduced lifespan: TET2, ATM, BRCA2, CKMT1B, BRCA1 and ASXL1. Additionally, in eight genes, the burden of pathogenic missense variants was associated with reduced lifespan: DNMT3A, SF3B1, CHL1, TET2, PTEN, SOX21, TP53 and SRSF2. Most of these genes have previously been linked to oncogenic-related pathways and some are linked to and are known to harbor somatic variants that predispose to clonal hematopoiesis. A direction-agnostic (SKAT-O) approach additionally identified significant associations with C1orf52, TERT, IDH2, and RLIM, highlighting a link between telomerase function and longevity as well as identifying additional oncogenic genes.

Our results emphasize the importance of understanding genetic factors driving the most prevalent causes of mortality at a population level, highlighting the potential of early genetic testing to identify germline and somatic variants increasing one’s susceptibility to cancer and/or early death.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

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