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The end of the year is approaching, and as we prepare for the celebrations for the new year, what could be better than sitting down with a warm drink and recapping 2017 in the world of rejuvenation biotechnology?
Winter kick-off
This year has been pretty intense, with a lot going on both at LEAF and in the rest of the community. January saw the launch of the LEAF website, shortly followed by both the Lifeboat Foundation and Trust me – I’m a biologist partnering with us. Given that it’s been only a year, we’re amazed at how enthusiastic and supportive the community has been—and how fast it has grown, with nearly 30,000 Facebook followers late in December! We’re also very grateful to our friends at Fight Aging! for their encouragement, support, and appreciation for our work, including honoring us by featuring it on their website!
Posted in biotech/medical, life extension
Currently have telomerase which can immortalize human cells in a petri dish. Currently we have stem cells and we can take regular cells even from someone who is 100 years old and we can deprogram the cells back to a pluripotent stem cell state. This is effectively de-aging the cells. There is an effort by some researchers (not Dr West) to achieve partial reprogramming of cells. This would be to use the reprogramming mechanisms to de-age cells while retaining differentiation.
Dr West mentions in the fifth video that he strongly disapproves of current stem cell treatment centers.
Dr. West notes that people did not believe that immortalizing human cells (even in a petri dish was possible). This was a belief held until the 1980s. Even Dr. Hayflick thought it was extremely unlikely to be achieved. Hayflick had found over 300 changes in the cells as they divided and reached their limit of division.
Recently pharma firms have released new diabetes treatments, including one in the past week. What’s more, a promising new therapy that attacks the cause of type 2 diabetes at its roots is in the development pipeline.
Summary: Recently pharmaceutical firms have released new diabetes treatments, including one in the past week. Moreover, a promising new therapy that attacks the root cause of type 2 diabetes is in the development pipeline. [This article first appeared on the LongevityFacts.com website. Author: Brady Hartman. ]
The CDC recently shocked the public when they reported that 40% of Americans walking around today would develop type 2 diabetes.
Many people develop type 2 diabetes as they age because their body’s response to insulin – the hormone that controls sugar levels – gets weaker.
In a paradigm shift, scientists are starting to regard respiratory disease as a disease of aging and scientists at the Mayo Clinic reversed symptoms of a lung disease in mice using age-reversing senolytic compounds. In addition to senolytics, researchers are developing other treatments for respiratory conditions such as gene therapy.
Summary: In a paradigm shift, scientists are starting to regard respiratory disease as a disease of aging and scientists at the Mayo Clinic reversed symptoms of a lung disease in mice using age-reversing senolytic compounds. In addition to senolytics, researchers are developing other treatments for respiratory conditions such as gene therapy. [This article first appeared on the website LongevityFacts.com. Author: Brady Hartman.]
All of us – both smokers and non-smokers alike – will lose significant lung capacity as we age. Scientists at the Mayo Clinic have developed a promising treatment that rejuvenates the damaged lungs of mice using anti-aging compounds called senolytics.
The Mayo Clinic researchers showed evidence linking the biology of aging with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a disease of aging that impairs lung function and causes fatigue, shortness of breath, declining quality of life, and, ultimately, death. The Mayo Clinic team showed that the lungs of human IPF patients are full of senescent cells, and treatment with senolytics reversed symptoms of the lung disease in mice. Moreover, because senolytics have general age-reversing effects, the Mayo researchers hope to test the therapy on seniors with IPF as well as other lung diseases of aging.
Elizabeth Parrish is a proponent of controversial ideas. Rankled by barriers to trials on potential life-enhancing treatments, she used herself as a guinea pig and says the results have borne fruit – but she has irked the science community in the process.
Experimenting on herself didn’t go down well with scientists, but Elizabeth Parrish is convinced gene therapy can increase the length and quality of our lives, and wants early approval for treatments to stem ‘planet’s biggest killer’.
Some 50,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease (PD) every year. The American Institute of Neurology estimates there are one million people affected with this neurodegenerative disorder, with 60 years as average age of onset. Falls and fall-related injuries are a major issue for people with Parkinson’s?up to 70 percent of advanced PD patients fall at least once a year and two-thirds suffer recurring falls. These fall rates are twice as high as those of adults of comparable age, so improving balance in patients with Parkinson’s would provide a major health advantage.
Sunil Agrawal, professor of mechanical engineering and of rehabilitation and regenerative medicine at Columbia Engineering, along with Dario Martelli, a post-doctoral researcher in his group, have been working on this issue with Movement Disorders faculty from the department of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center?Stanley Fahn, a leading expert in Parkinson’s, and Un Jung Kang, division director, and Movement Disorder Fellow Lan Luo. In their latest study, published today in Scientific Reports, the team looked at whether or not Parkinson’s disease affects patients’ balance and diminishes their ability to react and adapt to walking with perturbations. The researchers found that the ability to adapt to multiple perturbations or to modify responses to changing amplitudes or directions was not affected by PD; both the Parkinson’s and the healthy subjects controlled their reactive strategies in the same way.
A single infusion gene therapy treatment improved levels of the essential blood clotting protein Factor VIII, with 85 percent of patients achieving normal or near-normal levels of the blood clotting factor, even many months after treatment.
Summary: British doctors say they have achieved “mind-blowing” results using gene therapy to rid people of hemophilia A. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman.]
We are one step closer to a cure for hemophilia according to the results of a groundbreaking gene therapy trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Clinical researchers at the Queen Mary University of London and Barts Health NHS Trust have found that over one year after a single gene therapy treatment, patients with hemophilia A are showing normal levels of the previously missing blood clotting factor, effectively curing them.
New view on mitochondrial DNA could put the brakes on mutations that drive diseases. Scientists perform landmark sequencing of mitochondrial DNA and discover surprising facts.
Summary: New view on mitochondrial DNA could help put the brakes on mutations that drive diseases. [Author: Brady Hartman. This article first appeared on LongevityFacts.]
DNA sequences between mitochondria inside a single cell are vastly different, reported scientists in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. This discovery will help to illuminate the underlying mechanisms of diseases that start with mutations in mitochondrial DNA and provide clues about how patients might respond to specific treatments. The researchers published their findings in the journal Cell Reports this week.
Mutant Mitochondrial DNA
