Changes to gene activity that occur with age can be turned back, a new study shows.
- By Karen Weintraub on December 15, 2016
Read more
Category: life extension – Page 588
A talk about how to make life extension mainstream.
Presentation by Didier Coeurnelle at Transpolitica 2016.
Treatments that enable radical healthy longevity should increasingly be seen as an ethical and economic necessity, and debated within the political mainstream.
Check out the LEAF interview with Synthetic Biology company CellAge who plan to use their technology to create aging biomarkers for the research community to use for free as well as new approaches to removing senescent cells.
CellAge are using synthetic biology to remove senescent cells that accumulate with age and contribute to disease. We took the time to interview them about their technology, treating age-related diseases and their plans for the future.
You can also check out their campaign on Lifespan.io:
https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/cellage-targeting-senescen…c-biology/
Progress with treating osteoporosis.
A team of scientists at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) discovered a new bone-forming growth factor, Osteolectin (Clec11a), which reverses osteoporosis in mice and has implications for regenerative medicine.
Although Osteolectin is known to be made by certain bone marrow and bone cells, CRI researchers are the first to show Osteolectin promotes the formation of new bone from skeletal stem cells in the bone marrow. The study, published in eLife, also found that deletion of Osteolectin in mice causes accelerated bone loss during adulthood and symptoms of osteoporosis, such as reduced bone strength and delayed fracture healing.
“These results demonstrate the important role Osteolectin plays in new bone formation and maintaining adult bone mass. This study opens up the possibility of using this growth factor to treat diseases like osteoporosis,” said Dr. Sean Morrison, who led the team that made the discovery. Dr. Morrison, CRI Director, holds the Mary McDermott Cook Chair in Pediatric Genetics at UT Southwestern Medical Center, and the Kathryne and Gene Bishop Distinguished Chair in Pediatric Research at Children’s Research Institute at UT Southwestern.
Dr. Aubrey de Grey on the case again in this amusing video.
Dr. Aubrey de Grey in a new video where people ask questions via Twitter. It is a bit tongue in cheek and sorry about the title but hopefully you will enjoy it,
If you liked this video and agree that eliminating age-related diseases is a good idea please consider visiting our website and making a donation for science on the link below:
An interesting but predictably hyped research study currently doing the rounds. Epigentic changes are one of the Hallmarks of Aging and this study reinforces their importance despite the usual media hype.
Graying hair, crow’s feet, an injury that’s taking longer to heal than when we were 20—faced with the unmistakable signs of aging, most of us have had a least one fantasy of turning back time. Now, scientists at the Salk Institute have found that intermittent expression of genes normally associated with an embryonic state can reverse the hallmarks of old age.
This approach, which not only prompted human skin cells in a dish to look and behave young again, also resulted in the rejuvenation of mice with a premature aging disease, countering signs of aging and increasing the animals’ lifespan by 30 percent. The early-stage work provides insight both into the cellular drivers of aging and possible therapeutic approaches for improving human health and longevity.
“Our study shows that aging may not have to proceed in one single direction,” says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory and senior author of the paper appearing in the December 15, 2016 issue of Cell. “It has plasticity and, with careful modulation, aging might be reversed.”
For the first time, scientists have used cellular reprogramming to reverse the ageing process in living animals, enabling mice with a form of premature ageing to live 30 percent longer than control animals.
The technique involves the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which lets scientists reprogram skin cells to a base, embryonic-like state. From there, iPSCs can develop into other types of cells in the body – and now researchers have shown that reprogramming cells can also rejuvenate living creatures, in addition to winding back cells.
“In other studies scientists have completely reprogrammed cells all the way back to a stem-cell-like state,” says researcher Pradeep Reddy from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
Read more
Getting old may not be inevitable — scientists have found a way to turn back the clock on human and animal cells, making them look and behave like younger versions of themselves.
The researchers also used the method to treat mice with a rare disease that causes them to age prematurely and die early, and found that the method increased the animals’ lifespan by 30 percent. And, when normal mice received the treatment, they appeared to be rejuvenated, with some of their cells healing faster than normal in response to injury.
The researchers said that their findings may help scientists better understand the process of aging. One day, it may be possible to use a similar approach to ward off age-related diseases in humans, and thus improve people’s health and increase their lifespan, they said.
Read more
Dr. Matthew O’Connor from the SENS Research Foundation gives a fascinating talk about this years successful results of the mitochondrial repair project (MitoSENS) and the potential for repairing age-related damage to the mitochondria that SENS proposes. 2017 could be an even better year for progress, please consider donating to the SRF Winter Fundraiser and help them make age-related disease a thing of the past.
Please take a few minutes to watch SENS Research Foundation’s Matthew O’Connor give a Google TechTalk during Google’s Giving Week campaign. The topic is his recently published article on our MitoSENS Research. If you enjoy this presentation and support our work please go to our website and donate today. Your support is critical to our success. You can donate at www.sens.org/donate
The team showed that a new form of gene therapy produced a remarkable rejuvenating effect in mice. After six weeks of treatment, the animals looked younger, had straighter spines and better cardiovascular health, healed quicker when injured, and lived 30% longer.
Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, who led the work at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, said: “Our study shows that ageing may not have to proceed in one single direction. With careful modulation, ageing might be reversed.”
The genetic techniques used do not lend themselves to immediate use in humans, and the team predict that clinical applications are a decade away. However, the discovery raises the prospect of a new approach to healthcare in which ageing itself is treated, rather than the various diseases associated with it.
Read more