Scientists agree that CRISPR holds great promise in giving researchers unprecedented power to snip out abnormal stretches of DNA, But there are still significant questions about how safe and effective CRISPR gene editing will be once it’s unleashed in the human body. CRISPR works well enough in the lab, in a dish of human cells, but as with any technology, there are glitches. Some studies have shown that the gene editing goes awry once in a while, splicing incorrect places in the genome. Then there is the bigger question of what longer term, unanticipated effects man-made edits to the human genome might have… (READ MORE)
The black mouse on the screen sprawls on its belly, back hunched, blinking but otherwise motionless. Its organs are failing. It appears to be days away from death. It has progeria, a disease of accelerated aging, caused by a genetic mutation. It is only three months old.
I am in the laboratory of Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, a Spaniard who works at the Gene Expression Laboratory at San Diego’s Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and who next shows me something hard to believe. It’s the same mouse, lively and active, after being treated with an age-reversal mixture. “It completely rejuvenates,” Izpisúa Belmonte tells me with a mischievous grin. “If you look inside, obviously, all the organs, all the cells are younger.”
Izpisúa Belmonte, a shrewd and soft-spoken scientist, has access to an inconceivable power. These mice, it seems, have sipped from a fountain of youth. Izpisúa Belmonte can rejuvenate aging, dying animals. He can rewind time. But just as quickly as he blows my mind, he puts a damper on the excitement. So potent was the rejuvenating treatment used on the mice that they either died after three or four days from cell malfunction or developed tumors that killed them later. An overdose of youth, you could call it.
Ira Pastor, ideaXme longevity and aging Ambassador and Founder of Bioquark interviews Bill Faloon, Director and Co-Founder, Life Extension Foundation and Founder of The Church Of Perpetual Life.
Ira Pastor Comments:
On the last several shows we have spent time on different hierarchical levels the biologic-architecture of the life, disease and aging process. We’ve spent some time talking about the genome, the microbiome, tissue engineering, systems biology, and dabbled a bit in the areas of quantum biology, organism hydro-dynamics, and even chronobiology. As exciting and promising as all these research paths are, at the end of the day, in order for them to yield what many people are looking for, that is radically extended healthspans and lifespans, there needs to be an organized system of human translation build around them, integrating these various products, services and technologies, from supplements, to biologics, to functional foods, to cosmeceuticals, to various physio-therapeutic interventions, and so forth, as well as all the related supporting advocacy and education, as biologic aging is truly a multi-factorial, combinatorial process that is never going to be amenable to big pharma’s traditional “single magic bullet” philosophy that it promoted throughout the last century.
For today’s guest, I could think of no one better to talk with us about this topic and take us into the future on this front, than Bill Faloon, Director and Co-Founder, Life Extension Foundation (LEF), a consumer advocacy organization with over 100,000 members that funds research (investing million per year in researchers around the globe) and disseminates information to consumers about optimal health, and more recently in the area of actionable clinical interventions regarding human biologic age reversal, through a fascinating new project called the Age Reversal Network, defined as an open-source communications channel to exchange scientific information, foster strategic alliances, and support biomedical endeavors aimed at reversing degenerative aging.
Alkahest, a California-based biotech start-up, has just revealed some compelling early results from an ongoing Phase 2 trial into the efficacy of its novel formulation of plasma proteins derived from young blood, developed to slow, or even stop, the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
The tardigrades were part of a “lunar library” that Spivack’s foundation had put together. According to Wired, the package was about the size of a DVD and contained human DNA—including Spivack’s own—as well as 30 million pages of information on mankind’s knowledge and thousands of dehydrated tardigrades.
Tardigrades are known as one of the toughest creatures on Earth. They are microscopic, measuring about 0.012 to 0.020 inches in length, and can withstand temperatures of up to 304 degrees Fahrenheit and can survive being frozen alive. One tardigrade is known to have survived being frozen for 30 years. They can also live without water for up to a decade by shriveling up and placing themselves in a state of suspended animation—a trait DARPA is currently studying in the hope of preserving soldiers injured on the battlefield.
In addition to having access to large colonies of monkeys and other species, animal researchers in China face less public scrutiny than counterparts in the United States and Europe. Ji, who says his primate facility follows international ethical standards for animal care and use, notes that the Chinese public has long supported monkey research to help human health. “Our religion or our culture is different from that of the Western world,” he says. Yet he also recognizes that opinions in China are evolving. Before long, he says, “We’ll have the same situation as the Western world, and people will start to argue about why we’re using a monkey to do an experiment because the monkey is too smart, like human beings.”
This story, one in a series, was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
BEIJING, GUANGZHOU, JIANGMEN, KUNMING, AND SHANGHAI—Early one February morning, researchers harvest six eggs from a female rhesus macaque—one of 4000 monkeys chirping and clucking in a massive outdoor complex of metal cages here at the Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research. On today’s agenda at the busy facility, outside Kunming in southwest China: making monkey embryos with a gene mutated so that when the animals are born 5 months later, they will age unusually fast. The researchers first move the eggs to a laboratory bathed in red light to protect the fragile cells. Using high-powered microscopes, they examine the freshly gathered eggs and prepare to inject a single rhesus sperm into each one. If all goes well, the team will introduce the genome editor CRISPR before the resulting embryo begins to grow—early enough for the mutation for aging to show up in all cells of any offspring.
But as often happens when eggs are retrieved, all does not go well. Only one egg in this morning’s batch is mature enough to fertilize. “We were a little unlucky today,” says Niu Yuyu, who with facility director Ji Weizhi runs the gene-editing research. The group can afford a little bad luck, though. Through a combination of patience, ingenuity, and enormous animal resources, the team has already used CRISPR to create an astonishing range of genome-edited monkeys to serve as models for studying human diseases.
“Over the past 50 years [America has] gone from institutionalizing people with mental illnesses, often in subhuman conditions, [in state mental health hospitals] to incarcerating them at unprecedented and appalling rates—putting recovery out of reach for millions of Americans […] On any given day, between 300,000 and 400,000 people with mental illnesses are incarcerated in jails and prisons across the United States, and more than 500,000 people with mental illnesses are under correctional control in the community.” [1] Mental Health America (MHA) supports effective, accessible mental health treatment for all people who need it who are confined in adult or juvenile correctional facilities or under correctional control. People with mental health and substance use conditions also need an effective classification system to protect vulnerable prisoners and preserve their human rights. [2] Notwithstanding their loss of their liberty, prisoners with mental health and substance use conditions retain all other rights, and these must be zealously defended.
Background
In the past decade, America has been locking up increasing numbers of individuals with mental health conditions. [3] MHA is both concerned by and opposed to the increasing use of criminal sanctions and incarceration, replacing the state mental hospitals with much more drastic curtailment of personal liberty and preclusion of community integration and community-based treatment. [4] Prisoners with mental health conditions are especially vulnerable to the difficult and sometimes deplorable conditions that prevail in jails, prisons, and other correctional facilities. Overcrowding often contributes to inadequacy of mental health services and to ineffective classification and separation of prisoner classes. It can both increase vulnerability and exacerbate mental illnesses. For these and other reasons, MHA supports maximum reasonable diversion. [5].
IBM recently developed three artificial intelligence tools that could help medical researchers fight cancer.
Now, the company has decided to make all three tools open-source, meaning scientists will be able to use them in their research whenever they please, according to ZDNet. The tools are designed to streamline the cancer drug development process and help scientists stay on top of newly-published research — so, if they prove useful, it could mean more cancer treatments coming through the pipeline more rapidly than before.
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is an autosomal recessive disease caused by mutations in the CFTR gene. The 3272–26AG and 3849+10kbCT CFTR mutations alter the correct splicing of the CFTR gene, generating new acceptor and donor splice sites respectively. Here we develop a genome editing approach to permanently correct these genetic defects, using a single crRNA and the Acidaminococcus sp. BV3L6, AsCas12a. This genetic repair strategy is highly precise, showing very strong discrimination between the wild-type and mutant sequence and a complete absence of detectable off-targets. The efficacy of this gene correction strategy is verified in intestinal organoids and airway epithelial cells derived from CF patients carrying the 3272–26AG or 3849+10kbCT mutations, showing efficient repair and complete functional recovery of the CFTR channel. These results demonstrate that allele-specific genome editing with AsCas12a can correct aberrant CFTR splicing mutations, paving the way for a permanent splicing correction in genetic diseases.
A study on animals with autoimmune myocarditis was recently released in the journal Cell Reports [1], showing the impact of heart inflammation on the types of immune cell that are formed in the heart. This could have a significant impact on our understanding of cardiac aging.
What is myocarditis and how is it relevant to aging?
Myocarditis is a disease involving inflammation of the heart. It mainly influences people between the ages of 20 and 51 [2] [3]; however, the elderly are still affected to some degree. The disease has been known to cause serious complications, such as heart attack and heart failure.
