Biotech/medical – Lifeboat News: The Blog

A review and implications for aging research

Posted by Franco Cortese in biotech/medical, life extension

Aug 18
2018

The effects of donor age on organ transplants: A review and implications for aging research.

Despite the considerable amount of data available on the effect of donor age upon the outcomes of organ transplantation, these still represent an underutilized resource in aging research. In this review, we have compiled relevant studies that analyze the effect of donor age in graft and patient survival following liver, kidney, pancreas, heart, lung and cornea transplantation, with the aim of deriving insights into possible differential aging rates between the different organs. Overall, older donor age is associated with worse outcomes for all the organs studied. Nonetheless, the donor age from which the negative effects upon graft or patient survival starts to be significant varies between organs. In kidney transplantation, this age is within the third decade of life while the data for heart transplantation suggest a significant effect starting from donors over age 40. This threshold was less defined in liver transplantation where it ranges between 30 and 50 years. The results for the pancreas are also suggestive of a detrimental effect starting at a donor age of around 40, although these are mainly derived from simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplantation data. In lung transplantation, a clear effect was only seen for donors over 65, with negative effects of donor age upon transplantation outcomes likely beginning after age 50. Corneal transplants appear to be less affected by donor age as the majority of studies were unable to find any effect of donor age during the first few years posttransplantation. Overall, patterns of the effect of donor age in patient and graft survival were observed for several organ types and placed in the context of knowledge on aging.

Living in a culture dependant upon caffeine and lack of sleep, its important to remember that sleep offers an incredibly important biological function

Posted by Nicholi Avery in biotech/medical, neuroscience

Aug 18
2018

One night of sleep deprivation is tied to Alzheimer’s disease.

For the past few years researchers have shown that the brain flushes out neurotoxins during the period people are sleeping.

https://www.chronobiology.com/neurotoxins-and-sleep-what-you-need-to-know/

Do you want to join in the fight to end age-related disease?

Posted by Michael Greve in biotech/medical, life extension

Aug 18
2018

Together, Forever Healthy Foundation and SENS Research Foundation are now accepting research proposals that promise progress in regenerative medicine for the prevention and reversal of age-related disease. This Fellowship will take place at SRF’s research center in Mountain View, California.

For more information, please visit: http://sens.org/research/research-blog/forever-healthy-found…technology

What Causes Glaucoma? Scientists May Have Finally Figured It Out

Posted by Genevieve Klien in biotech/medical

Aug 18
2018

Researchers say an autoimmune response may be behind the eye pressure and vision loss that sometimes precedes a glaucoma diagnosis.

The Dark Secret These Corporations Are Hiding From You

Posted by Michael Dodd in biotech/medical, evolution, food, neuroscience

Aug 17
2018

This is a must watch video. It tells a painful truth of our real world. It is worth the watch. Please pass this video along if you are so inclined.

Excerpt: You live in a world of drug dealers. Only the drugs can be bought legally, and are perfectly priced to prevent you from inquiring into other areas. Your society exhibits a wealth of negative side effects from these drugs. Yet the bulk of your population still continues to use our products, even after they’ve shown themselves to be harmful. You live in a population that continues to grow more restless, agitated, and depressed, in part from eating our goodies and treats. Treats that are called “superstimuli” as the stimulus it produces inside your brain vastly exceeds the natural stimuli humans received throughout evolution, from natural foods.

*** I do this full time with the help of your donations or patronage. Your help is profoundly appreciated, and truly does help these videos continue, thank you!

Aubrey de Grey — We Will End Aging

Posted by Bill Kemp in biotech/medical, life extension

Aug 17
2018

Website ► http://sens.org
YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/user/SENSFVideo
Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/sensf
Twitter ► https://twitter.com/senstweet

“At SENS Research Foundation, we believe that a world free of age-related disease is possible. That’s why we’re funding work at universities across the world and at our own Research Center in Mountain View, CA.

Our research emphasizes the application of regenerative medicine to age-related disease, with the intent of repairing underlying damage to the body’s tissues, cells, and molecules. Our goal is to help build the industry that will cure the diseases of aging. ”

Aubrey de Grey ► http://goo.gl/Tc5QHl

Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey is an English author and theoretician in the field of gerontology and the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation. He is editor-in-chief of the academic journal Rejuvenation Research, author of The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging (1999) and co-author of Ending Aging (2007). He is known for his view that medical technology may enable human beings alive today to live to lifespans far in excess of any existing authenticated cases.

De Grey’s research focuses on whether regenerative medicine can thwart the aging process. He works on the development of what he calls “Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence” (SENS), a collection of proposed techniques to rejuvenate the human body and stop aging. To this end, he has identified seven types of molecular and cellular damage caused by essential metabolic processes. SENS is a proposed panel of therapies designed to repair this damage.

Continue reading “Aubrey de Grey — We Will End Aging” | >

Steven A. Garan — Silicon Valley’s Role in Fighting Aging

Posted by Steve Hill in biotech/medical, life extension

Aug 17
2018

Today, we would like to share the talk that Steven A. Garan gave at our recent conference in New York, Ending Age-Related Diseases: Investment Prospects & Advances in Research. The conference focused on bringing together the world of research and investment and bringing thought leaders, investors, the media, and the general public together.

Steven A. Garan is the Director of Bioinformatics at the Center for Research and Education on Aging (CREA) and a researcher at UC Berkeley National Laboratory. In his talk at Ending Age-Related Diseases, he discussed the impact of various present and future Silicon Valley technology breakthroughs on overcoming aging.

He gave a somewhat future-facing talk at the conference, which may surprise some people given his senior position at Berkeley; however, we consider this a sign of how times have changed in the last decade. Ten years ago, talking about ending aging would potentially have damaged your career and gotten you unfairly labeled as fringe, much as Dr. Aubrey de Grey was for many years until many others joined his crusade to end aging. It was therefore refreshing to hear Steven talk so positively about the future of biomedical science and about doing something about aging itself in order to end age-related diseases.

Bioengineers borrow from electronics industry to get stem cells to shape up

Posted by Genevieve Klien in bioengineering, biotech/medical, life extension, robotics/AI

Aug 17
2018

To understand how cells in the body behave, bioengineers create miniature models of the cells’ environment in their lab. But recreating this niche environment is incredibly complex in a controlled setting, because researchers are still learning all the factors that influence cell behavior and growth. By observing and then modifying their engineered mini-models, scientists are better able to identify those factors.

This form of cellular research is essential to the study of regenerative medicine, which focuses on replacing or repairing damaged tissue, often through the use of stem cells, a special population of cells that can give rise to all tissues in the body. Bioengineers face the central question of regenerative medicine: what causes stem cells to grow, organize, and mature from a small population of cells to complex organs?

To find an answer, a research team from the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology borrowed a process commonly used in the electronics industry called micropatterning, in which the miniaturization of shapes increases the number of transistors on a circuit. The team created micropatterned shapes, coupled with machine learning, to see how confinement influences stem cell maturation and organization.

Kelsey Moody — Antibody Mimetic for Parkinson’s Disease | LEAF

Posted by Steve Hill in biotech/medical, life extension

Aug 17
2018

Kelsey Moody, CEO of Ichor Therapeutics, discusses the creation of a gut-stable antibody mimetic for Parkinson’s disease and announces 10 million dollars in investment from Juvenescence into Ichor portfolio company Antoxerene Inc. at the Ending Age-Related Diseases conference in NYC.

More at: https://www.leafscience.org/ending-age-related-diseases-2018/

Discovery reveals why toxic Alzheimer’s plaques don’t always lead to dementia

Posted by Genevieve Klien in biotech/medical, neuroscience

Aug 17
2018

One of the fundamental pathological markers seen in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease is a build-up of two proteins — amyloid beta and tau — in the brain. It’s this action that many researchers hypothesize is the key symptomatic cause of cognitive decline associated with the disease. However, not all people with a build-up of these proteins display neurological damage and cognitive decline. New research from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston may have finally homed in on the reason behind this strange observation, and the results could lead to a whole new way to battle this devastating disease.