3D printed ovaries restore fertility to mice. Another step towards more complex organs.
There is a clinical need to develop a bioengineering system to support ovary transplantation. Here, the authors generate a bioprosthetic ovary using 3D printed scaffolds of varying pore architectures to support follicle survival and ovarian function in sterilized mice.
University of Florida (UF) researchers have developed a method for 3D printing soft-silicone medical implants that are stronger, quicker, less expensive, more flexible, and more comfortable than the implants currently available. That should be good news for the millions of people every year who need medical devices implanted.
I get beat up in The Guardian today a bit with a ham-fisted review. But make no mistake, the book Radicals by journalist and Immortality Bus rider Jamie Bartlett, which is coming out in a few days, is important and brilliant: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/16/radicals-outsi…ett-review #transhumanism
This thoughtful study of radical movements explores politics, sex and drugs.
Scientists have successfully re-awoken coma patients so they can communicate with their family by ‘zapping’ their brain with a low-intensity current.
Two people in a vegetative state, and another 13 in a minimally-conscious coma, were able to show new signs of awareness after receiving brain stimulation, New Scientist reported.
The effect lasted for up to a week, according to researchers at the University of Liege in Belgium.
Sometimes, albeit rarely, people object to rejuvenation biotechnologies saying that ageing has its pluses too, thus subtly implying that we should leave it alone in order not to lose these pluses. The thing is, they’re not talking about the same kind of ageing that science is trying to undo. They’re mixing up chronological and biological ageing, and they’re not at all the same thing.
This objection is very simple to explain and even simpler to dismantle, because it boils down to a gross misunderstanding.
Whoever raises this objection generally says that with ageing comes experience, that later in life people are generally happier, more accomplished, and so on. I have nothing to object to that, except that all those nice things are a (possible) consequence of chronological ageing, most definitely not of biological ageing. It is not very often that people mix the two up, but at times they do, so let us clarify once and for all what the difference is.
Chronological ageing is nothing more, nothing less than the passing of time. Becoming chronologically older simply means that the time you’ve existed for is getting longer. There’s nothing wrong with it, and no one (to my knowledge) wants to stop, ‘cure’, or reverse chronological ageing—especially because that would be a bit complicated to do and it would have annoying side-effects, such as time freezing or rewinding your life back to your elementary school years, possibly dragging the entire universe along, and would do nothing to eliminate the ill health of old age. Doesn’t sound like a lot of fun—and I speak as a chap with a thing for time travel.
Happy Birthday to Elie Metchnikoff the father of modern Gerontology and an inspiration to those working on rejuvention biotechnology.
May 15th is the birthday of Elie Metchnikoff, famous Russian/French scientist, a vice director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1908 (together with Paul Ehrlich) for his work on Immunity in infectious diseases. But healthy longevity supporters know him for another achievement: a strong statement he made regarding aging, that helped to ignite interest in aging research for the next century. In his 1903 book “Studies of optimism” he wrote: “Aging is a disease that should be treated like any other”. Today to commemorate Elie Metchnikoff’s input in the development of gerontology we will talk with Dr. Ilia Stambler, the author of the book “A History of Life-extensionism in the Twentieth Century” and likely the only expert on the history of the longevity movement in the world.
Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Stambler. First, could you please tell us a little more about the studies of Elie Metchnikoff? He is most of all recognised as a pioneer in immunology, what are the main discoveries he made? And how are they related to his understanding of aging as a disease?
Metchnikoff is the founder of the cellular theory of immunity, who showed for the first time that cells (such as phagocytes) play a vital role in immune defense. Remember that until about mid-19th century, slightly more than 150 years ago, people did not even know that cells existed or that diseases were caused by bacteria. It was just another step forward for Metchnikoff to understand that aging is a part of life that needs to be studied, and that cellular immunity, especially the immunity against one’s own organism (that we now call “auto-immunity”) also plays a crucial role in the aging processes.
Scientists’ ability to create organisms through synthetic biology is getting easier and cheaper fueling the start of a new era in biology. Synthetic biology has already lead to some innovations such as lab-grown meat, advancement in medicine, and even helping to bring back extinct species.
