Researchers at UC San Francisco (UCSF) have engineered molecules that act like “cellular glue,” allowing them to direct in precise fashion how cells bond with each other. This discovery represents a major step toward building tissues and organs, a long-sought goal of regenerative medicine [1].

Longevity. Technology: Adhesive molecules are found naturally throughout the body, holding its tens of trillions of cells together in highly-organised patterns. They form structures, create neuronal circuits and guide immune cells to their targets. Adhesion also facilitates communication between cells to keep the body functioning as a self-regulating whole.

Now a new study, published in Nature, details how the researchers engineered cells containing customised adhesion molecules that bound with specific partner cells in predictable ways to form complex multicellular ensembles.

Awareness about aging and early symptom of disease can extend life to much more year.

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There has been plenty going on here at Lifespan.io, so we thought it was time to give you a little update on what’s been happening.

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In this video Professor Sebastiano discusses the results that he and his team have had in rejuvenating human cells and how the process could be applied as well as their experience rejuvenating a muscle in an old mouse.

Professor Vittorio Sebastiano manages a lab in Stanford University which developed and patented technology for partial cellular reprogramming. He co-founded Turn Bio, where he is now Head of research, to translate this technology into clinical applications. And with that, let me start the interview.

Turn Bio website.

Unity CEO Anirvan Ghosh, Ph.D./courtesy of Unity Biotechnology

Senolytic therapies are, at this point, as revolutionary as checkpoint inhibitors but with broader effectiveness. This approach delays the onset of diseases of aging by removing senescent cells from the body, thus enabling people to remain healthier longer or to regain some degree of function lost to disease.

Senolytics is a new field and most of the research is still in academic centers – most notably, the Mayo Clinic. Approval of any therapeutics is years – perhaps even a decade – away.

During aging, mice, like humans, become inactive and lose muscle mass and strength. A team of scientists led by Johan Auwerx at EPFL have now discovered that when mice age, their muscles become packed with ceramides. Ceramides, known for their use in skin care products, are sphingolipids, a class of fat molecules that are not used to produce energy but rather perform different tasks in the cell.

The researchers found that, in aging, there is an overload of the protein SPT and others, all of which are needed to convert fatty acids and amino acids to ceramides. “The sphingolipids and ceramides are complex yet very interesting fat class, and there is high potential to further study their role in aging, as they perform many diverse functions,” says Dr. Pirkka-Pekka Laurila, a medical doctor and the lead author of the study.

Next, the scientists wanted to see whether reducing ceramide overload could prevent age-related decline in muscle function. They treated old mice with ceramide blockers, such as myriocin and the synthetic blocker Takeda-2, and used adeno-associated viruses to block ceramide synthesis specifically in muscle. The ceramide blockers prevented loss of muscle mass during aging, made the mice stronger, and allowed them to run longer distances while improving their coordination.

In his lively tour of longevity science and pseudoscience, Ward, a British reporter, discovers that researchers are largely not as interested in immortality per se as much as in helping us live fulfilling, active lives until our final day. And while some immortalists hope the culmination of this effort will eventually lead us to never finding that day, Ward leaves the question open.

He begins at the Church of Perpetual Life, a congregation of people who, instead of seeking paradise after death, would rather avoid their demise altogether. There, Ward meets Neal VanDeRee, the church’s pastor, who practices intermittent fasting and envisions a future in which biotechnology advances faster than our bodies break down.

VanDeRee is working to reach what he and other immortalists call “escape velocity” by extending their lives until biotechnology progresses fast enough to keep them alive forever. Another immortalist, Aubrey de Grey, sees this moment as surprisingly close — within 20 to 30 years, or maybe even sooner. It’s quite a claim, but is it possible? “Either we’ll discover we can make people healthy for longer but our lifespan is quite set, as most gerontologists believe, or de Grey’s longevity escape velocity will be proven correct,” Ward writes, never quite telling us which future he is betting on.