Lifeboat Foundation

Aging is one of the world’s greatest health problems. And subsequently, is the cause of most fatal diseases. Age-related processes are inevitable and cause a range of diseases. It is much more efficient and effective to tackle the aging itself rather than each disease it causes.

At the end of every chromosome are telomere caps which degrade as we age. This causes a number of issues. For example:

The human body secretes an enzyme that might increase our lifespan if properly developed.

We are drawing close now to the Ending Age-Related Diseases Conference in New York City, so with less than a month before the big day, today is the ideal time to have a look at what has been happening.

Tickets are priced at only $500 and include access to two action-packed days of aging research and biotech business discussion. There will be talks covering the latest research progress along with talks involving the business and investment side of the industry, and this conference will feature a total of 34 leading experts in the field of rejuvenation biotechnology.

Refreshments and lunch are provided on site for your enjoyment during both days of the conference, and a conference program is available here.

This post originally appeared at Fight Aging!

Sizable factions within the research and advocacy communities are very interested in having aging officially classified as a disease, meaning its inclusion in the International Classification of Diseases maintained by the World Health Organization, as that is the basis for the definition of disease used by national regulatory bodies. The view is that this would open the door to greater large-scale institutional funding, more relevant clinical trials for therapies targeting the mechanisms of aging, and that this greater level of funding and activity will percolate back down the chain of research and development to accelerate progress. I think this a reasonable argument to make, though I would advocate for greater effort to be placed on finding a way to bypass the system rather than change it directly – the threat of competition tends to be more effective than petitions as a way to force change.

Continue reading “Inching Towards the Regulatory Classification of Aging as a Disease” »

Urolithin A, a metabolite of biomolecules found in pomegranates and other fruits, could help slow certain aging processes. EPFL spin-off Amazentis, in conjunction with EPFL and the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, has published a paper in the journal Nature Metabolism outlining the results of their clinical trial.

It is a fact of life that skeletal muscles begin to lose strength and mass once a person reaches the age of 50. A recent clinical trial involving two EPFL entities—spin-off Amazentis and the Laboratory of Integrative Systems Physiology (LISP) – showed that urolithin A, a compound derived from biomolecules found in fruits such as pomegranates, could slow down this process by improving the functioning of mitochondria—the cells’ powerhouses. A joint paper presenting the results of the trial, published today in Nature Metabolism, also demonstrates that ingesting the compound poses no risk to human health.

Since aging is a key driver of many diseases, targeting that process could be a handy catch-all for treating a range of diseases and improving quality of life for pretty much everybody. Researchers at EPFL have now reported a new step towards that goal, with human clinical trials of a fruit-derived compound showing promise in slowing mitochondrial aging in elderly patients, with no side effects found.

Aubrey de Grey, Ph.D., Chief Science Officer and Co-founder of SENS Research Foundation, delivers an overview of aging and the many health problems that develop in our advanced years.

Dr. de Grey is a respected member of the science community; he is the noted biomedical gerontologist who devised the innovative SENS platform and co-founded the SENS Research Foundation to further it. Dr. de Grey has written about his work and as an established researcher, he has been appointed to the editorial and scientific advisory boards of many journals, organizations, etc. Dr. de Grey is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America as well as the American Aging Association. He holds a BA in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Biology from the prestigious University of Cambridge.

Dr. de Grey discusses his research in aging and the motivations for tackling the career. As he states, aging is the number one medical problem as it causes more suffering. He was motivated to research in this area because he found that not enough was being done to focus on aging and the myriad of problems that come with it. He talks about the many excuses that are given as reasons to simply accept aging as it is, or not focus on it at all, such as “it’s inevitable…everything ages,” or the philosophical—“death gives meaning to life,” or social—“maybe we could do this, but it would create new problems worse than the problem we are solving.” And as the Ph.D. states, none of these excuses stand up to even the faintest scrutiny, however, they still remain quite popular.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland—(BUSINESS WIRE).

Breakthrough translational science of dietary supplementation with Urolithin A, a pomegranate metabolite, on mitochondrial and cellular health in humans published in the journal Nature Metabolism

Amazentis, an innovative life sciences company pioneering scientific breakthroughs in nutrition to manage health conditions linked to aging, announced today a collaborative publication in Nature Metabolism with scientists at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) demonstrating the Company’s lead product, Urolithin A (UA), is safe, bioavailable and improves mitochondrial and cellular health in humans.

Age is a leading risk factor for a number of conditions such as heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease among others, such conditions make a real need for development of anti-aging therapies urgent. Salk Institute researchers may have developed a new gene therapy to help decelerate the aging process, as published in the journal Nature Medicine.

CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing therapy has been shown by the Salk Institute team to suppress the accelerated aging observed in mice with Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria syndrome; and provided insight into the molecular pathways involved in accelerated aging, and how to reduce toxic proteins via gene therapy.

Having an early onset and fast progression progeria is a severe form of degenerative disorder caused by LMNA gene mutations; signs of accelerated aging include DNA damage, cardiac dysfunction, and dramatically shortened lifespan. LMNA genes produce lamin A and lamin C inside a cell, progeria shifts production of lamin A to progerin which is a toxic shortened form of lamin A that accumulates with age and becomes exacerbated with the condition.

Continue reading “CRISPR-Cas9 Therapy May Suppress Aging” »