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Category: life extension – Page 335

“Time Jump” by 30 Years: Old Skins Cells Reprogrammed To Regain Youthful Function

Findings could lead to targeted approach for treating aging.

Research from the Babraham Institute has developed a method to ‘time jump’ human skin cells by 30 years, turning back the aging clock for cells without losing their specialized function. Work by researchers in the Institute’s Epigenetics research program has been able to partly restore the function of older cells, as well as rejuvenating the molecular measures of biological age. The research is published today (April 7, 2022) in the journal eLife and whilst at an early stage of exploration, it could revolutionize regenerative medicine.

What is regenerative medicine?

Scientists make further inroads into reversing ageing process of cells

People could eventually be able to turn the clock back on the cell-ageing process by 30 years, according to researchers who have developed a technique for reprogramming skin cells to behave as if they are much younger.

Research from the Babraham Institute, which is affiliated to the University of Cambridge, could lead to the development of techniques that will stave off the diseases of old age by restoring the function of older cells and reducing their biological age.

No air currents required: Ballooning spiders rely on electric fields to generate lift

In 1,832, Charles Darwin witnessed hundreds of ballooning spiders landing on the HMS Beagle while some 60 miles offshore. Ballooning is a phenomenon that’s been known since at least the days of Aristotle—and immortalized in E.B. White’s children’s classic Charlotte’s Web—but scientists have only recently made progress in gaining a better understanding of its underlying physics.

Now, physicists have developed a new mathematical model incorporating all the various forces at play as well as the effects of multiple threads, according to a recent paper published in the journal Physical Review E. Authors M. Khalid Jawed (UCLA) and Charbel Habchi (Notre Dame University-Louaize) based their new model on a computer graphics algorithm used to model fur and hair in such blockbuster films as The Hobbit and Planet of the Apes. The work could one day contribute to the design of new types of ballooning sensors for explorations of the atmosphere.

There are competing hypotheses for how ballooning spiders are able to float off into the air. For instance, one proposal posits that, as the air warms with the rising sun, the silk threads the spiders emit to spin their “parachutes” catch the rising convection currents (the updraft) that are caused by thermal gradients. A second hypothesis holds that the threads have a static electric charge that interacts with the weak vertical electric field in the atmosphere.

Scientists Used Cellular Rejuvenation Therapy to Rewind Aging in Mice

At roughly 70 years human age, the mice looked elderly and unremarkable. Yet hidden underneath was a youthful cellular clock, turned back in time based on a Nobel-Prize-winning strategy. It’s also the latest bet for finding the fountain of youth, backed by heavy-hitter anti-aging startups in Silicon Valley.

At the center is partial cellular reprogramming. The technique, a sort of gene therapy, forces cells to make four proteins, collectively dubbed the Yamanaka factors. Like erasers, the factors wipe a cell’s genetic history clean, reverting adult cells—for example, skin cells—to a stem cell-like identity, giving them back the superpower to turn into almost any type of cell.

The process isn’t all-or-nothing. In a twist, scientists recently found that they can use the factors to rewind a cell’s genetic history tape rather than destroying it altogether. And if they stop at the right point, the cell dramatically loses its age, becoming more youthful but retaining its identity. The results spurred a wave of interest in moving the therapy to humans, with Calico Life Sciences—a sister company to Google—and Altos Labs, backed by Jeff Bezos, in the race.

Genetic ‘Hotspots’ That Speed up and Slow Down Brain Aging Could Provide New Targets for Alzheimer’s Drugs

Summary: 15 newly discovered “hotspots” in the genome that either speed up or slow down brain aging could be new targets for the development of Alzheimer’s medications and therapies for other brain disorders.

Source: USC

Researchers from a USC-led consortium have discovered 15 “hotspots” in the genome that either speed up brain aging or slow it down—a finding that could provide new drug targets to resist Alzheimer’s disease and other degenerative brain disorders, as well as developmental delays.

Peter Diamandis on When You’ll Stop Aging

ABOUT PETER DIAMANDIS

Peter is the founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, and has started over 20 companies in the areas of longevity, space, venture capital and education. He is also the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including his latest, Life Force, which he published early in 2020 with Tony Robbins.

Peter joined host Robert Glazer on the Elevate Podcast to discuss transformational changes needed in education, how the pandemic accelerated global trends, and the astonishing medical and health technologies he believes will be widely available, sooner than you think.

Why AGING Therapies Will Be AFFORDABLE To Us | Dr David Sinclair Interview Clips

The only way life extension would remain financially out of reach is if we vote ourselves into a dystopia.

Dr David Sinclair explains why aging therapies will be eventually affordable to us in this clip.

David Sinclair is a professor in the Department of Genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School, where he and his colleagues study sirtuins—protein-modifying enzymes that respond to changing NAD+ levels and to caloric restriction—as well as chromatin, energy metabolism, mitochondria, learning and memory, neurodegeneration, cancer, and cellular reprogramming.

Dr David Sinclair has suggested that aging is a disease—and that we may soon have the tools to put it into remission—and he has called for greater international attention to the social, economic and political and benefits of a world in which billions of people can live much longer and much healthier lives.

Dr David Sinclair is the co-founder of several biotechnology companies (Life Biosciences, Sirtris, Genocea, Cohbar, MetroBiotech, ArcBio, Liberty Biosecurity) and is on the boards of several others.

Continue reading “Why AGING Therapies Will Be AFFORDABLE To Us | Dr David Sinclair Interview Clips” | >

Loss of neurons, not lack of sleep, makes Alzheimer’s patients drowsy

The lethargy that many Alzheimer’s patients experience is caused not by a lack of sleep, but rather by the degeneration of a type of neuron that keeps us awake, according to a study that also confirms the tau protein is behind that neurodegeneration.

The study’s findings contradict the common notion that Alzheimer’s patients during the day to make up for a bad night of sleep and point toward potential therapies to help these patients feel more awake.

The data came from study participants who were patients at UC San Francisco’s Memory and Aging Center and volunteered to have their sleep monitored with electroencephalogram (EEG) and donate their brains after they died.

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