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Category: life extension – Page 345

Scientists Discover a Way to Control the Immune System’s “Natural Killer” Cells With “Invisible” Stem Cells

UC San Francisco scientists have discovered a new way to control the immune system’s “natural killer” (NK) cells, a finding with implications for novel cell therapies and tissue implants that can evade immune rejection. The findings could also be used to enhance the ability of cancer immunotherapies to detect and destroy lurking tumors.

The study, published today (January 82021) in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, addresses a major challenge for the field of regenerative medicine, said lead author Tobias Deuse, MD, the Julien I.E. Hoffman, MD, Endowed Chair in Cardiac Surgery in the UCSF Department of Surgery.

“As a cardiac surgeon, I would love to put myself out of business by being able to implant healthy cardiac cells to repair heart disease,” said Deuse, who is interim chair and director of minimally invasive cardiac surgery in the Division of Adult Cardiothoracic Surgery. “And there are tremendous hopes to one day have the ability to implant insulin-producing cells in patients with diabetes or to inject cancer patients with immune cells engineered to seek and destroy tumors. The major obstacle is how to do this in a way that avoids immediate rejection by the immune system.”

Scientists have restored youth to aging eyes in mice

Aging is, at least for now, inevitable, and our eyes are not immune to those changes. Vision loss is, in fact, one of the top 10 causes of disability in the US., however, shows that this might be reversible in the future.

A large team of geneticists, ophthalmologists, and other scientists used a group of molecules called Yamanaka factors to turn cells in the eyes of mature mice back to a youthful state. This reversed the damage done by aging, and the cells were then able to regenerate, connect back to the brain, and vision was restored in both models of normal aging and glaucoma.

Yamanaka factors are nothing new in neuroscience. They are named after the after Shinya Yamanaka led research using those factors to convert mature adult cells back to stem cells, kickstarting the field of induced pluripotent stem cells — cells reprogrammed with the ability to generate other types of cells.

Immortal Line of Cloned Mice Created

Watch out, George Lucas, there’s a new attack of the clones, and these ones are furry.

Japanese researchers have created a potentially endless line of mice cloned from other cloned mice. They used the same technique that created Dolly the sheep to produce 581 mice from an original donor mouse through 25 rounds of cloning, the scientists report in the March 7 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell.

“This technique could be very useful for the large-scale production of superior-quality animals, for farming or conservation purposes,” study leader Teruhiko Wakayama of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, said in a statement.

Dr. Tim R. Peterson — Moonshot Thinking For Aging, Mental Health, And Drug Re-Purposing

Moonshot Thinking For Aging, Mental Health, And Drug Re-Purposing — Dr. Tim R. Peterson.

Washington University in St. Louis.

Dr. Tim R. Peterson PhD. is Assistant Professor, in the Department of Medicine, at Washington University in St. Louis.

Dr. Peterson went to the Massachusetts Institutes of Technology (MIT) where he received his doctorate in biology.

Dr. Peterson’s lab is interested in quality of life issues that affect all people, indirectly or directly, and two critical conditions that his lab is especially interested in are aging (specifically research on health span – the healthy period of one’s life) and mental health / mental health equality for all people.

Continue reading “Dr. Tim R. Peterson — Moonshot Thinking For Aging, Mental Health, And Drug Re-Purposing” | >

Gene Therapies and the Promise of the Fountain of Youth

Gene therapies are opening up possibilities that were once reserved for science fiction.

At Harvard University, Professor of Genetics David Sinclair says he believes it’s possible to unlock the fountain of youth, and gene therapy is the key.

Sinclair spent two years trying to correct the vision of a mouse using gene therapy, and finally succeeded in doing it.

Although these discoveries are encouraging, Sinclair cautions that people set their expectations realistically.

“Many people are eager to use the research for their own health benefit,” he said. “But I’m hoping that the public will realize that it does take a long time and we can’t just jump from a mouse to a human tomorrow.”

Aging researcher Dr. Nir Barzilai is studying clinical trials that use the diabetes drug metformin to directly target aging.

Continue reading “Gene Therapies and the Promise of the Fountain of Youth” | >

Anti-Aging: State of the Art

A huge shout-out to LessWrong for this fantastic write-up on the science of anti-aging research:

We join them in their call-to-action…

“For those wanting to help aging be solved in our lifetime so we can avoid being the last generation to die, consider taking the following actions:

• Sharing this post with others.
• Joining the Longevity subreddit or the Lifespan Discord server to plug in to longevity channels…

• Donating to the SENS Research Foundation.”

Can science reverse the ageing process?

The idea of slowing down the ageing process and living healthier, more productive lives is hugely appealing. It’s led to a growing trend for people looking to take control of their own biology, optimising their bodies and minds through ‘biohacking’. But how safe and ethical is this pursuit of longevity? And are there more natural ways of expanding your healthy lifespan? Video by Dan John Animation by Adam Proctor.

Do we have to age?

Once, at a friend’s wedding, he left a group of guests mildly incensed for suggesting that near-future humans might live well into their 100s. A similar thing happens at dinner parties, where the responses are more polite but no less sceptical. Eventually, he says, “I think we are very likely to have a drug that treats ageing in the next 10 years.” Steele believes we will be hopelessly unlucky if scientists don’t make a breakthrough within that time, given how many human trials are in progress or upcoming. And although these breakthroughs won’t result in treatments that extend our lives by 100 years, they will give us enough extra time to ensure we’re alive for subsequent breakthroughs, subsequent treatments, subsequent additions in lifespan and so on.

The biologist Andrew Steele thinks ageing is a disease that can be treated. But if we had a cure for getting old, what would that mean for us?

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