Scientists have identified molecules that can protect the eye’s cone cells from degeneration, a major cause of vision loss. The discovery points to new drug targets—and even uncovers compounds that may be harmful.
Researchers led by Botond Roska at the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB), along with an international team, have uncovered genetic pathways and chemical compounds that can help protect cone photoreceptors. These cells are damaged in diseases such as age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of vision loss.
Polymath and trailblazer in bio-rejuvenation Aubrey de Grey gave a talk at Future Day 2026 on the next phase of robust mouse rejuvenation trials!
Synopsis: The “damage repair” approach to bringing aging under medical control has made huge strides since I first proposed it 25 years ago. However, since it is a divide-and-conquer strategy, we should not be surprised at the absence of progress in the “bottom line” of life extension, even in mice. Can we realistically expect that to change any time soon? I will present reasons to believe that we can, in the form of accelerating progress in proofs of efficacy of individual treatments, together with initial proof of concept that combining damage repair modalities will give additive benefits.
0:00 Intro. 0:29 Talk starts. 1:28 Age related vs infectious diseases. 3:26Epidemic of the chronic conditions of late life — why? 4:42 Ways to be sick: popular view. 7:10 Aging in three words (metabolism, damage, pathology) 11:46 Ways to be sick: correct view. 15:29 What we do these days against aging — Geriatrics. 18:21 Gerontology: A more promising approach? 20:57 Metabolism is complex. 22:37 Maintenance: A common sense alternative. 24:39 Comparison: car maintenance. 26:00 7 deadly things. 29:17 Cell 153:1194 — too many citations to count. 30:22 The first round of the race to RMR (Robust Mouse Rejuvenation) 38:43 Females: yay, additivity! 40:09 Males: messier, but mostly the same story. 41:02 What health indices did we measure? 43:23 RMR2: ASAP! See levf.org/rmr2 46:30 AUBRAI 48:36 Learn more and help! 51:11 How has the longevity industry vibe changed over the last 7 years? 56:32 LEV Foundation only org working on this combination of damage repair regimes. 57:55 Has AI made progress in helping solve aging? In-silico medicine. 1:01:16 Changes to seven deadly things? 1:04:54 Hallmarks of aging — defacto taxonomy — difficulty translating to other taxonomies? 1:06:17 Has the damage repair methodology been attracting people over? 1:09:56 Stradelling both academia and private industry — but what about the state? 1:13:36 Robust Mouse Rejuvenation timelines under ideal funding. 1:19:49 Infections. 1:25:46 Treatment cadence.
Imagine a world where anyone who needs a bone marrow transplant can get one — on demand. No more desperate donor searches or deadly delays. Kevin Caldwell, Co-Founder & CEO, Ossium Health.
Bone marrow transplants have always depended on finding the right donor at the right time. But what if bone marrow could be stored, shipped, and used on demand—just like a drug? That’s exactly what Ossium Health is now showing in human clinical data.
Kevin Caldwell is the Co-Founder, CEO, and President of Ossium Health (https://ossiumhealth.com/), a clinical-stage bioengineering company pioneering off-the-shelf, cryopreserved bone marrow therapies derived from deceased organ donors.
Under Kevin’s leadership, Ossium has developed a novel platform designed to solve one of the most persistent challenges in transplantation medicine: timely access to compatible bone marrow for patients with life-threatening hematologic malignancies such as Acute Myeloid Leukemia. The company’s approach enables on-demand delivery of viable marrow cells, bypassing the logistical and biological constraints of traditional donor matching and scheduling.
Since its founding, Kevin has scaled Ossium from an early-stage startup into a clinical-stage company with a robust network of over 50 strategic partnerships across supply, clinical development, and commercial channels. He has led multiple financings and secured a landmark contract with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, validating Ossium’s relevance to national health preparedness and biomanufacturing resilience.
Assessing thymic function and health has highlighted the lifelong importance of the thymus as an organ that could be targeted to improve health outcomes, protect against disease and promote healthy ageing.
Cellular senescence has been linked to both beneficial and detrimental functions. Chiche, Djoual, Charifou and colleagues show that senescence supports normal postpartum mammary gland remodeling, but that when oncogenic events coincide with involution, senescent cells enhance tumorigenesis by regulating plasticity, invasion and metastasis.
LigandForge generates 150,000 peptide drug candidates in 3 minutes — a million times faster than existing methods, unlocking a tsunami of possible treatments.
A man with no medical background used ChatGPT, AlphaFold, and Grok to design a custom mRNA cancer vaccine for his dying dog — and her biggest tumor shrank 75%.
Meanwhile, scientists discovered a single protein that literally spreads aging through your bloodstream. These stories are each incredible on their own. But the big story is the implications for curing aging.
In this deep dive, I break down how these three breakthroughs fit together, what peptides and mRNA vaccines actually are (and how they’re different), and why this moment might be the most important inflection point in the history of drug design.
The age of custom AI cures isn’t coming. It’s here.
A central question in molecular biology is how cells protect their chromosomes from damage during repeated cell division. At the heart of this protective process is an enzyme called telomerase. Now an international research team has mapped the three-dimensional structure of telomerase in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a widely used model organism in genetics.
Using cutting-edge technology, the scientists were able to visualize the architecture of this complex enzyme in unprecedented detail, uncovering unexpected features that may explain how it functions.
This major discovery was the result of an international collaboration between Pascal Chartrand, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at Université de Montréal, and researchers from Université de Sherbrooke and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the U.K. Their findings were recently published in Science.
