Keith Comito, interviewed by Adam Ford at the Undoing Aging 2019 conference in Berlin, discusses why solving the diseases of old age is a powerful cause.
How can solving aging reduce suffering? What are some common objections to the ideas of solving aging? How does Anti-Aging stack up against other cause…
AI Overlords
Musk has repeatedly warned of evil AI overlords in the past, saying that AI could become “an immortal dictator from which we could never escape” in a 2018 documentary called “Do You Trust This Computer?”
Most of what Neuralink is working on, including any plans for a brain computer interface, are still tightly under wraps. In one tantalizing clue, Bloomberg recently reported on a still unpublished academic paper by five authors who have been employed by or associated with Neuralink — though it’s unclear whether Musk’s tweet referred to their work.
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been a topic of great interest in the last decade or so due to their ability to improve tissue regeneration merely by their presence and the secreted signals they give out.
Adult MSCs have traditionally been used for regenerative medicine with hit-and-miss results, depending on the quality and age of the harvested MSCs. It has been discovered in recent years that the efficacy of these cells greatly depends on how damaged by aging they are, which explains why MSC therapy sometimes works very well in one person but not so much in another.
However, what about aged cells that are reprogrammed back to pluripotency then guided into becoming mesenchymal stem cells through cellular reprogramming?
Earlier this year, we launched a new webinar series where our monthly patrons, the Lifespan Heroes, are given the opportunity to join live discussion panels with the researchers who are working on solving aging.
Our April 8th, 2019 episode saw Dr. Mike Lustgarten, Dr. Amy Proal, and Dr. Cosmo Mielke join hosts Dr. Oliver Medvedik and Steve Hill for a discussion about the microbiome and how it relates to aging.
The webinar discusses gut flora and the pro-aging effects of immune system burden, the link between bacterial burden and inflammation, and exercise and nutrition. There was also plenty of discussion about the immediately available practical measures that can improve the gut microbiome and thus control weight and promote health.
On July 11–12, we will be hosting our second annual Ending Age-Released Diseases conference. This conference focuses on the progress of aging research along with the business and investment side of rejuvenation biotechnology.
Aging research is on the cusp of some major breakthroughs in the battle against age-related diseases, and we invite you to join us for an action-packed event filled with exciting talks and discussion panels featuring some of the leaders of aging research and the biotech business.
Lying within our muscles are stem cells, invisible engines that drive the tissue’s growth and repair. Understanding the signal(s) that direct muscle stem cells to spring into action could uncover new ways to promote muscle growth. However, these mechanisms are poorly understood.
Now, scientists from Sanford Burnham Prebys have uncovered a molecular signaling pathway involving Stat3 and Fam3a proteins that regulates how muscle stem cells decide whether to self-renew or differentiate—an insight that could lead to muscle-boosting therapeutics for muscular dystrophies or age-related muscle decline. The study was published in Nature Communications.
“Muscle stem cells can ‘burn out’ trying to regenerate tissue during the natural aging process or due to chronic muscle disease,” says Alessandra Sacco, Ph.D., senior author of the paper and associate professor in the Development, Aging and Regeneration Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys. “We believe we have found promising drug targets that direct muscle stem cells to ‘make the right decision’ and stimulate muscle repair, potentially helping muscle tissue regeneration and maintaining tissue function in chronic conditions such as muscular dystrophy and aging.”
