Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: life extension – Page 608

California-based startup Ambrosia is starting clinical trials that will see older people pumped with blood from younger donors, in the hopes of rejuvenating their bodies.

Reversing and eliminating aging has always been one of the true Holy Grails of medical science. Like the search for the rumored Grail, the journey to eliminate aging will be a difficult one– and there is some doubt as to whether it is actually achievable.

But one startup seems like it may have cracked the problem, and is now beginning tests. Ambrosia, a startup based in Monterey, California, is starting a clinical trial to rejuvenate people over 35 by injecting them with young people’s blood.

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More progress with senolytics for treating age related diseases and further vindication for the SENS approach to aging.

The open access paper linked below provides another reason to be optimistic about the therapies to clear senescent cells from old tissues that are presently under development. Here, the researchers created genetically engineered mice in which they could selectively trigger senescent cell death in lung tissues. In older mice, the result was improved pulmonary function, and other improvements in the state of lung tissue — turning back the clock on some of the detrimental age-related changes that take place in the lungs.

Cells become senescent in response to damage or environmental toxicity, or at the end of their replicative lifespan, or to assist in wound healing. The vast majority either destroy themselves or are destroyed by the immune system, but a few manage to linger on. Those few grow in numbers over the years, and more so once the immune system begins to decline and falter in its duties. Ever more senescent cells accumulate in tissues with advancing age, and they secrete a mix of signals that can encourage other cells to become senescent, increase inflammation, and destructively remodel nearby tissue structures. In small numbers senescent cells can help to resist cancer or assist healing, but in large numbers they contribute meaningfully to all of the symptoms and conditions of old age. They are one of the root causes of aging.

Building therapies to destroy senescent cells is the best, easiest, and most direct response. If carried out sufficiently well it would remove this contribution to the aging process entirely, and fortunately the cancer research community has been working on targeted cell destruction for many years now: the technologies exist and just need to be hammered into shape. This class of rejuvenation therapy has been advocated as a part of the SENS vision for the medical control of aging for going on fifteen years now, but only in recent years has the research community made useful progress. As for so many promising lines of research related to bringing aging under medical control, it has been next to impossible to raise funds for this work. The most critical studies in senescent cell clearance, those that proved the case beyond any reasonable doubt, were funded through philanthropy, as is often the case for work at the true cutting edge of medical science.

Continue reading “Removing Senescent Cells from the Lungs of Old Mice Improves Pulmonary Function and Reduces Age-Related Loss of Tissue Elasticity” | >

Fixing one thing only gets you so far, as all the other forms of damage will still, on their own, kill you. Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Research Foundation believes that only small gains in overall life span are possible without addressing all of the causes of aging.

Five years from now, it will be possible to take a trip overseas to have most of the senescent cells that have built up in your tissues cleared away via some form of drug or gene therapy treatment. That will reduce your risk of suffering most age-related diseases, and in fact make you measurably younger — it is a narrow form of rejuvenation, targeting just one of the various forms of cell and tissue damage that cause aging, age-related disease, and ultimately death. I say five years and mean it. If both of the present senescent cell clearance startup companies Oisin Biotechnologies and UNITY Biotechnology fail rather than succeed, and it is worth noting that the Oisin founders have a therapy that actually works in animal studies, while drugs and other approaches have also been shown to both clear senescent cells and extend life in mice, then there will be other attempts soon thereafter. The basic science of senescent cell clearance is completely open, and anyone can join in — in fact the successful crowdfunding of the first Major Mouse Testing Program study earlier this year was exactly that, citizen scientists joining in to advance the state of the art in this field.

Five years from now, however, there will be no definitive proof that senescent cell clearance extends life in humans, nor that it reduces risk of age-related disease in our species over the longer term. There will no doubt be a few more studies in mice showing life extension. There will be initial human evidence that clearance of senescent cells causes short-term improvements in technical biomarkers of aging such as DNA methylation patterns, or more easily assessed items such as skin condition — given how much of the skin in old people is made up of senescent cells — or markers of chronic inflammation. These are all compelling reasons to undertake the treatment, but if you want definite proof of life extension you’ll have to wait a decade or more beyond the point of first availability, as that is about as long as it takes to put together and run academic studies that make a decent stab at quantifying effects on mortality in old people.

Uncertainty is the state of affairs when considering the effects of potentially life-extending therapies on human life span. Consider the practice of calorie restriction, for example, where theory suggests the likely outcome is a few extra years, but certainly not a large number of extra years or else it would be very apparent in epidemiological data. I think that an enterprising individual could, given a good relationship with the Calorie Restriction Society, put together a 20-year or 40-year study to that would — in theory — produce a decent set of data on practitioners and outcomes in the wild. It won’t happen, most likely, because for one the funding isn’t there for such a study, and secondly we’ll be well into the era of widely available rejuvenation therapies along the way. Those calorie restriction practitioners will be taking advantage of treatments to repair the causes of aging just like everyone else.

Continue reading “Effective Therapies to Extend Healthy Life May Well be Widely Available for a Decade or More in Advance of Definitive Proof” | >

An interview with SENS research Dr. Haroldo Silva and his work with ALT Cancer.

As you might have noticed, the SENS Research Foundation is presently asking for your support in a crowdfunding campaign that aims to close in on a universal therapy capable of effectively treating all types of cancer, one based on blocking telomere lengthening. As is often the case, the SENS network is here using philanthropic donations to pick up necessary work that hasn’t been taken on by the rest of the community, so as to unblock progress. The scientist who will lead the work is Haroldo Silva; he has been focused on this particular branch of cancer research for some years now, and below you’ll find a short interview that covers some of his thoughts on the field and on this effort in particular.

I should emphasize that this SENS initiative is an important component in efforts to completely change the way in which the research community approaches the treatment of cancer. The cancer research community suffers from a high level strategy problem: the majority of treatments are only applicable to a small number of cancer types, out of the hundreds of known types, and the majority of new technology platforms under development will be just as expensive to adapt to a different type of cancer as to build in the first place. A much more efficient approach is needed, as there are only so many researchers and only so much funding in the world. As Silva describes below, blocking telomere lengthening is the most efficient of possible better approaches: all cancers must lengthen their telomeres in order to grow, and abuse a small number of target mechanisms in order to do so.

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Listen to famed biogerontolgist Aubrey de Grey explain the OncoSENS approach to curing ALT-Cancer (https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/sens-control-alt-delete-cancer/) and how this is a vital part of overcoming the ill-effects of aging. This presentation is part of the Designing New Advances conference held by the Institute of Exponential Sciences in the Netherlands.

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Tempus fugit. I’m just about old enough to remember a time in which 2020 was the distant future of science fiction novels, too far away to be thinking about in concrete terms, a foreign and fantastical land in which anything might happen. Several anythings did in fact happen, such as the internet, and the ongoing revolution in biotechnology that has transformed the laboratory world but leaks into clinics only all too slowly. Here we are, however, close enough to be making plans and figuring out what we expect to be doing when the third decade of the 21st century gets underway. The fantastical becomes the mundane. We don’t yet have regeneration of organs and limbs, or therapies to greatly extend life, but for these and many other staples of golden age science fiction, the scientific community has come close enough to be able to talk in detail about the roads to achieving these goals.

Of all the things that researchers might achieve with biotechnology in the near future, control over aging is by far the most important. Aging is the greatest cause of death and suffering in the world, and none of us are getting any younger. That may change, however. SENS, the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, is a synthesis of the scientific view of aging as an accumulation of specific forms of cell and tissue damage, pulling in a century of evidence from many diverse areas of medical science to support this conclusion. Aging happens because the normal operation of our cellular biochemistry produces damage, wear and tear at the level of molecules and molecular structures, and some of that damage accumulates to cause failure of tissues and organs, and ultimately death.

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Philadelphia, PA, USA / Mexico City, Mexico — Bioquark, Inc., (www.bioquark.com) a life sciences company focused on the development of novel bioproducts for complex regeneration, disease reversion, and aging, and RegenerAge SAPI de CV, (www.regenerage.clinic/en/) a clinical company focused on translational therapeutic applications of a range of regenerative and rejuvenation healthcare interventions, have announced a collaboration to focus on novel combinatorial approaches in human disease and wellness. SGR-Especializada (http://www.sgr-especializada.com/), regulatory experts in the Latin American healthcare market, assisted in the relationship.

regenerage

“We are very excited about this collaboration with RegenerAge SAPI de CV,” said Ira S. Pastor, CEO, Bioquark Inc. “The natural synergy of our cellular and biologic to applications of regenerative and rejuvenative medicine will make for novel and transformational opportunities in a range of degenerative disorders.”

As we close in on $7 trillion in total annual health care expenditures around the globe ($1 trillion spent on pharmaceutical products; $200 billion on new R&D), we are simultaneously witnessing a paradoxical rise in the prevalence of all chronic degenerative diseases responsible for human suffering and death.

With the emergence of such trends including: personalization of medicine on an “n-of-1” basis, adaptive clinical design, globalization of health care training, compassionate use legislative initiatives for experimental therapies, wider acceptance of complementary medical technologies, and the growth of international medical travel, patients and clinicians are more than ever before, exploring the ability to access the therapies of tomorrow, today.

recovering patient

The estimate of the current market size for procedural medical travel, defined by medical travelers who travel across international borders for the purpose of receiving medical care, is in the range of US $40–55 billion.

Additionally, major clinical trial gaps currently exist across all therapeutic segments that are responsible for human suffering and death. Cancer is one prime example. As a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide for many decades, today there are approximately 14 million new cases diagnosed each year, with over 8 million cancer related deaths annually. It is estimated that less than 5% of these patients, take the initiative to participate in any available clinical studies.

“We look forward to working closely with Bioquark Inc. on this exciting initiative,” said Dr. Joel Osorio, Chief of Clinical Development RegenerAge SAPI de CV. “The ability to merge cellular and biologic approaches represents the next step in achieving comprehensive regeneration and disease reversion events in a range of chronic diseases responsible for human suffering and death.”

bioquarklogo

About Bioquark, Inc.
Bioquark Inc. is focused on the development of natural biologic based products, services, and technologies, with the goal of curing a wide range of diseases, as well as effecting complex regeneration. Bioquark is developing both biological pharmaceutical candidates, as well as products for the global consumer health and wellness market segments.

About RegenerAge SAPI de CV

RegenerAge SAPI de CV is a novel clinical company focused on translational therapeutic applications, as well as expedited, experimental access for “no option” patients, to a novel range of regenerative and reparative biomedical products and services, with the goal of reducing human degeneration, suffering, and death.

Telomerase, an enzyme naturally found in the human organism, is the closest of all known substances to a “cellular elixir of youth.” In a recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Brazilian and US researchers show that sex hormones can stimulate production of this enzyme.

The strategy was tested in patients with genetic diseases associated with mutations in the gene that codes for telomerase, such as aplastic anemia and pulmonary fibrosis.

READ MORE ON AGÊNCIA FAPESP

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A new story with lots of transhumanism in it:

Zoltan Istvan is in the running for President of the United States. You may not have heard of him, but if elected, he hopes to put an end to death. All of it. (Yes, seriously).

There are people right now walking around with artificial hearts – something that many people believed would not happen for another decade (or even longer). There are quadriplegics no longer bound to a wheelchair, but walk with exoskeleton technology. There are hundreds of thousands of people with brain implants that help them with various ailments. In short, recent technological breakthroughs like these open up the possibility for humans to enhance themselves and their health—and perhaps to even become immortal (someday).

As you can imagine, such radical developments demand strong, intelligent and science-focused political leadership. That is why Zoltan Istvan, of the Transhumanist Party, says that he is running for U.S. President this year, as the #ScienceCandidate.

Continue reading “The U.S. Presidential Candidate Who Loves Science, Technology, And…Immortality?” | >