Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: life extension – Page 619

Nanomedicine has been something that many in tech expected to be a critical part of the healthcare landscape for over a decade. I am glad to see how quickly the technology is being adopted as part of bio-medical research and treatments for various diseases, etc.

NEW YORK, April 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Nano-based science paving the precision medicine era.

The continued development of new treatments associated with the demographic trends and public health considerations is remarkable. Nanotechnology has been identified as one most relevant key enabling technologies of the last ten years, significantly impacting on many different biomedical developments in a broad spectrum of applications therapeutics, diagnostics, theranostics, medical imaging, regenerative medicine, life sciences research and biosciences, among many others. In fact, nanomedicine is present in all therapeutic areas, exhibiting a perceptible and extensive impact in the treatment and diagnosis of some most concerned diseases.

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In the pages of comic books and on the silver screen, superheroes like Wolverine and Deadpool have a “healing factor” that allows their bodies to regenerate and recover from injuries or illness at an amazing rate – but certainly nothing like that is possible in real life, right?

Amazingly, a team of scientists led by John Pimanda, a hematologist and associate professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, published a study in Monday’s edition of the journal PNAS reporting that they had successfully reprogrammed bone and fat cells into induced multipotent stem cells (iMS) – the first step to making such a repair system a reality.

As they explained in a statement, stem cell therapies using iMS cells could theoretically repair a fractured bone or fix injured spinal discs, using a technique similar to how salamanders are able to regenerate lost limbs. These treatments could radically alter the field of regenerative medicine, and perhaps most surprisingly, the authors believe they could be available in just a few years. The technique, which has been successfully tested in mice, “is a significant advance on many of the current unproven stem cell therapies, which have shown little or no objective evidence they contribute directly to new tissue formation,” Pimanda said.

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Stem cells, human trials, regenerative medicine, yay!

UNSW researchers say the therapy has enormous potential for treating spinal disc injury and joint and muscle degeneration and could also speed up recovery following complex surgeries where bones and joints need to integrate with the body (credit: UNSW TV)

A stem cell therapy system capable of regenerating any human tissue damaged by injury, disease, or aging could be available within a few years, say University of New South Wales (UNSW Australia) researchers.

Their new repair system, similar to the method used by salamanders to regenerate limbs, could be used to repair everything from spinal discs to bone fractures, and could transform current treatment approaches to regenerative medicine.

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Dear Friends,

This month we at the MMTP are launching our crowdfunding campaign on Lifespan.io. Our Senolytics research is very important to the field of aging and longevity research and if we successfully raise sufficient funds, we will be ready to make a significant impact on aging!

We are seeking like minded groups and organisations to show their support, by becoming our official supporters. Showing your support means your logo will be displayed on some of our official media and website, demonstrating you are standing with us to get this vital work underway.

If you want to get involved beyond donating to our crowdfunding, please get in touch with us at [email protected] or contact us directly on our facebook page.

We have a very real opportunity to change how we age, be part of that change!

Continue reading “We have a very real opportunity to change how we age, be part of that change!” | >

Preliminary work suggests that T-cells, which normally target disease, can be genetically engineered to target senescent cells in a wide range of tissues. In future, an infusion of GM blood every few years might be able to keep you going indefinitely (assuming some major advances in treating cancer, Alzheimer’s and heart disease). At which point, the question might be less: “How long have I got?” and more: “How long do you fancy sticking around?”

American scientists have coined the term ‘senolytics’ to describe a new class of drugs designed to delay the ageing process by clearing out doddery cells.

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When rock band Queen asked us “Who wants to live forever?” back in 1986, we interpreted it as standard lyrical rhetoric. But now, three decades and what feels like light years in technological, medical, and scientific advances later, the answer to that age-old question may have changed. And according to Ray Kurzweil, the famous American inventor who has been described as the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” we’re nearing immortality.

As the man responsible for the first CCD flatbed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer, and much more, Kurzweil has a knack for spotting trends and anticipating the future. And if history is any indication (and his word stays true), we may be in for a long, long lifetime.

In an episode of PBS’s News Hour last week, Kurzweil noted that death, which he describes as “a great robber of meaning, of relationships, of knowledge,” will soon be conquered. Indeed, the futurist notes, our species will soon be able to defeat disease and degeneration, and live “indefinitely.”

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A crowd gathers to hear about transhumanism and life extension technologies — Photo by Roen Horn

Recently I was asked to be a part of a debate for British think-tank Demos and their quarterly magazine. In the debate, The University of Sheffield Professor Richard Jones and I faced off over the merits and faults of transhumanism. You can read the entire debate here, but I wanted to focus on one part of it, where Jones questions why there’s a need for a transhumanism movement at all.

I used to get asked the question Jones raised all the time. Luckily, the amount of people that ask it has declined, partially because transhumanism has grown so much in popularity. Many people nowadays simply accept transhumanism as part of tech and science culture.

That said, I believe it’s worth sharing my thoughts on why a “transhumanism movement” is needed. Here was my answer in the debate:

Continue reading “Why We Need a Transhumanism Movement” | >

The quest for immortality isn’t something new. Longevity and eternal youth have frequently been sought after down through the ages, and efforts to keep from dying and fight off age have a long and interesting history. Legends about such things as ‘the Elixir of Life’, universal panaceas, and ‘the Fountain of Youth’ can be found in many different cultures from around the world, and the pursuit for immortality actually seems to be as old as mankind itself. Although divided by many generations of great men, the feelings of sheer helplessness and hopelessness that Ray Kurzweil must have felt when he experienced the loss of his father, strongly resembles those of Gilgamesh, the ancient Sumerian king, when he mourned over his friend Enkidu almost 5000 years earlier. As a matter of fact, mortality has probably haunted our conciuousness since the first human in horror witnessed death; and thus realized his or her own eventual demise

Humanity has been in a bitter war with ‘the Grim Reaper’ ever since.

“Six days and seven nights I mourned over him, and I would not allow him to be buried until a maggot fell out of his nose. I was terrified [by his appearance]. I began to fear death, and so roam the wilderness.” –Gilgamesh

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