Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: life extension – Page 9

Lately, there’s been growing pushback against the idea that AI will transform geroscience in the short term.
When Nobel laureate Demis Hassabis told 60 Minutes that AI could help cure every disease within 5–10 years, many in the longevity and biotech communities scoffed. Leading aging biologists called it wishful thinking — or outright fantasy.
They argue that we still lack crucial biological data to train AI models, and that experiments and clinical trials move too slowly to change the timeline.

Our guest in this episode, Professor Derya Unutmaz, knows these objections well. But he’s firmly on Team Hassabis.
In fact, Unutmaz goes even further. He says we won’t just cure diseases — we’ll solve aging itself within the next 20 years.

And best of all, he offers a surprisingly detailed, concrete explanation of how it will happen:
building virtual cells, modeling entire biological systems in silico, and dramatically accelerating drug discovery — powered by next-generation AI reasoning engines.

🧬 In this wide-ranging conversation, we also cover:

✅ Why biological complexity is no longer an unsolvable barrier.
✅ How digital twins could revolutionize diagnosis and treatment.
✅ Why clinical trials as we know them may soon collapse.
✅ The accelerating timeline toward longevity escape velocity.
✅ How reasoning AIs (like GPT-4o, o1, DeepSeek) are changing scientific research.
✅ Whether AI creativity challenges the idea that only biological minds can create.
✅ Why AI will force a new culture of leisure, curiosity, and human flourishing.
✅ The existential stress that will come as AI outperforms human expertise.
✅ Why “Don’t die” is no longer a joke — it’s real advice.

🎙️ Hosted — as always — by Peter Ottsjö (tech journalist and author of Evigt Ung) and Dr. Patrick Linden (philosopher and author of The Case Against Death).

Continue reading “Aging will be cured within 20 years” | >

In a demographically diverse sample of healthy people, Cornell researchers found dramatic changes over the human lifespan in the brain’s “blue spot”—a tiny region involved in cognition and believed to be the first affected by neurodegenerative conditions including Alzheimer’s disease.

Using specialized MRI scans to measure the intensity of neuromelanin, a pigment that gives the locus coeruleus (LC) its , the research team observed an inverted U-shaped curve that peaked in later middle age before dropping off sharply, a finding that helps characterize healthy aging patterns.

Maintaining a stronger blue signal after age 60 was associated with better cognitive performance, according to the study involving 134 participants aged 19 to 86. Because of the participants’ diversity, including about 40% who were non-white, the researchers also discovered higher peaks among Black participants and women, groups known to be more susceptible to Alzheimer’s.

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As humans age, particularly after middle age, their brain functions, cognitive abilities and memory can deteriorate to varying degrees. Aging-related disorders marked by cognitive decline, particularly dementia, have become increasingly widespread over the past decades.

Estimates suggest that the number of individuals diagnosed with dementia could increase from 55 million in 2019 to around 139 million by 2050. Understanding the factors contributing to and devising methods to detect the first signs of dementia is thus of the utmost importance, as it could help to reliably pick up its emergence and plan therapeutic interventions accordingly.

In recent years, some studies have found a link between people’s ability to perceive and identify odors (i.e., olfactory function) and their cognitive abilities as . While the relationship between and cognitive decline is now well-documented, whether one causes the other or they are the result of similar aging-related or neurodegenerative mechanisms remains unclear.

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The findings indicate that the Cel System supplement range may effectively lower biological age and enhance health metrics, highlighting the need for further research into its underlying mechanisms and long-term effectiveness. A research team led by first authors Natalia Carreras-Gallo and Rita D

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Certain DNA sequences can form structures other than the canonical double helix. These alternative DNA conformations—referred to as non-B DNA—have been implicated as regulators of cellular processes and of genome evolution, but their DNA tends to be repetitive, which until recently made reliably reading and assembling their sequences difficult.

Now, a team of researchers, led by Penn State biologists, has comprehensively predicted the location of non-B DNA structures in great apes. It’s the first step in understanding the functions and evolution of such structures, known to contribute to genetic diseases and cancer, the team said.

The work depends on newly available telomere-to-telomere (T2T), or end-to-end, genomes of humans and other great apes that overcame sequencing and assembly difficulties associated with repetitive DNA to fill in any remaining gaps in the genomes. A paper describing the study, which shows that non-B DNA is enriched in the newly sequenced segments of the genomes and suggests potential new functions, was published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

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It’s no secret that our waistlines often expand in middle age, but the problem isn’t strictly cosmetic. Belly fat accelerates aging and slows down metabolism, increasing our risk for developing diabetes, heart problems and other chronic diseases. Exactly how age transforms a six pack into a softer stomach, however, is murky.

Now preclinical research by City of Hope has uncovered the cellular culprit behind age-related abdominal fat, providing new insights into why our midsections widen with middle age.

Published today in Science, the findings suggest a novel target for future therapies to prevent belly flab and extend our healthy lifespans.

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The political news these days is enough to make some Chicagoans wish they were a million miles away. But consider this: Even in the depths of space, there’s no escape from politics.

The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope is literally parked 1 million miles away. In the nearly three years since it became operational, “Webb,” as it’s called, has made some incredible findings.

Webb uses infrared scanning to show how stars and galaxies form, and to study the atmospheres of distant planets. Its capabilities complement the aging Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits Earth at an altitude of only 340 miles or so.

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