Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 6,058

AI is all that matters now, and reaching Agi before 2030 is all that matters for this decade.

A substantial percentage of the human clinical trials, including those evaluating investigational anti-aging drugs, fail in Phase II, a phase where the efficacy of the drug is tested. This poor success is in part due to inadequate target choice and the inability to identify a group of patients who will most likely respond to specific agents. This challenge is further complicated by the differences in the biological age of the patients, as the importance of therapeutic targets varies between the age groups. Unfortunately, most targets are discovered without considering patients’ age and being tested in a relatively younger population (average age in phase I is 24). Hence, identifying potential targets that are implicated in multiple age-associated diseases, and also play a role in the basic biology of aging, may have substantial benefits.

Identifying dual-purpose targets that are implicated in aging and disease at the same time will extend healthspan and delay age-related health issues – even if the target is not the most important in a specific patient, the drug would still benefit that patient.

“When it comes to targets identification in chronic diseases, it is important to prioritize the targets that are implicated in age-associated diseases, implicated in more than one hallmark of aging, and safe,” said Zhavoronkov. “So that in addition to treating a disease, the drug would also treat aging – it is an off-target bonus.”

Read more | >

Imagine gliding into space in a pressurized capsule via a huge balloon the size of a football stadium. That’s how one startup plans to take tourists on suborbital journeys 100,000 feet above Earth.

Passengers will be able to observe stunning views during a six hour journey. They will also be able to sip on cocktails from a bar aboard the vessel. (Yes, there’s a bathroom.)

The voyage will happen “very gently and smoothly” and provide passengers “the quintessential astronaut experience,” Jane Poytner, co-founder and co-CEO of Space Perspective, told Yahoo Finance Live.

Read more | >

Now, though, new research is helping us understand this strange dusty environment and paving the way for safer Mars missions in the future — like a crewed landing and possibly even a permanent settlement.

The problem of dust

Mars’s surface is covered in fine particles of dust. With its smaller size than Earth, it has lower gravity – around one-third of the gravity here – and a thinner atmosphere, which is around one percent of the density of Earth’s atmosphere. That means it is easy for winds to form and to pick up those dust particles, blowing them into a dust storm.

Read more | >

Great article by the great Steve Hill. One little thing:

“The life extension community unfortunately does have a reputation for being long on promises and short on delivery. With what is now decades of research, there are still no effective therapies against aging.”

Well, George Church commented recently that life extension does exist for mice and worms. And there is one human trial underway via plasma dilution and another one later this year.

It seems bizarre that in 2022, some biotech companies interested in doing something about aging are still saying that they are not. Cellular rejuvenation seems to be the latest buzzword and an attempt to rebrand and escape the stigma of anti-aging.

Read more | >

The sunspot, called AR2975, has been shooting out flares of electrically charged particles from the sun’s plasma soup since Monday (March 28). Sunspots are areas on the sun’s surface where powerful magnetic fields, created by the flow of electrical charges, knot into kinks before suddenly snapping. The resulting release of energy launches bursts of radiation called solar flares, or explosive jets of solar material called coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

Related: Strange new type of solar wave defies physics

Cannibal coronal mass ejections happen when fast-moving solar eruptions overtake earlier eruptions in the same region of space, sweeping up charged particles to form a giant, combined wavefront that triggers a powerful geomagnetic storm.

Read more | >

Despite a wealth of knowledge gained in the past three decades concerning the molecular underpinnings of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), progress towards obtaining effective, disease modifying therapies has proven to be challenging. In this manner, numerous clinical trials targeting the production, aggregation, and toxicity of beta-amyloid, have failed to meet efficacy standards. This puts into question the beta-amyloid hypothesis and suggests that additional treatment strategies should be explored. The recent emergence of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing as a relatively straightforward, inexpensive, and precise system has led to an increased interest of applying this technique in AD. CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing can be used as a direct treatment approach or to help establish better animal models that more faithfully mimic human neurodegenerative diseases. In this manner, this technique has already shown promise in other neurological disorders, such as Huntington’s disease. The purpose of this review is to examine the potential utility of CRISPR/Cas9 as a treatment option for AD by targeting specific genes including those that cause early-onset AD, as well as those that are significant risk factors for late-onset AD such as the apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4) gene.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, CRISPR/Cas9, Gene editing, Treatment, Huntington’s disease, iPSC neurons.

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disorder that primarily affects older adults and is the most common cause of dementia [1]. Currently it afflicts 5.5 million Americans and that number is expected to triple by 2050. At the present time, it is the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer, with an estimated 700,000 Americans ages65 years will have AD when they die [2]. In addition, the cost of the disease is substantial with $259 billion health care dollars going to manage the disease currently, and by the middle of the century costs are predicted to soar over $1.2 trillion, which will completely bankrupt the healthcare system in the USA [3]. Worldwide, 47 million people live with dementia and that number is projected to increase to more than 131 million by 2050 with an estimated worldwide cost of US $818 billion [4].

Read more | >