Improving Targeted Nanoparticles
May 08 2008   |   Permanent Link
A great deal of tomorrow's better, more effective medicine will rest on targeting nanosystems that can deliver therapies to specific cell populations in the body. Much of this development is taking place in the cancer research community, but you can be sure there are a thousand and one other uses: "Using nanoworms, doctors should eventually be able to target and reveal the location of developing tumors that are too small to detect by conventional methods. Carrying payloads targeted to specific features on tumors, these microscopic vehicles could also one day provide the means to more effectively deliver toxic anti-cancer drugs to these tumors in high concentrations without negatively impacting other parts of the body. ... Most nanoparticles are recognized by the body's protective mechanisms, which capture and remove them from the bloodstream within a few minutes. The reason these worms work so well is due to a combination of their shape and to a polymer coating on their surfaces that allows the nanoworms to evade these natural elimination processes. As a result, our nanoworms can circulate in the body of a mouse for many hours. ... We are now using nanoworms to construct the next generation of smart tumor-targeting nanodevices."

CIRM Funds For the Buck Institute
May 08 2008   |   Permanent Link
The Buck Institute for Age Research is one of the recipients of research funds awarded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM): CIRM "has awarded $20.5 million to the Buck Institute for Age Research to build a 'CIRM Center of Excellence' on its Novato campus. ... The Buck Institute's proposed research program for the Center of Excellence is guided by the promise that human embryonic stem cells may provide a model system to study and understand the process of human aging and age-related disease. ... The specific aims are to use human embryonic stem cells or their differentiated progeny to study how cells self-renew and to examine processes involved in the biology of aging including DNA repair, genome integrity and programmed cell death. The long-term goal of the program is to unravel the mysteries of aging and age-related human diseases by understanding the fundamental biological process of aging in appropriate human cell models." Which is an excellent summary of the slow boat, look-but-don't-intervene approach, and shows why those researchers invested in this approach - rather than the much more direct repair of damage approach and the goal of curing aging as soon as possible - believe, incorrectly, that any successful intervention in aging is a long way away.

A Discussion on Animal Longevity
May 07 2008   |   Permanent Link
Researchers talk about the basis for animal longevity at the Post-Gazette: "What is it about tortoise biology that makes them so long-lived? The same thing can be asked of some even more intriguing creatures in the Methuselah Club, including the rough-eye rockfish (up to 205 years), the bowhead whale (211 years) and the ocean quahog clam (225 years). ... In the bowhead whales, researchers have been able to chart the slow change in the orientation of amino acids in their eyelids, he said, while the rockfish and quahog lay down age-related rings, the rockfish in an ear bone and the quahog on its shell. ... Dr. de Magalhaes said he did a survey two years ago of hundreds of species of mammals, and 'what we showed is there is really no correlation between metabolic rate and life span in mammals.' ... 'I'm a little bit skeptical about the idea that telomeres contribute that much to aging,' said Dr. de Magalhaes, given the fact that mice, which live about four years, have longer telomeres than humans. ... scientists have been able to create mice with short telomeres and with long telomeres, and 'the mice with long telomeres don't have a significant difference in life span.' Unfortunately, the article doesn't delve into mitochondrial biochemistry, which looks like it might be much of the root of differences in life span, in mammals at least.

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