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Monday February 08

Curing Osteoporosis By Manipulating Serotonin Permanent Link | Original Article A novel approach to the treatment of age-related bone loss is demonstrated: "An investigational drug that inhibits serotonin synthesis in the gut, administered orally once daily, effectively cured osteoporosis in mice and rats ... Serotonin in the gut has been shown in recent research to stall bone formation. The finding could lead to new therapies that build new bone; most current drugs for osteoporosis can only prevent the breakdown of old bone. ... Prior to this discovery, serotonin was primarily known as a neurotransmitter acting in the brain. Yet, 95 percent of the body's serotonin is found in the gut, where its major function is to inhibit bone formation (the remaining five percent is in the brain, where it regulates mood, among other critical functions). By turning off the intestine's release of serotonin, the team was able, in this new study, to cure osteoporosis in mice that had undergone menopause. ... [Researchers] administered the compound orally, once daily, at a small dose, for up to six weeks to rodents experiencing post-menopausal osteoporosis. Results demonstrated that osteoporosis was prevented from developing, or when already present, could be fully cured. Of critical importance, levels of serotonin were normal in the brain, which indicated that the compound did not enter the general circulation and was unable to cross the blood-brain barrier, thereby avoiding many potential side effects." TERC, Telomeres, and Rate of Aging Permanent Link | Original Article The title of this EurekAlert! release is misleading - this isn't the first identified genetic variant associated with human longevity. But is is nonetheless interesting: scientists "have identified for the first time definitive variants associated with biological ageing in humans. The team analyzed more than 500,000 genetic variations across the entire human genome to identify the variants which are located near a gene called TERC. ... two forms of ageing - chronological ageing i.e. how old you are in years and biological ageing whereby the cells of some individuals are older (or younger) than suggested by their actual age. ... There is accumulating evidence that the risk of age-associated diseases including heart disease and some types of cancers are more closely related to biological rather than chronological age. What we studied are structures called telomeres which are parts of one's chromosomes. Individuals are born with telomeres of certain length and in many cells telomeres shorten as the cells divide and age. Telomere length is therefore considered a marker of biological ageing. In this study what we found was that those individuals carrying a particular genetic variant had shorter telomeres i.e. looked biologically older. ... The effect was quite considerable in those with the variant, equivalent to between 3-4 years of 'biological aging' as measured by telomere length loss."

Friday February 05

Nanoparticles, Lasers, and Cancer Permanent Link | Original Article Researchers have been killing cancer cells in the lab through a combination of targeted nanoparticles and laser heating for a couple of years now, but here is an interesting advance on that method: scientists "have discovered a new technique for singling out individual diseased cells and destroying them with tiny explosions. The scientists used lasers to make 'nanobubbles' by zapping gold nanoparticles inside cells. In tests on cancer cells, they found they could tune the lasers to create either small, bright bubbles that were visible but harmless or large bubbles that burst the cells. ... Single-cell targeting is one of the most touted advantages of nanomedicine, and our approach delivers on that promise with a localized effect inside an individual cell. The idea is to spot and treat unhealthy cells early, before a disease progresses to the point of making people extremely ill. ... In laboratory studies published last year [researchers also] applied nanobubbles to arterial plaque. They found that they could blast right through the deposits that block arteries. ...The bubbles work like a jackhammer. ... nanobubble technology could be used for 'theranostics,' a single process that combines diagnosis and therapy. In addition, because the cell-bursting nanobubbles also show up on microscopes in real time, [the] technique can be use for post-therapeutic assessment, or what physicians often refer to as 'guidance.'" To Cure Aging: How Much and How Long? Permanent Link | Original Article From the Maximum Life Foundation blog, a video from the Manhattan Beach Project meeting on the projected cost and time taken to develop various aging-slowdown or actual rejuvenation therapies: "How much will it cost and how long will it take to develop an effective caloric restriction mimetic - one that will add many years if not decades to the human lifespan? What will it take to come up with a drug that turns on telomerase and thus lengthens telomeres? How about immune system restoration, tissue/organ storage, mitochondrial medicine, and other medical technologies?" For another perspective on time and cost, you might look at the SENS Foundation information on pushing to completion therapies for the seven contributing aspects of aging. We could expect working rejuvenation in mice with ten years of work and a billion dollars, for example - the challenge has always been convincing people that this is in fact the case, and raising those funds. Predicting how long it will take to move from mice to people is much harder, as this depends far more on regulation and politics than anything else. Two decades doesn't seem unreasonable in the present environment.

Thursday February 04

Working on Lung Regeneration Permanent Link | Original Article Via ScienceDaily: "Stem cell researchers exploring a new approach for the care of respiratory diseases report that an experimental treatment involving transplantable lung cells was associated with improved outcomes in tests on mice with acute lung injury. ... Respiratory diseases are a major cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Current treatments offer no prospect of cure or disease reversal. Transplantation of pulmonary progenitor cells derived from human embryonic stem cells may provide a novel approach to regenerate endogenous lung cells destroyed by injury and disease. ... [Researchers] used a genetic selection procedure they created to generate a type of lung cell known as alveolar epithelial type II, which secretes surfactant, a substance that keeps the lung inflated, and can turn into another important lung cell that regulates the transfer of oxygen into the blood and the removal of carbon dioxide. ... the experimental stem cell treatment [not only] prevented or reversed visual hallmarks of pulmonary injury, but also restored near normal lung function to mice. ... additional tests in other animal models and eventually humans will be needed before these cell transplants can be used to treat respiratory diseases." An Article on Calorie Restriction Permanent Link | Original Article From the Huffington Post, an article on the science and practice of calorie restriction that focuses on extended longevity, and so manages to omit mention of the demonstrated health benefits in human studies: "The science of aging is among the most dynamic and provocative in modern biology. Over the past two decades we have seen a virtual explosion in research investigating the molecular and behavioral systems that control the aging process. But the more researchers uncover about the science of aging, the more questions emerge. Dietary restriction has long been considered the most potent regulator of aging. Restricting food intake by any means induces a series of metabolic changes in organisms from yeast to primates that serve to extend life. Studies are currently underway to investigate the ability of dietary restriction to extend life in humans. ... The genes linking diet and aging are highly conserved through evolution, indicating that there is a great chance human aging is sensitive to diet. Indeed, insulin-related genes have been found to be important in long-lived human populations. This suggests that the pathways discovered in worms and other organisms have similar functions in humans. What is not clear is how much influence diet has on lifespan and to what extent we are able to manipulate it."

Wednesday February 03

Rapamycin Reviewed at Ouroboros Permanent Link | Original Article From Ouroboros: "One of [the] most significant breakthroughs [in biogerontology] last year was the announcement that the macrolide drug rapamycin can extend longevity in mice. More specifically, rapamycin can accomplish this when administered to adult, wildtype mice. In other words, no genetic modification or early-life intervention is necessary, making rapamycin one of the first compounds that meets the criteria for an anti-aging drug that could be used for people who are already alive and well down the road toward aging themselves. The lifespan extension achieved is modest (~10%), but this is more impressive in light of the fact that the mice were quite old at the time treatment began, and the study used only a single dose rate. Future studies will undoubtedly seek to optimize the dose and regimen with the goal of achieving greater enhancement of lifespan. How does it work? As the saying goes, further study is required, and at multiple levels. ... There's a good deal left to discover about the rapamycin’s effects on aging in general - and regarding the specific mechanistic relationship between translational control, senescence, and organismal aging - but I have it on good authority that there's a great deal of effort being exerted in that direction. Watch this space for future developments." The Deathist Viewpoint Permanent Link | Original Article From EconLog: "Ron Bailey's Liberation Biology quoted Frank Fukuyama: 'Life extension seems to me a perfect example of something that is a negative externality, meaning that it is individually rational and desirable for any given individual, but it has costs for society that can be negative.' I couldn't believe my eyes. Did Frank Fukuyama actually mean that when a person has another year of healthy life, the net effect on other people is negative? If so, why do people cry at funerals, instead of celebrating? Fukuyama's statement was so hateful and twisted that I wondered if he was being quoted out of context. So I dug up the full paragraph ... The extra words definitely make Fukuyama's position more confusing, but they take away none of the horror. The extra words definitely make Fukuyama's position more confusing, but they take away none of the horror. You'd think that a 'perfect example' of a negative externality would be easy to explain and hard to dispute - like air pollution. But to make his case, Fukuyama has to appeal to the controversial notion of group selection: Human beings evolved to die because it's adaptive for society. His specific mechanism - death stops elders from impeding progress - would be controversial even for believers in group selection. After all, during our evolutionary history, there was almost no progress to impede! ... On purely pragmatic grounds, then, Fukuyama's argument is about as feeble as 'Life extension is bad for morticians.'"

Tuesday February 02

Premiere Screening of To Age or Not to Age Permanent Link | Original Article A new film on aging and longevity science, "To Age or Not to Age," will be premiered in New York on February 11th, with a discussion panel of biogerontologists to follow: "The New York City screening will be followed by a live panel discussion. The panel discussion will be simulcast to venues screening the film nationwide and will stream live online. Panelists include: Dr. Robert Butler, Gerontologist, Psychiatrist & Pulitzer-Prize Winner; President and CEO of the International Longevity Center. ... Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Biomedical Gerontologist; Chief Science Officer, SENS Foundation. ... Dr. Leonard P. Guarente, Novartis Professor of Biology, MIT; Director, Paul F. Glenn Lab for Science of Aging. ... Dr. Gordon Lithgow, Biomolecular Geneticist; Head of the Lithgow Lab, Buck Institute on Aging. Moderated by Robert Kane Pappas, director of To Age or Not to Age. The scientists featured in To Age or Not to Age have found the means to postpone and possibly mitigate diseases tied to aging, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative diseases, and diabetes." Improving the Human Immune System Permanent Link | Original Article From h+ Magazine: "For now, the best way to supplement the body's own defenses is through vaccines, but vaccines are far from a panacea. Each vaccine must be prepared in advance, few vaccines provide full protection to everybody, and despite popular misconception, even fewer last a lifetime. For example, smallpox vaccinations were lifelong, but tetanus vaccines generally last 5-10 years. There is still no vaccine for HIV infection. And when it comes to bacteria like tuberculosis, current vaccines are almost entirely ineffective. What's more, the whole process is achingly indirect. Vaccines work by first stimulating B cells and T cells in order to induce production of antibodies. They don't directly produce the needed antibodies. Rather, they try (not always successfully) to get the body to generate its own antibodies. In turn, stimulation of T cells requires yet another set of cells - called dendritic cells - and the presence of a diverse set of molecules called the major histocompatibility complex, creating still further complexity in generating an immune response. Our best hope may be to cut out the middleman. Rather than merely hoping that the vaccine will indirectly lead to the antibody an individual needs, imagine if we could genetically engineer these antibodies and make them available as needed. Call it immunity-on-demand. At first blush, the idea might seem farfetched. But there's a good chance this system, or something like it, will actually be in place within decades."

Monday February 01

Vetting Stem Cell Therapies Permanent Link | Original Article First generation stem cell therapies are offered in many locations around the world, and medical tourism is booming, but what sort of due diligence should you perform before trying to take advantage of a particular therapy? Here are some good suggestions: "The International Cellular Medicine Society (ICMS) has promulgated laboratory, practice standards and maintains a non-profit stem cell treatment registry. The easiest way to determine if the cell therapy is credible is to see if the clinic is ICMS certified. ... The development of treatment protocols for stem cells is difficult and disease as well as tissue specific. This means that valid treatment isn't as easy as sprinkling magic stem cells on the patient. For example, the treatment protocol for knee osteoarthritis has a completely different approach than cardiac disease. Some stem cell clinics are operating at a high level focus on a small collection of diseases and perfect their protocols for those diseases. This may take years for each application. So if the clinic advertises that it treats everything from ALS to Parkinson's to knee arthritis, this usually indicates that it's not operating at a high level of credibility.... Where are the stem cells obtained? Are they from the same patient (autologous) or from an allogeneic source? Many experts agree that autologous cells are more likely to have a much more robust safety profile than cells obtained from a donor. In particular, genes of the donor remain active in the host (which could have either a potentially positive or negative impact)." Killing Cells to Stop Rheumatoid Arthritis Permanent Link | Original Article Promising news for sufferers of autoimmune conditions: "A researcher [has] invented a novel way to halt and even reverse rheumatoid arthritis. He developed an imitation of a suicide molecule that floats undetected into overactive immune cells responsible for the disease. ... This new therapy stopped the disease cold in 75 percent of the mice. The best part was we didn't see any toxicity. ... Healthy immune cells are supposed to die after they attack an invading virus or bacteria. But in rheumatoid arthritis, the immune cells called macrophages live and go rogue. They proliferate in the blood, build up in the joints and invade cartilage and bone. Currently, there is no effective, nontoxic way to stop them. ... immune cells in rheumatoid arthritis are low in a critical molecule called Bim, whose job is to order the cells to self-destruct. To correct that shortage, [researchers] developed an imitation of the molecule, called BH3 mimetic. When [injected into] mice with rheumatoid arthritis, it floated ghostlike into their macrophages and bam!, the misbehaving immune cells self destructed. ... the molecule could prevent the development of rheumatoid arthritis as well as trigger a remission of existing disease. ... the next step is to develop nanotechnology for a more precise method of delivering the drug."

Friday January 29

Immortality Institute Creative Writing Contest Permanent Link | Original Article The Immortality Institute is running a creative writing contest over the next few months, with a submission deadline in March: "Throughout the history of the Immortality Institute a high priority has been placed on communication. The use of various media including graphic arts, film, and prose has always been a powerful means of disseminating ideas and the idea of life extension is no exception. This focus has led to the creation of the world's first comprehensive tome on modern scientific efforts and philosophy of immortality – The Scientific Conquest of Death, and the documentary film Exploring Life Extension (both available free online). The Immortality Institute has also sponsored writing contests. Read about the most recent non-fiction essay contest here. Winning entries here and here. It is 2010 and time again for forward-thinking individuals to put their best pen forward to communicate the ideals, vagaries, possibilities, and dreams of radical life extension, human enhancement, and immortality. Unlock your imagination and submit a story today!" Attacking Cancer Stem Cells in Ovarian Cancer Permanent Link | Original Article Via ScienceDaily: "Eliminating cancer stem cells (CSCs) within a tumor could hold the key to successful treatments for ovarian cancer ... Ovarian cancer has been challenging to treat because it tends to recur frequently and develop resistance to treatment. ... This recurrence and drug resistance may be due to the presence of CSCs within the tumors that have the capacity to reproduce and to differentiate into non-CSC tumor cells that repopulate the tumor mass. Eliminating these CSCs may be key to successful treatments. ... While in the process of studying the functions of stem cell proteins in human embryonic stem cells, [researchers] unexpectedly discovered that a sub-population of ovarian cancer cells express stem cell proteins Lin28 and Oct4, [both of which are known markers of embryonic or embryonic-like stem cells]. They also found that the two proteins appear to act together in ovarian cancer tissue cells to produce more advanced tumors. Inhibiting their combined expression led to a significant decrease in the growth and survival of cancer cells. A larger-scale ovarian cancer study is currently underway to confirm the significance of the findings."

Thursday January 28

A Discussion on Cryonics With Ben Best Permanent Link | Original Article At It's Rainmaking Time, you'll find an audio interview with Ben Best on the topic of cryonics: "Many of us would choose to live another 100 years or more, if we only knew how. Enter cryonics: an exciting, fascinating, and highly misunderstood scientific field. We have invited Ben Best, the president of The Cryonics Institute, to help us understand cryonics, where the paradigm is gaining traction, and the logistics involved. Join us for an illuminating discussion." Best, like many of the movers and shakers in the pro-longevity community, is a writer. You should take the time to look through the work at his personal website, especially the essays on cryonics and engineered longevity. For example, the Mechanisms of Aging essay is a fairly detailed overview is what is presently known and debated in the scientific community, whilst Why Life Extension? examines the motivations of those who want to live longer in good health and those who claim not to. Skin Cells Turned Into Neurons Permanent Link | Original Article From EurekAlert!: researchers "have succeeded in the ultimate switch: transforming mouse skin cells in a laboratory dish directly into functional nerve cells with the application of just three genes. The cells make the change without first becoming a pluripotent type of stem cell - a step long thought to be required for cells to acquire new identities. ... Until recently, it's been thought that cellular specialization, or differentiation, was a one-way path: pluripotent embryonic stem cells give rise to all the cell types in the body, but as the daughter cells become more specialized, they also become more biologically isolated. Like a tree trunk splitting first into branches and then into individual leaves, the cells were believed to be consigned to one developmental fate ... The research suggests that the pluripotent stage, rather than being a required touchstone for identity-shifting cells, may simply be another possible cellular state. ... finding the right combination of cell-fate-specific genes may trigger a domino effect in the recipient cell, wiping away restrictive DNA modifications and imprinting a new developmental fate on the genomic landscape. ... It may be hard to prove. but I no longer think that [induced pluripotency] is a reversal of development. It's probably more of a direct conversion like what we're seeing here, from one cell type to another that just happens to be more embryonic-like. This tips our ideas about epigenetic regulation upside down."

Wednesday January 27

An Illustration of Progress in Biotechnology Permanent Link | Original Article While we all pay attention to end results in our own field of interest, the general infrastructure biotechnologies that enable those end results are progressing rapidly. This article illustrates just how fast one of the benchmark technologies - DNA sequencing - is moving: "Although Complete Genomics is now slated to sequence an incredible 5,000 human genomes in 2010, this is nothing compared to what the company has in store for the years ahead. ... the company is now hoping to sequence 50,000 genomes in 2011 and a whopping 1 million genomes by 2014. Considering that by the end of 2009 only about 100 or so human genomes had ever been sequenced, most of them by - you guessed it - Complete Genomics, this represents an enormous shift in the industry. ... In November of last year Complete Genomics announced that they had sequenced 3 human genomes at an average cost of materials below $5000 apiece, shattering all previous records by nearly a factor of ten! Last year Complete Genomics was charging its customers $20,000 per genome and this year they will be charging $10,000 or less. We can expect the company’s costs and the prices it charges its customers to continue to drop dramatically in the next few years. The $1,000 genome is indeed within sight." More on Garage Biotechnology From h+ Magazine Permanent Link | Original Article Another good article from h+ Magazine is illustrative of the present state of the art in the DIY Bio scene: "In September 2007, I gave a short talk at Aubrey de Grey's SENS conference in Cambridge outlining my intention to found an open source biotech company that would make customized therapies for breast cancer. The response to the presentation was predictable: many had concerns whether regulators would allow such a drug to be used in a human trial. I had no idea, but I knew the only way to truly find out would be to try. It took almost two years of discussion and feeling my way around, but this company now exists. It‘s called the Pink Army Cooperative. ... Breast cancer is the first target, but ultimately the cooperative's goal is to open a path from diagnostics to the clinic for individualized medicines - to make effective cancer treatments as fast as diagnostic data can be translated into designs, manufactured, tested in the lab, and approved for use on a single person. Using open source synthetic biology, each of these steps can be automated, and each should get cheaper over time. ... Pink Army, then, is the first DIY drug company. It's a container that allows people interested in tackling cancer to connect and focus their passion, skills, and other resources."

Tuesday January 26

Rejuvenating Aspects of the Aged Immune System Permanent Link | Original Article Researchers are investigating a range of ways to restore aspects of the aged immune system to youthful levels. Here is one: "By comparing the immune responses of both, young and old mice, to bacterial infection they found that the number of macrophages, one of the major cell populations involved in the elimination of infecting bacteria, decreases rapidly in aged mice. This decline in the number of fighters and the associated weakness of the immune defense may be responsible for the age-associated increase in susceptibility to infections. [Researchers] have succeeded to enhance the resistance to an infection in aged mice by treating them with a macrophage-specific growth factor. This treatment increases the amount of macrophages in aged mice and improves their capacity to fight the infection. ... The treatment made aged mice much more resistant and they could fight much better the infection. The results of our study indicate that repeated prophylactic administration of this growth factor can help to maintain the macrophage compartment in the elderly and the fitness of the immune system." Aubrey de Grey in Helsinki Permanent Link | Original Article Here's a report on a presentation given by biomedical gerontologist and engineered longevity advocate Aubrey de Grey in Finland: "All in all, I found the presentation very understandable, concise and even entertaining. Everything except maybe the part about the seven types of aging damage was understandable even for the layperson. If you have doubts about whether ending aging is desirable or possible, I very much recommend watching some of his lectures online. They're also very useful if you want to convince others that the fight against aging is an important one. One thing I noticed Aubrey does well (and I don't) is to counter arguments by people whose life philosophy is, in my opinion, grounded on bad logic. For example, he gave a good response to the religious objection that life extension is a sin, arguing that it's essentially the other way around, because not doing anything to aging is the same thing as allowing suffering, which must be wrong. ... Another important point is that unlike what people imagine their own death to be like - quick and painless - for the overwhelming majority of the world's population it is nothing of the sort. What it is is a slow decline in physical and mental capabilities followed by a complete collapse and, ultimately, death. It is a process of slow deterioration that goes on for decades, with each decade being progressively worse in terms of biological functions than the previous one. To wish such a fate upon yourself is irrational, and to wish it upon others is just evil."