Why Don't Biotech Investors Run Replication Studies Before Investing?
Ichor Life Sciences is one of the earliest longevity industry companies, an interesting mix of contract research organization (CRO), biotech working on several different therapeutics, and investor in very early stage biotech startups. One of the Ichor co-founders here offers an interesting, though possibly biased perspective on how investors should behave in the biotech space. Inside companies, every new development program in the biotech industry starts with an attempt to replicate the research results that form the basis for the program, even given the existence of detailed, published papers and a coven of accessible res...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 28, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Longevity Industry Source Type: blogs
Amie Fornah Sankoh Achieves a Scientific Dream
Credit: LinkedIn.
“I wanted to give up so many times. Although I tried to remain positive, I never thought I’d be able to finish my Ph.D. But I made it, and I’m extremely proud of myself,” says Amie Fornah Sankoh, Ph.D., a research scientist with Dow Chemical Company who received NIGMS support as a graduate student.
Human and Plant Communication
Dr. Sankoh has loved science and mathematics since she was just a child growing up in Sierra Leone. When she was 3 years old, Dr. Sankoh became deaf from a childhood disease. Math, unlike other subjects, is very visual, which played a part in her interest in it. “...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - February 28, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Being a Scientist Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology Profiles Training Source Type: blogs
Telomere Length as a Target for Therapy
Average telomere length in a tissue is some reflection of (a) stem cell activity and (b) pace of cell division. Telomeres, repeated DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes, lose some of their length with each cell division, and cells self-destruct or become senescent when telomeres become too short. This limits the ability of somatic cells to replicate, reducing the odds that a given cell will mutate to become cancerous by imposing a limit on cell activity and cell life span, enforcing turnover of cells in tissues. Stem cells, in comparison, are a small, well protected, privileged set of cell populations that use telomera...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 26, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
The Current State And Future Of Biohacking
For years at The Medical Futurist, we’ve covered countless digital health devices and technologies, and how they can empower patients in the digital health age. These share the common feature of augmenting the patient experience, and such augmentations can be taken to the next level via biohacking.
In this article, we’ll introduce the biohacking concept, illustrate it with examples of biohackers (you might be one already!) and contemplate its impact on the future of digital health.
What is biohacking?
As the term itself suggests, “biohacking” generally refers to the act of hacking or modifying biolog...
Source: The Medical Futurist - February 15, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Pranavsingh Dhunnoo Tags: TMF implants biohacking grinders Source Type: blogs
The 2024 Word of the Year: Missense
By MIKE MAGEE
Not surprisingly, my nominee for “word of the year” involves AI, and specifically “the language of human biology.”
As Eliezer Yudkowski, the founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and coiner of the term “friendly AI” stated in Forbes:
“Anything that could give rise to smarter-than-human intelligence—in the form of Artificial Intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, or neuroscience-based human intelligence enhancement – wins hands down beyond contest as doing the most to change the world. Nothing else is even in the same league.”
Perhaps the ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 13, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Biology Crispr DNA Mike Magee Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 12th 2024
In conclusion, frailty is a dynamic process, and improved frailty and remaining robust are significantly associated with lower risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular death in older people.
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Greater Individual Wealth Correlates with Longer Life Expectancy
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2024/02/greater-individual-wealth-correlates-with-longer-life-expectancy/
Individual wealth correlates with life expectancy, with an effect size that is in the same ballpark as those related to lifestyle choices involving exercise, diet, and consequences thereof. It remains unclear...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 11, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
The Death of Death, in English
The authors of the Death of Death are regulars on the conference circuit for aging research, the longevity industry, and patient advocacy for the treatment of aging as a medical condition. The book was originally in Spanish, and has finally been translated into English. It is a popular science overview of progress towards technologies that will first slow aging, then enable the control of aging, and eventually, at some point, produce large gains in healthy human life span, postponing death by aging essentially indefinitely. The book and its authors also unapologetically and straightforwardly stand in opposition to the horr...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 8, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs
An Interview with Karl Pfleger
Karl Pfleger is one of the more prolific angel investors in the longevity industry. Naturally he is an investor in Repair Biotechnologies, the company that I co-founded with Bill Cherman and which is currently focused on a gene therapy approach to reversal of atherosclerosis. In addition to his investment and conference-going activities, Pfleger runs the very useful Aging Biotech Info resource, which has expanded from the starting point of a list of companies in the longevity industry to its present state of listing of a great many more items: conferences, books, blogs, interventions, diagnostics, and so forth. In the podc...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 5, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
Want to Build A Sequencer? 454.bio Opens Up Their Plans
Just as the AGBT hype cycle was firing up (with me contributing multiple sparks), serial entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg's latest sequencing startup 454.bio fully de-stealthed their technology this weekend, going so far as to release open source plans to build an instrument prototype. 454.bio is aiming to build a Keurig-sized device to retail for $100, with sequencing runs in the $20 range. To accomplish this, they're attempting a novel twist on sequencing-by-synthesis. It's an unconventional strategy by someone who has succeeded twice before in DNA sequencing (454 and Ion Torrent) and has multiple oth...
Source: Omics! Omics! - February 5, 2024 Category: Bioinformatics Authors: Keith Robison Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 5th 2024
In conclusion, the Immunity and Redox Clocks allow BA quantification in mice and both the ImmunolAge and RedoxAge in mice relate to lifespan.
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Senolytic CAR T Cell Therapy Improves Health in Aged Mice
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2024/01/senolytic-car-t-cell-therapy-improves-health-in-aged-mice/
To the degree that senescent cells in a tissue exhibit distinctive surface features, one can deploy technologies such as chimeric antigen receptor T cells to selectively destroy them. T cells will destroy whatever cell binds to the chimeric antigen receptor they are equipped w...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 4, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Making a Mouse that Exhibits Human Telomere Dynamics
Telomerase acts to extend telomeres, the repeated DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes. With every cell division, some of the telomere repeats are lost. Cells with critically short telomeres become senescent or undergo programmed cell death, having reached the Hayflick limit on replication. Some cells employ telomerase to adjust the countdown of telomere length. In humans, only stem cells use telomerase. In other species, such as mice, telomerase is much more widely expressed. There has been some interest in the research community in upregulation of telomerase as a way to improve stem cell and tissue function in old ag...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 2, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Putting West Virginia Students on the Path to Scientific Careers
Credit: NIGMS.
Two NIGMS-funded programs are teaming up to shape the future of science and technology in West Virginia (WV). One engages high school students in science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine (STEM+M); introduces them to research; and provides direct access to college through tuition waivers. In the other program, undergraduate students are paired with a researcher at their institution for a paid internship—an important step toward a career in science.
The Health Sciences & Technology Academy
“We liken our students to rosebuds. As they grow, you see them blossom into self-confident lea...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - January 31, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Being a Scientist STEM Education SEPA Training Source Type: blogs
My Ode to Yolo Bypass
Gave my 1st ever talk about Yolo Bypass and my 1st ever talk about Nature Photography. Here it is ...
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This is from the" Tree of Life Blog "
of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.
-------- (Source: The Tree of Life)
Source: The Tree of Life - January 30, 2024 Category: Microbiology Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 29th 2024
Fight Aging! publishes news and commentary relevant to the goal of ending all age-related disease, to be achieved by bringing the mechanisms of aging under the control of modern medicine. This weekly newsletter is sent to thousands of interested subscribers. To subscribe or unsubscribe from the newsletter,
please visit:
https://www.fightaging.org/newsletter/
Longevity Industry Consulting Services
Reason, the founder of Fight Aging! and Repair Biotechnologies, offers strategic consulting services to investors, entrepreneurs, and others interested in the longevity industry and its complexities. To find out m...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 28, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
An Interview with Andrew Steele on the Need for Advocacy for Aging Research
Those of us who have been involved in advocacy for aging research and the development of therapies to treat aging as a medical condition for long enough will remember the early 2000s, a time in which a million dollars of new funding for a specific project or specific non-profit was an amazing, novel, rare event. Given that $3 billion, a sizable fraction of all investment into all forms of medical biotech in 2022, was invested into one entity focused on one approach to the treatment of aging, Altos Labs, we might forgive advocates who think that the job is done, that the argument has been made and heard, that it is time to ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 25, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs
