MKP1 as a Target for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis
The causes of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis remain somewhat unclear, which is often the case for conditions in which treatments struggle to achieve more than a slowed progression. There is evidence for cellular senescence to drive the progression of fibrosis, but most research remains focused on the molecular biochemistry of fibroblasts, the cells responsible for building the collagen deposits characteristic of fibrotic tissue.
The process by which lung injury either leads to healing or fibrosis relies in part on what happens to a cell called a fibroblast, which forms connective tissue. During injury or illness, f...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 19, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Endothelial Cellular Senescence Contributes to Loss of Capillary Density
The consensus of the research community on senescent cells in old tissues is that (a) their presence causes harm, and (b) treatments based on the selective removal of such cells will be beneficial, reversing many aspects of aging and age-related disease. These cells secrete a pro-inflammatory mix of signal molecules that is disruptive to tissue structure and function when maintained over time. Cells become senescent constantly throughout life, only to be destroyed by programmed cell death or by the immune system. With advancing age, newly created senescent cells are cleared ever more slowly, however, and thus the burden of...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 18, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Gut Microbiome Composition Correlates with Longevity in Rabbits
The balance of microbial populations making up the gut microbiome is different from individual to individual, and changes with age in detrimental ways. Pro-inflammatory microbes, as well as those that create otherwise harmful metabolites, expand in number at the expense of microbial populations that produce beneficial metabolites. Evidence strongly suggests that both variations between individuals and age-related changes in the gut microbiome can contribute to age-related disease and mortality. Here, for example, a study in rabbits shows that specific differences in the gut microbiome correlate well with observed length of...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 18, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
An Interview with Reason of Repair Biotechnologies on Reversal of Atherosclerosis
As some of you may know, I co-founded Repair Biotechnologies with Bill Cherman. The company is presently on the development of a gene therapy approach now demonstrated to rapidly reverse atherosclerosis in mice, the condition in which fatty plaques grow to narrow blood vessels and weaken blood vessel walls. One of the possible approaches to treating aging as a medical condition is to take the list of causes of human mortality, start at the top, and work down. Atherosclerosis is the single largest cause of death in our species, through the rupture of unstable atherosclerotic plaque leading to heart attack or stroke. The bur...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 18, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Sea Urchins as a Model of Negligible Senescence
Species that exhibit negligible senescence tend to be long-lived, but more interestingly appear to exhibit few to none of the functional declines of degenerative aging until very late in life, quite unlike the situation for most mammals, and particularly for humans. One can argue that the most useful species that exhibit negligible senescence are those with near relative species that age more normally. The closer the relative, the more likely it is that comparing the biochemistry of the two will lead to new knowledge regarding aging. So naked mole rats versus other, less long-lived mole rats, Brandt's bat versus other shor...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 17, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
A Population Study Correlates Air Pollution with Faster Cognitive Aging
A number of large epidemiological studies provide evidence for long-term exposure to greater levels of air pollution to accelerate the onset and progression of age-related disease. A few of these manage to control for the tendency for wealthier people to avoid living in areas with higher particulate air pollution, and the correlation with worse health remains. Mechanistically, it is thought that particulates provoke greater chronic inflammation via their interaction with lung and other tissues, and this in turn contributes to the cell and tissue dysfunction that leads to age-related disease.
The present study asse...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 17, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Bacterial Peptides Improve Mitochondrial Function in Intestinal Tissues
This study reveals a potential treatment for human mitochondrial diseases.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2024.114067 (Source: Fight Aging!)
Source: Fight Aging! - April 17, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Higher Taurine Intake in the Diet Correlates with Some Measures of Strength in Middle Age
Taurine is a amino acid mainly found in fish and meat in the diet. It is not an essential amino acid, and can be synthesized in humans. Circulating taurine levels in the bloodstream decline with age by about 50% by middle age for reasons that have yet to be determined. Studies in aged mice and non-human primates have shown modestly improved function and slowed aging following taurine supplementation. Past human studies of taurine supplementation have produced entirely unimpressive outcomes, but given that they predated present aging clocks it may be that the researchers were evaluating the wrong metrics. Taurine may act on...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 16, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Inducing Low Body Temperature via Torpor Slows Aging in Mice
Past evidence has suggested that the lowered body temperature characteristic of calorie restriction is important to the slowed aging that results in short-lived mammals. One might compare that to the strong evidence for upregulated autophagy to be the driving factor in slowed aging produced by the practice of calorie restriction. Researchers here conduct a similar study, inducing a reduction in metabolic rate, dietary intake, and body temperature in mice via activation of a specific brain region. As in past research, the resulting slowed aging was shown to be driven by that lowered body temperature rather than any of the o...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 16, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Considering Cellular Senescence in Macrophages
Cells become senescent in response to damage, a toxic environment, the signaling of nearby senescent cells, or, most commonly, because they reach the Hayflick limit on replication. Senescent cells cease replication and begin to secrete pro-inflammatory signals, attracting the attention of the immune system. With advancing age he aged immune system becomes less able to clear senescent cells in a timely manner, leading to a growing, permanent presence of senescent cells in tissues. Some of these senescent cells are themselves immune cells. Given the importance of the immune system to tissue maintenance and regeneration, part...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 16, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Proximate Causes of Increased Transposon Expression with Age
In today's open access paper, researchers here look at some of the proximate causes of transposable element activation, the details of the epigenetic and transcriptional issues. It is well known that transposable element activity increases with age. These are sequences capable of self-replication in the genome, the remnants of ancient retroviral infections. Transposon activity is repressed in youth, the sequences hidden from transcription machinery within compact regions of the packaged genome, or hidden inside intron sequences that are normally excluded from transcription.
Aging produces a growing dysregulation of ...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 15, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Mesenchymal Stem Cell Therapy Produces Thymus Regrowth in Old Non-Human Primates
Thymocytes generated in the bone marrow migrate to the thymus, near the heart, where they mature into T cells of the adaptive immune system. Unfortunately, the thymus atrophies with age. Most people have little active thymus tissue left by the time they are in their 50s. Absent a robust supply of new T cells, the adaptive immune system becomes ever more made up of malfunctioning, senescent, and other problematic cells, lacking the naive T cells needed to respond to new threats. Regeneration of the thymus is thus an important goal. There are some indications that the thymus is more plastic than thought, given that mild calo...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 15, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Herpes Simplex Infection Correlates with Amyloid Burden in the Aging Brain
There is a continuing debate over the degree to which Alzheimer's is driven by persistent infection in brain tissue, such as by varieties of herpesvirus. Amyloid-β is an antimicrobial peptide, a part of the innate immune response, and one could argue that persistently raised expression of amyloid-β will increase misfolding and generation of the aggregates that drive pathology in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, at least under the amyloid cascade hypothesis. The data is not all convincing, however, which suggests that perhaps there are other factors involved - that multiple viruses interact in some people, for exa...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 15, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 15th 2024
In conclusion, although several clinical trials targeting SnCs are ongoing, various questions about the biology of SnCs remain open, resulting in a gap between molecular and cellular data. Concerning the need, initiatives such as SenNet aiming to create openly accessible atlases of SnCs should contribute enormously to the area. Advances in understanding the subcellular structure, the heterogeneity, and the dynamics of SnCs require the integration of molecular and cellular techniques with data analysis packages to evaluate high throughput evidence from microscopy and flow cytometry. It is also necessary to develop new equip...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 14, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
TLR2 Important in the Dysfunction of Hair Follicles
Dysfunction in hair follicles and loss of the capacity for hair growth is a perhaps surprisingly complex aspect of aging and disease. For all the the basic mechanisms of hair growth are well-investigated, the hair follicle is a complex structure, and hair growth involves the collaboration of many cell types, activities, and signaling that shifts over time as the follicle progresses through the stages of growth. It has proven to be hard to pin down any one specific mechanism as vital, and it may turn out to be the case that no one specific mechanism is the key to preventing loss of hair with advancing age and other circumst...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 12, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
