Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 25th 2017
Fight Aging! provides a weekly digest of news and commentary for thousands of subscribers interested in the latest longevity science: progress towards the medical control of aging in order to prevent age-related frailty, suffering, and disease, as well as improvements in the present understanding of what works and what doesn't work when it comes to extending healthy life. Expect to see summaries of recent advances in medical research, news from the scientific community, advocacy and fundraising initiatives to help speed work on the repair and reversal of aging, links to online resources, and much more.
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Source: Fight Aging! - September 24, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
The Science and Technology of Liquid Biopsies Improving Rapidly
I have blogged about liquid biopsies over the course of seven years (see, for example:Does the New Term"Liquid Biopsy" Make Any Sense?;Rapid Adoption of the Term"Liquid Biopsy" on the Web;"Liquid Biopsy" Used to Refer to Detection of Any Serum Cancer DNA). The procedure has the potential to revolutionize both the diagnosis and monitoring of malignant lessons. A recent article discussed the technology in detail (see:Going With the Flow: The Promise and Challenge of Liquid Biopsies). I offer below only a short excerpt from the article. Be sure to read the whole thing if you are interested....
Source: Lab Soft News - September 23, 2017 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Food and Drug Administration Lab Industry Trends Lab Processes and Procedures Medical Research Surgical Pathology Source Type: blogs
HSP90 Inhibitors as Another New Class of Potential Senolytic Drug Compounds
The increasing number of senescent cells present in older tissues is one of the root causes of degenerative aging. It is also the closest to being effectively reversed. An open access paper describing the evidence for HSP90 inibitors to selectively destroy senescent cells was published earlier this month. I had half missed it in passing and half skipped over it in favor of a more general review of the current state of senolytic drug development, pharmaceuticals capable of clearing senescent cells, but on reflection I think it is worth pointing out. The number of senolytic drug candidates has not yet reached a count of twen...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 19, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Engineering Macrophages to Ignore " Don't Eat Me " Signals from Cancer Cells
Macrophages are one of the types of immune cell responsible for destroying potentially dangerous cells, such as those that have become cancerous. Unfortunately cancerous cells tend to circumvent the immune system by displaying molecules on their outer surface that cause macrophages to leave them alone. This is an abuse of recognition mechanisms that exist to protect other cell types. Researchers here show that producing engineered macrophages that ignore this signal can be a viable approach to cancer therapy, even though past attempts have proven too harmful to normal cells to proceed towards the clinic. Their new methodol...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 20, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Hemopurifier Filters Ebola, Hep C, Metastatic Melanoma: Interview with James A. Joyce, CEO of Aethlon Medical
Filtering infectious pathogens and cancer cells directly from whole blood has been an almost fantastic proposition, but the Hemopurifier from Aethlon Medical does just that. We’ve been covering it for over 10 years on Medgadget as it proves itself in clinical trials and new applications for it are discovered. It has already been studied as a treatment option for hepatitis C, metastatic melanoma, and the Ebola virus. Recently at the 2017 BIO International Convention in San Diego, virus capture data was presented from a study of the Hemopurifier involving health-compromised patients infected with a virus.
We wer...
Source: Medgadget - July 18, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Exclusive Medicine Oncology Source Type: blogs
FDA User Fee Reauthorization Poised To Pass House of Representatives
On Monday, the House of Representatives released the latest version of the proposed Food and Drug Administration (FDA) user fee reauthorization bill. The House is expected to vote on the must-pass bill as early as today, but the Senate has not yet set forth its own timeline for voting on the bill. I have previously written here about the version of the bill marked up in the Senate, and about the committee staff’s valiant efforts to keep the bill free of politically controversial provisions.
In this post, I review some of the key provisions in the newly released bill and consider its implications for the FDA.
Widespread A...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - July 12, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Rachel Sachs Tags: Drugs and Medical Innovation FDA orphan drugs user fees Source Type: blogs
Using Light to Activate Genes and Kill Cancer
Scientists at Kyoto University in Japan have developed a gene delivery system, involving gold nanorods and a near infrared laser, which can transport a gene into cells and activate it.
Changing gene expression is a powerful way to affect cell behavior, and scientists hope to use this approach to treat a variety of diseases. Researchers have developed a range of nanoparticle systems to deliver genes into cells. However, regulating when the gene is activated using an external signal, like light, adds a sophisticated level of control.
Gold nanorods coated with lipids efficiently penetrate cells. The gene is turned on by heat ...
Source: Medgadget - July 10, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Genetics Nanomedicine Source Type: blogs
Progress in the Creation of a Neoantigen Cancer Vaccine
Targeting therapies to some combination of neoantigens, distinctive markers on the surface of cancerous cells that the immune system learns to recognize, and which vary from patient to patient, represents an advance in the specificity of targeted cancer immunotherapy. It should, in principle, better rouse the immune system to attack cancerous cells, while producing fewer side-effects. Researchers here report on an early human trial of this sort of approach; the initial results look promising, certainly from the perspective of an absence of serious side-effects, though a more robust demonstration of the ability to reduce tu...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 7, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Onco-cardiology, or Cardio-oncology
I was at a Cardiology Education Meeting where a case was presented of a patient receiving a monoclonal antibody for melanoma, who may have then developed myocarditis.Onco-cardiology (or cardio-oncology) is the study of the cardiac effects of cancer treatment but also used to refer to patients who are cancer survivors with a cardiac condition or people living with both conditions.Though not a new term, I don ' t remember coming across it before. Here is some introductory reading:Some recent freely available articles (with links to PubMed):Cardio-Oncology: An Update on Cardiotoxicity of Cancer-Related Treatme...
Source: Browsing - July 3, 2017 Category: Databases & Libraries Tags: cancer cardiology Source Type: blogs
The Contribution of Decreasing Cancer Mortality to Gains in Life Expectancy
This study provides an assessment of the impact of improvements in cancer prevention and cancer therapies over the past few decades, based on observed changes in life expectancy. In the opinion of the authors, better prevention is the more important contribution to these results - which doesn't say much for the current high level strategy in cancer research aimed at production of better therapies, given the vast sums devoted to that industry. Because of its focus on cancer, an unusual life expectancy construct is used in this study, considering only ages 40 to 84; cancer has a very low incidence at younger ages, and the ri...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 29, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Upstream Palliative Care and Dissecting Hope From Hype in Oncology
by Christian SinclairWorking in an outpatient cancer center, I frequently encounter the conversation about whether the next cancer treatment regimen is ‘worth it.’ Patients and families consider may interpretations of worth; financial being one of course, but also physical side effects, the emotional toll of investing faith into ‘one more treatment’ and hoping that it works. These conversations are challenging as they weigh biological, medi cal, spiritual, social, personal, emotional and other issues, so there is no neat equation which can easily tell you if the benefits or the risks are greater.These struggles wer...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - June 28, 2017 Category: Palliative Care Tags: sinclair tweetchat Source Type: blogs
Dichotomous Endings: A Physician ’ s Personal Reflection
My grandfather was the patriarch of his family, at the center of a tightknit Lebanese immigrant community in Toronto, Canada. Some of my warmest childhood memories are from Sundays at my grandparents’ home, where there was always family, community, and delicious food. Both in their mid-seventies, they remained exceptionally active and maintained an impressive social calendar. From my perspective as barely a teenager, it somehow seemed that family life would go on forever in this way. So, it is not surprising that I remember vividly when my grandfather first became ill. He had learned from his doctor that his kidneys were...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - June 8, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Ryan Van Wert Tags: End of Life & Serious Illness Quality advance care planning Cancer end-stage renal disease Hospice care Source Type: blogs
Deletion of Gene Enhancer DNA Improves Cancer Resistance in Mice with No Apparent Loss of Normal Tissue Function
The path to effective control of cancer involves finding common mechanisms that target many different types of cancer, departing from the present approach of one costly project for every subtype of cancer. Here, researchers undertake a novel approach to the challenge, finding a sizable region of the genome that can be deleted in mice with no apparent loss of normal function. The deletion improves cancer resistance to a degree that makes suppression of the contents of this region of the genome worth pursuing as the basis for therapies that might control many types of cancer.
Our cells each contain close to 20,000 g...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 6, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Update from London Global Forum on Life Science Innovation
The two-day Global Forum on Life Science Innovation came to London last week, bringing together participants from industry, academia, and advocacy charities. The program’s speakers included a number of Directors of Research who set out the pressing global issues facing the life sciences sector and showcased some exciting new innovations for combating these challenges.
One theme of the meeting was the exponential growth of AMR (antimicrobial resistance), the cost of which is predicted to reach a staggering $100 trillion worldwide by 2050. Kai Stoeber, VP of Global Innovation at Shionogi of Japan, discussed the use of bi...
Source: Medgadget - May 2, 2017 Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Tom Peach Tags: Exclusive Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 1st 2017
In this study we demonstrate the use of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-based epigenome editing to alter cell response to inflammatory environments by repressing inflammatory cytokine cell receptors, specifically TNFR1 and IL1R1. This has applications for many inflammatory-driven diseases. It could be applied for arthritis or to therapeutic cells that are being delivered to inflammatory environments that need to be protected from inflammation."
In chronic back pain, for example, slipped or herniated discs are a result of damaged tissue when inflammation causes cells to create molec...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 30, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
