A Look at Ascendance Biomedical, Packaging Medical Tourism for Longevity Therapies
Ascendance Biomedical is a fairly new venture, still in the early stages of formalizing its structure and agenda. It is focused on two twofold path of (a) establishing patient-funded trials of potentially useful therapies in the longevity science space, and (b) packaging participation in trials and later purchase of therapies via medical tourism, bundling all of the complications into a single product. The people involved overlap with the principals of the Global Healthspan Policy Institute, and are fairly well connected in our community. The organization is tackling just a few types of therapy to get started, gaining expe...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 29, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
Piperlongumine as a Senolytic Drug Candidate with Fewer Side-Effects
Today's open access research paper outlines the discovery of yet another new candidate drug for the selective destruction of senescent cells. This is an increasingly popular research topic nowadays. Senescent cells perform a variety of functions, but on the whole they are bad news. Cells become senescent in response to stresses or reaching the Hayflick limit to replication. They cease further division and start to generate a potent mix of signals, the senescence-associated secretory phenotype or SASP, that can provoke inflammation, disarray the surrounding extracellular matrix structures, and change behavior of nearby cell...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 21, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Gene, An Intimate History & the Crafting of Scientific Stories
Back in 2011, I read andreviewed Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee's book on the history of cancer therapy, The Emperor of All Maladies. I liked the book, but as is my character I also listed some criticisms. It was a very pleasant surprise to one day discover an email from Dr. Mukherjee engaging me on my points. A real author, writing me! Fast forward to this fall, and I had some inexplicable inertia to reading his new book, The Gene, An Intimate History. This time he drove the process forward, asking if I'd like to read and review the book and if so could his publisher send me a copy? Wow! Having just fini...
Source: Omics! Omics! - December 8, 2016 Category: Bioinformatics Authors: Keith Robison Source Type: blogs
Become a SENS Patron Before the Year Ends: Another $12,000 is Added to the Challenge Fund, and We Need Your Help to Meet that Goal
The end of year fundraiser for SENS rejuvenation research progresses apace. We are helping to fund the work needed to produce actual, working rejuvenation therapies soon enough to matter, treatments that can target and repair the fundamental causes of aging. Aging is caused by a few forms of molecular damage that accrue in cells and tissues, a sort of slow biological wear and tear that results from the normal operation of metabolism. Given the right lines of research, that damage can be repaired, and thus the clock turned back, age-related disease prevented or effectively treated. Those research programs are outlined in th...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 21, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs
IBM-Watson to Take On Genomic Sequencing to Bring Forth a New Era of Precision Oncology
Oncologist, Dr. Norman Sharpless, and pathologist, Dr. Nirali Patel, of the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center review cancer treatment insights from Watson for Genomics.
IBM Watson Health and Quest Diagnostics have joined forces to launch Watson for Genomics from Quest Diagnostics, a platform that combines genomic tumor sequencing with the computing prowess of Watson. This is the first time Watson for Genomics is made publicly available to physicians across the United States. The service will involve analysis of the genetic makeup of patient tumors to help locate and identify mutations ...
Source: Medgadget - November 7, 2016 Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Rukmani Sridharan Tags: Genetics Medicine Oncology Pathology Surgery Source Type: blogs
SENS Rejuvenation Research Fundraiser Launched: Become a SENS Patron!
The year-end fundraiser in support of the SENS Research Foundation kicks off today - and all donations are matched dollar for dollar. Funds raised will, as always, go towards speeding up and unblocking currently languishing fields of research that are necessary for the production of effective, working rejuvenation therapies in the years ahead. The SENS Research Foundation has a proven track record on this front, and for years now has used the philanthropic donations provided by our community to generate meaningful progress in research like mitochondrial repair, clearance of senescent cells, clearance of cross-links that st...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 1, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs
CAP16 Scientific Plenary Session - The Immune Checkpoint Revolution in Cancer Treatment: " Moonshot " or " Pie in the Sky "
I ' m attending the scientific plenary session at the 2016 annual meeting of the College of American Pathologists in Las Vegas. The discussion is being led by Dr. Lynette Sholl (pathologist), Dr. Christopher Lathan (medical oncologist), and Barry Nelson (lung cancer patient). Although not directly related neuropathology, the discussion of the role of biomarkers as a means of directing treatment impacts every area of surgical pathology -- including neuropathology. Mr. Nelson recounted his journey through immunotherapy. Dr. Sholl talked about the paradigm shift that has occurred in cancer therapy by virtue of&...
Source: neuropathology blog - September 25, 2016 Category: Radiology Tags: meetings molecular studies Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 26th 2016
This study included 647 patients 80 to 106 years of age who had audiometric evaluations at an academic medical center (141 had multiple audiograms). The degree of hearing loss was compared across the following age brackets: 80 to 84 years, 85 to 89 years, 90 to 94 years, and 95 years and older. From an individual perspective, the rate of hearing decrease between 2 audiograms was compared with age. The researchers found that changes in hearing among age brackets were higher during the 10th decade of life than the 9th decade at all frequencies for all the patients (average age, 90 years). Correspondingly, the annual rate of ...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 25, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
An Open Access Journal Special Issue on Telomerase Activity in Human Cells
If you have an interest in telomerase research, and anyone following developments in the science of aging really should pay attention to telomerase research, then you might find a recent special issue of Genes to be worth reading. It collects a dozen or so papers on the subject, adding to a growing number of reviews, calls to action, and discoveries published in the last couple of years in the field of telomere and telomerase biology. You might look at a very readable review from Maria Blasco's lab, published earlier this year, for example. The researchers there are leaders in telomerase gene therapy, and have demonstrated...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 21, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Crowdfunding Success for SENS Research Foundation, Funds to Aid in Pushing Forward to a Universal Cancer Therapy
The SENS Research Foundations's latest crowdfunding campaign, hosted by Lifespan.io, was focused on one of a number of vital projects in the development of a universal cancer therapy. I'm pleased to note that the campaign closed successfully yesterday, having raised more than $70,000 for this research initiative from nearly 550 donors. The SENS Research Foundation cancer team will be using the funds for the first rigorous exercise of an alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) assay to find potential drug candidates that can suppress the ALT mechanisms used by some cancers to sustain their growth.
All cancers must...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 19, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs
Pioneering Researcher to Lead LIVESTRONG Cancer Institutes at UT Austin’s Dell Med School
S. Gail Eckhardt, a visionary cancer leader, educator and research innovator, will serve as the inaugural director of the LIVESTRONG Cancer Institutes of the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin.Eckhardt also has been appointed associate dean of the medical school. She will oversee the creation of a transdisciplinary cancer research program at UT Austin, one that will lead to new models of prevention, treatment, patient-centered cancer care; and new models of teaching and training future doctors.The appointment was made possible by a $6 million recruitment grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research I...
Source: LIVESTRONG Blog - September 13, 2016 Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: LIVESTRONG Staff Source Type: blogs
The Science of Size: Rebecca Heald Explores Size Control in Amphibians
Credit: Mark Hanson.
Rebecca Heald
Grew up in: Greenville, Pennsylvania
Studied at: Hamilton College, Rice University, Harvard Medical School
Job site: University of California, Berkeley
Favorite hobby: Cycling
A 50-pound frog isn’t some freak of nature or a creepy Halloween prank. It’s a thought experiment conceived by Rebecca Heald, a cell biologist at the University of California, Berkeley , who is studying the factors that control size in animals.
Heald’s “50-pound frog project” speaks to the power of evolution and to scientists’ ability to modify the physical characteristics of an organism by altering it...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - September 12, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Chris Palmer Tags: Being a Scientist Cell Biology Cellular Processes Profiles Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 12th 2016
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.
This content is...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 11, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Considering Age Reversal Therapeutics
Age Reversal Therapeutics is an initiative launched by quite the varied set of people: leaders from the "anti-aging" marketplace's Life Extension Foundation, a SENS Research Foundation researcher, a selection of biotech industry veterans, a practitioner of anti-aging medicine, and a reputable genetics researcher quite well known in our community. Strange bedfellows indeed - a meeting of many houses of the broader community interested in aging, houses that typically don't have much to do with one another, and indeed in some cases don't think much of one another. The basic plan here is to raise money from investors and then ...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 7, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 5th 2016
This study is a good example of the degree to which the choice to remain active in later life makes a difference. That implies a range of other choices over the decades in order to raise the odds that you can in fact choose to remain active when older, such as avoiding weight gain.
Moderate physical activity is associated with a greater than 50% reduction in cardiovascular death in over-65s. The 12 year study in nearly 2500 adults aged 65 to 74 years found that moderate physical activity reduced the risk of an acute cardiovascular event by more than 30%. High levels of physical activity led to greater risk reducti...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 4, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
