Greater Senescent Cell Burden Correlates with a Worse Cervical Cancer Survival Rate
It is thought that the burden of senescent cells is likely correlated with survival in many cancers. Senescent cells cease to replicate and begin to secrete pro-growth, pro-inflammation signals. Most senescent cells are rapidly destroyed by the immune system, but this process slows with age and thus senescent cells accumulate. Cellular senescence does act to suppress cancer in its earliest stages, by removing those cells most likely to become cancerous. Once a significant number of senescent cells are present, however, their signaling begins to aid cancer growth. Thus we might expect to see that the application of senolyti...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 14, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Freezing a Moment in Time: Snapshots of Cryo-EM Research
To get a look at cell components that are too small to see with a normal light microscope, scientists often use cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). As the prefix cryo- means “cold” or “freezing,” cryo-EM involves rapidly freezing a cell, virus, molecular complex, or other structure to prevent water molecules from forming crystals. This preserves the sample in its natural state and keeps it still so that it can be imaged with an electron microscope, which uses beams of electrons instead of light. Some electrons are scattered by the sample, while others pass through it and through magnetic lenses to land on a detecto...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - November 4, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Molecular Structures Tools and Techniques Cellular Imaging Cellular Processes Cool Tools/Techniques Cryo-Electron Microscopy Research Roundup Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, October 19th 2020
In conclusion, we found that regardless of the presence of multimorbidity, engaging in a healthier lifestyle was associated with up to 6.3 years longer life for men and 7.6 years for women; however, not all lifestyle risk factors equally correlated with life expectancy, with smoking being significantly worse than others.
A Hydrogel Scaffold to Encourage Peripheral Nerve Regeneration
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2020/10/a-hydrogel-scaffold-to-encourage-peripheral-nerve-regeneration/
The nervous system of mammals is poorly regenerative at best. The use of implantable scaffold materials is one of th...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 18, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
G3BP1 is Required for the Senescence-Associated Secretory Phenotype
In this study, we assessed the role of G3BP1 as a regulator of the deleterious effects of senescent cells. We show that G3BP1 is required for the activation of the senescent-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). During senescence, G3BP1 achieves this effect by promoting the association of the cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS) with cytosolic chromatin fragments. In turn, G3BP1, through cGAS, activates the NF-κB and STAT3 pathways, promoting SASP expression and secretion. G3BP1 depletion or pharmacological inhibition impairs the cGAS-pathway preventing the expression of SASP factors without affecting cell commitment to senesc...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 13, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 28th 2020
In conclusion, it remains unclear if brain-specific regional and temporal changes occur in the expression of the different APP variants during AD progression. Since APP is also found in blood cells, assessing the changes in APP mRNA expression in peripheral blood cells from AD patients has been considering an alternative. However, again the quantification of APP mRNA in peripheral blood cells has generated controversial results.
Brain APP protein has been analyzed in only a few studies, probably as it is difficult to interpret the complex pattern of APP variants and fragments. We previously characterized the soluabl...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 27, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Fasting Mimicking Diet Improves Chemotherapy Effectiveness and Reduces Side Effects
The fasting mimicking diet emerged from efforts to better define the dose-response curve for beneficial effects resulting from a reduced calorie intake. Fasting is beneficial, calorie restriction is beneficial, but where are the dividing lines? How much food can one eat and still obtain near all of the benefits of fasting? As a result of this work, the fasting mimicking diet has undergone clinical testing in cancer patients. Numerous benefits have been demonstrated, and the paper here is an example of the type. In this human trial, fasting mimicking reduced the negative short term impact of chemotherapy on health, and, fur...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 22, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 21st 2020
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,
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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! - September 20, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Clearance of Senescent Cells Reverses the Peripheral Neuropathy Caused by Chemotherapy
A primary goal of chemotherapy is to force cancerous cells into programmed cell death or cellular senescence. Cellular senescence is a state of growth arrest that should normally be triggered by exactly the sort of damage and dysfunction exhibited by cancer cells, but cancer is characterized by a mutation-induced ability to bypass those restrictions. Chemotherapy remains the primary approach to cancer therapy, but chemotherapeutic agents are still at best only marginally discriminating. Treating cancer with chemotherapy has always been a fine balance between harming the cancer and harming the patient. Even in the best of o...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 14, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 24th 2020
We report that electrical stimulation (ES) stimulation of post-stroke aged rats led to an improved functional recovery of spatial long-term memory (T-maze), but not on the rotating pole or the inclined plane, both tests requiring complex sensorimotor skills. Surprisingly, ES had a detrimental effect on the asymmetric sensorimotor deficit.
Histologically, there was a robust increase in the number of doublecortin-positive cells in the dentate gyrus and SVZ of the infarcted hemisphere and the presence of a considerable number of neurons expressing tubulin beta III in the infarcted area. Among the genes that were unique...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 23, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
TREM2 Inhibition as a Potentially Broadly Effective Cancer Therapy
It remains the case that far too much of the extensively funded work on cancer therapies is only relevant to a tiny subset of cancers. This is no way to achieve success in the fight to control cancer: there is only so much funding, only so many researchers, and too many types of cancer for an incremental strategy to make earnest process over the next few decades. The important lines of research into cancer treatments are those that can in principle be applied to many (or preferably all) cancers, and that are in principle highly effective, such as inhibition of telomere lengthening. The ideal cancer therapy is one that can ...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 20, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, June 29th 2020
In conclusion, metabolomics is a promising approach for the assessment of biological age and appears complementary to established epigenetic clocks.
Sedentary Behavior Raises the Risk of Cancer Mortality
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2020/06/sedentary-behavior-raises-the-risk-of-cancer-mortality/
Living a sedentary lifestyle is known to be harmful to long term health, raising the risk of age-related disease and mortality. Researchers here show that a sedentary life specifically increases cancer mortality, and does so independently of other factors. This is one of many, many reasons to maintain a r...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 28, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Demonstrating a Senolytic Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cell Therapy
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies target specific surface features on other cells by providing T cells with a way to recognize that feature - the CAR. T cells so equipped will selectively destroy other cells with the target surface feature. To produce a CAR T cell therapy, a patient's T cells are taken, genetically engineered to introduce the CAR, expanded, and then reintroduced. This is presently used as a form of cancer therapy. Given a surface feature sufficiently specific to senescent cells, CAR T cell immunotherapy can be turned into a senolytic treatment, however. Senescent cell accumulation is one of ...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 25, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Reviewing the Role of the Immune System in Clearance of Senescent Cells
Cells in the body become senescent constantly, in response to reaching the Hayflick limit on replication, to DNA damage, to a toxic local environment, to injury. A senescent cell grows large, ceases replication, and secretes a potent mix of signals, the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). The SASP rouses the immune system into an inflammatory state, disrupts tissue maintenance and structure, and encourages other cells to also become senescent. In the short term this is a necessary part of wound healing and cancer suppression. If maintained for the long term, the SASP becomes very harmful, however.
Near...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 22, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
New drugs approved for advanced BRCA-positive prostate cancer
Defective BRCA genes are well known for their ability to cause breast and ovarian cancers in women. But these same gene defects are also strong risk factors for aggressive prostate cancer in men. About 10% of men with metastatic prostate cancer — meaning cancer that is spreading away from the prostate — test positive for genetic mutations in BRCA genes. Fortunately, these cancers can be treated with new types of personalized therapies.
In May, the FDA approved two new drugs specifically for men with BRCA-positive metastatic prostate cancer that has stopped responding to other treatments. One of the drugs, called rucapa...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - June 15, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Charlie Schmidt Tags: Health Prostate Knowledge Treatments HPK Source Type: blogs
Artificial Red Blood Cells to Carry Oxygen, Drugs, and Work as Biosensors
Manufacturing artificial red blood cells may turn out to be significant in treating a number of diseases and conditions. This has been tried in the past by a number of teams, but some important functions were missing in every design. Now, a team of scientists at the University of New Mexico have developed artificial red blood cells that can perform all the main functions of the real cells that they mimic.
The artificial cells, which are as squeezable as the real ones, can carry hemoglobin, and so bind oxygen, while at the same time presenting the necessary proteins on their surface so that the immune system recognizes ...
Source: Medgadget - June 8, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Cardiology Materials Medicine Nanomedicine Source Type: blogs
