New Year Begins With Anti-Vaping Researcher Telling Public that Smoking is No More Hazardous than Vaping
This study involved laboratory testing only. The effect of e-cigarette aerosol was examined on cell cultures, which by definition have been altered so that they are unlike actual human cells. The results of studies on cells in laboratory cultures cannot necessarily be extrapolated to clinically meaningful effects in humans.In fact, this point is readily acknowledged by the study authors. The authors also acknowledge that the dose of e-cigarette aerosol to which the cells were exposed was far above that experienced in real life, which further limits the conclusions that can be drawn about the effects of vaping on actual hum...
Source: The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary - January 4, 2016 Category: Addiction Source Type: blogs
Investigating the Removal of Stemness from Cancer Cells
Most types of cancer are made dangerous by malignancy and metastasis, the ability to grow and spread rapidly. For many cancers these capabilities have been shown to be driven by a comparatively small population of cancer stem cells. One of the possibilities arising from the growing knowledge of stem cell biology is to turn off the stemness of cancer cells, reprogramming them to cease aggressive replication. As this paper indicates, however, efforts on this front are still in the very early stages of research:
Metastasis is the major factor responsible for the lethality of malignant breast cancer in human patients. Althoug...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 17, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Why Does Cancer Risk Result from Excess Fat Tissue?
Here I'll point out a recent popular science article on the mechanisms underlying the correlation between cancer and obesity. It is well known and well proven by the scientific community that being overweight is bad for you, even if large sections of the public appear to be solidly in a state of denial on this topic. If you choose to carry excess visceral fat tissue for any great length of time as an adult, even decades later, even having lost that weight, the demographic data strongly suggests that you have a significantly increased risk of suffering all of the common age-related conditions: cancer, heart disease, dementi...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 9, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Reporting on Rejuvenation Biotechnology 2015: Thymus Regeneration and Thoughts on Research Strategy
To go along with a few posts from last week, here is a longer report from this year's Rejuvenation Biotechnology conference, hosted by the SENS Research Foundation. There are some interesting tidbits in the section on thymus regeneration, which is an approach to immune system rejuvenation that promises to be very helpful, even if not capable of solving all of the problems of the aging immune system in and of itself. A sizable component of the frailty of aging arises because the immune system becomes dysregulated and incompetent, its complement of cells capable of destroying pathogens reduced to very low levels, replaced by...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 24, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
Tissue Engineering of Lung and Gut Sections
The first practical outcome of tissue engineering research is not therapies, but rather improved tools for further scientific work in this and other fields. At present the structured tissue sections created in the laboratory are largely too small or too dissimilar from natural organs for use in treatments, but these engineered tissues can nonetheless be very useful in drug testing, investigation of disease mechanisms, and many other aspects of medical research. Real tissue is a vast improvement over cells in a dish and animal models, and real tissue grown from patient cells is a tremendous step forward for work on genetic ...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 19, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Recent Metastasis Research
Most cancers kill through metastasis. It isn't the initial malignant tumor but rather the spread of its cells throughout the body to seed more growths that outpaces today's medical toolkit. Absent metastasis, most cancers would be far more controllable and far less deadly, and even last generation treatments like chemotherapy could be made more localized and less taxing on the patient. Thus while a way to block metastasis in a majority of cancers is not a cure, it is a worthwhile stepping stone to aim for. Many of the same considerations come into play as for research aimed at destroying cancer cells: are there common mech...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 31, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Growing a New Thymus From Engineered Cells
The thymus is vital to generation of new immune cells, and the fact that it atrophies early in life, turning a river of new cells into a trickle, is one of the factors placing an effective cap on the adult immune cell population. In part because of this limit in later life competent immune cells capable of dealing with new threats are crowded out by other immune cell types. Solutions to this issue include restoration of a larger supply of new cells by restoring the thymus or targeted destruction of the excess cells to free up space and spur the body to generate replacement immune cells that are capable of doing their jobs....
Source: Fight Aging! - August 25, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Aneuploidy and Carcinogenesis
In June, 2014, my book, entitled Rare Diseases and Orphan Drugs: Keys to Understanding and Treating the Common Diseases was published by Elsevier. The book builds the argument that our best chance of curing the common diseases will come from studying and curing the rare diseases. The book has an extensive glossary, that explains the meaning and relevance of medical terms appearing throughout the chapters. The glossary can be read as a stand-along document. Here is an example of one term, "aneuploidy", excerpted from the glossary.Aneuploidy - The presence of an abnormal number of chromosomes (for the species) in a cell...
Source: Specified Life - July 15, 2014 Category: Pathologists Tags: aneuploidy cancer types carcinogenesis common cancers common disease cytogenetics glossary orphan disease orphan drugs rare cancers rare disease tumor biology tumor types types of cancer Source Type: blogs
Rare Cancer are Subsets of Common Cancers
In June, 2014, my book, entitled Rare Diseases and Orphan Drugs: Keys to Understanding and Treating the Common Diseases was published by Elsevier. The book builds the argument that our best chance of curing the common diseases will come from studying and curing the rare diseases. One of the key ideas developed in the book is that each common diseases is actually an aggregate of cellular processes that are present, individually, in rare diseases. In the case of the common cancers, we can find specific rare diseases that are subsets of the common diseases. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 8: 8.3.3 Inherited syndromes that...
Source: Specified Life - July 9, 2014 Category: Pathologists Tags: cancer syndromes carcinogenesis common cancers common disease familial cancer syndromes genetic disease orphan disease orphan drugs rare cancers rare disease Source Type: blogs
Summer Scholars at the SENS Research Foundation
Every year a group of exceptional young scientists come to work on projects at the SENS Research Foundation in California and in allied laboratories around the country. Producing the rejuvenation therapies of tomorrow is a project that will last for decades: the researchers who will lead companies and academic laboratories into the final stretches to produce the first comprehensive rejuvenation toolkit are still undergraduates and postgraduates today, just starting their careers. It is a very exciting time to be in biotechnology.
It is of great importance that today's leaders in the field of aging research do better than ...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 1, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
SNAI1 functional variant associated with decreased risk for lung cancer
This article adds another layer of complexity and I post it (rather belatedly) now because I find in it such an intriguing finding that a variant protein could have functional consequences that are observable as a clinical outcome with regard to COPD and NSCLC. Moreover, this variant was discovered to attenuate Snai1’s ability to specifically up-regulate mesenchymal biomarkers (i.e., fibronectin and vimentin) expression, and to promote EMT-like changes, including morphologic changes, cell migration, and invasion. (Source: The Daily Sign-Out)
Source: The Daily Sign-Out - June 26, 2014 Category: Pathologists Authors: Mark D. Pool, M.D. Tags: Cancer Biology Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition Lung Cancer Non small cell lung cancer Source Type: blogs
More Quantification of Human Nuclear DNA Mutation Rates
Nuclear DNA is essentially a big complicated molecule, and stuck in the middle of the dynamic environment of the cell it accumulates damage due to reactions with other molecules. Near all of this damage is repaired quickly, but only near all. So we accumulate somewhat random mutations scattered across our cells as we age. There is some debate over whether this is actually a cause of general age-related degeneration over the present human life span versus only a cause of cancer.
This paper looks at human mutation rates in the exome, a classification that includes only small fraction of our DNA, but which is thought to enco...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 18, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
New nanopharmaceutical may help overcome resistance to specific anticancer drugs
Conclusions: Results generated through this translational research plan suggest that CRLX101 can overcome HIF-1α-mediated acquired resistance to antiangiogenic drugs, assisting the use of CRLX101 in combination with antiangiogenic medicines as an exciting new paradigm for the treatment of cancer.
Related Posts:Cleveland Clinic’s preventive breast cancer vaccine…Harvard Stem Cell Institute publishes initial clinical trialImportant advance in the fight against skin cancerNew IBS treatment shows possible in Phase 2 researchNew blood test could help millions of patients with&hellip...
Source: My Irritable Bowel Syndrome Story - October 21, 2013 Category: Other Conditions Authors: Ken Tags: IBS News Source Type: blogs
SENS Research Foundation Releases 2013 Research Report
The SENS Research Foundation coordinates and conducts research into the baseline technologies needed for human rejuvenation. We age because we become damaged: cells and the structures between cells accumulate broken proteins, waste products, and other forms of harm. The machines of our cells run down, run amok, and run ragged. Eventually that kills us, as damage overwhelms self-repair, but this ugly process of aging to death could be indefinitely postponed given effective means of repairing the forms of damage that are fundamental, those that result from nothing more than the ordinary operation of human metabolism.
SENS s...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 15, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
What's in a name?
If the name is "cancer," plenty. When people are told they have cancer, they ordinarily are terrified. And they and their doctors feel compelled to do something about it. Doing something about cancer normally means surgery, chemotherapy, radiation -- all extremely expensive, unpleasant, and in fact damaging to your health.It turns out, however, that since we've undertaken massive programs to screen the general population for what is generally called cancer, we've been detecting a lot of phenomena which, if untreated, would never hurt anyone. But the doctor tells the person "You have cancer," and off we go.The Nationa...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 31, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs
