Will We All Have To Become Biologically Enhanced Superhumans?
Okay, hands up who can tell who’s the most famous biologically enhanced superhuman in the world? True, it’s a quite close call between Captain America and The Incredible Hulk (sorry Spidey, you’re not even close). But are human-invented superhumans just a thing of a Stan Lee comic, or is it an actual scientific idea from a real laboratory?
As a matter of fact, enhancing human capabilities has been on the minds of people for ages, but it has come a long way from ancient training methods to exoskeletons. Enhancing our abilities, be it permanently or temporarily is a tempting but risky matter. Will it be possibl...
Source: The Medical Futurist - November 21, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: berci.mesko Tags: Forecast Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Augmented Reality Bioethics Biotechnology Cyborgization Digital Health Research E-Patients Genomics Health Sensors & Trackers Healthcare Policy Medical Education Robotics Science Ficti Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 6th 2023
This study aimed to gather valuable insights from pharmaceutical experts and healthcare practitioners regarding the potential and challenges of translating senolytic drugs for treatment of vascular aging-related disorders. This study employed a qualitative approach by conducting in-depth interviews with healthcare practitioners and pharmaceutical experts. Participants were selected through purposeful sampling. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes from the interview transcripts. A total of six individuals were interviewed, with three being pharmaceutical experts and the remaining three healthcare practitioners.
...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 5, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Epigenetic Reprogramming as a Treatment for Alzheimer's Disease
This review paper lumps together thoughts on the prospects for both epigenetic reprogramming and upregulation of autophagy as approaches to the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, the former a much more recent development in the research community, and the latter a long-running goal that has seen less concrete progress than desired. The long, slow path to any sort of success in the development of Alzheimer's therapies based on clearance of amyloid-β has led to considerable pressure to try other other avenues, but despite numerous trials and development programs, few of those have made much progress towards the clinic as of ...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 3, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 25th 2023
In conclusion, this individual patient data meta-analysis of longitudinal cohort studies found that antihypertensive use was associated with decreased dementia risk compared with individuals with untreated hypertension through all ages in late life. Individuals with treated hypertension had no increased risk of dementia compared with healthy controls.
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Results from Human Clinical Trials Do Not Support Metformin as a Longevity Drug
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2023/09/results-from-human-clinical-trials-do-not-support-metformin-as-a-longevity-drug/
The SENS Research Fou...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 24, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Many Researchers and Companies Will Aim to Produce Small Molecule Reprogramming Therapies
The typical path for any program in biomedical research and development is to first demonstrate interesting results in animal studies using forms of genetic engineering or gene therapy, and then find small molecules that adjust the same mechanism. Small molecules are never as good as genetic manipulations, the size of the effect is always smaller, usually much smaller, and there are inevitably side-effects. Small molecule development is much easier to conduct, however, more familiar to investors and regulators and program managers, a well-trodden path. Thus while the future of medicine is gene therapy, in search of large e...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 21, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 18th 2023
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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https://www.fightaging.org/newsletter/
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 17, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Towards Targeted Telomerase Gene Therapy
Interestingly, telomerase upregulation to lengthen telomere length may turn out to be a decent match for the capabilities of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery of messenger RNA (mRNA) as an implementation of gene therapy. This produces one to two days of expression which, by the sound of things, is enough to give telomeres enough of a boost in length to be worth the exercise, can be repeated as needed, is familiar to regulators, and the LNP field is energetically working towards variant LNPs that can target specific tissues and cell types.
The question is whether or not lengthening of telomeres via telomerase gene th...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 13, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
All Too Short Comments on the 10th Aging Research and Drug Discovery (ARDD) Meeting
I attended the 10th Aging Research and Drug Discovery (ARDD) conference in Copenhagen recently, alongside my Chief Scientific Officer at Repair Biotechnologies, Mourad Topors. If one wanted to take in all of the presentations and take notes, as I've done in the past, ARDD would be much more of a test of endurance than other longevity industry conferences. It is five 12 hour days, starting with networking at 8am, the last presentations going on past 8pm, and then socializing at nearby bars afterwards for the truly dedicated. This on top of jet lag for those coming in from the US in direction and Asia in the other. The inten...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 11, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 4th 2023
In conclusion, although the contribution of CRF to GrimAgeAccel and FitAgeAccel is relatively low compared to lifestyle-related factors such as smoking, the results suggest that the maintenance of CRF is associated with delayed biological ageing in older men.
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Release of Acetylcholine is Necessary for the Aging Brain to Compensate for a Lack of Neurogenesis
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2023/09/release-of-acetylcholine-is-necessary-for-the-aging-brain-to-compensate-for-a-lack-of-neurogenesis/
Neurogenesis is the process by which new neurons are created by neural stem c...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 3, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
PGC-1 α4 Gene Therapy Reduces Sarcopenia and Metabolic Disease in Aged Mice
Researchers here demonstrate that aged muscle metabolism can be improved via gene therapy to deliver a short isoform of PGC-1α. Upregulating PGC-1α in muscle tissue is suggested to be a good approach to therapy based on its declining expression with age. It is interesting that the researchers focus on an isoform of the protein shown to be upregulated in exercise, in effect aiming to produce an exercise mimetic gene therapy that switches on one of the reactions to exercise and leaves it switched on indefinitely.
Sarcopenia is characterized of muscle mass loss and functional decline in elder individuals which seve...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 30, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 28th 2023
In conclusion, we identified 20 genes with significant evolutionary signals unique to long-lived species, which provided new insight into the lifespan extension of mammals and might bring new strategies to extend human lifespan.
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Trials of Xenotransplantation of Pig Organs into Humans Continue
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2023/08/trials-of-xenotransplantation-of-pig-organs-into-humans-continue/
Researchers have genetically engineered pigs to overcome the known barriers to transplantation of pig organs into humans, and have reached the stage of conducting transplants i...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 27, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Gene Therapy Targets Chronic Pain
Scientists at New York University have developed a gene therapy for chronic pain. The technology works by targeting the NaV1.7 sodium ion channel present on neurons, which is an important component of the pain response. The researchers encoded a version of a peptide that allows a modulatory protein, called CRMP2, to bind to NaV1.7 sodium ion channels and modulate their activity. Treating neurons so that they now express this peptide interfered with the ability of CRMP2 to affect the sodium channel, reducing the transmission of pain. As chronic pain affects a large number of patients, new treatments such as this could be se...
Source: Medgadget - August 25, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Genetics Medicine Pain Management chronic pain nyu Source Type: blogs
The Longevity-Associated Variant of BPIFB4 Reduces Heart Disease Severity
Few human longevity-associated gene variants are replicated in multiple patient populations. One of those is a variant of BPIFB4, that appears to improve immune function and lower inflammation by adjusting the behavior of macrophage cells of the innate immune system. Delivering the variant to mice using a gene therapy has similar effects. It may well operate via other mechanisms as well, however. Few proteins in a living cell turn out to have only one purpose.
In today's open access paper, researchers report that the BPIFB4 variant reduces the severity of coronary artery disease in humans and mice. Delivering the va...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 25, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 14th 2023
This study demonstrates just how vital the thymus is to maintaining adult health."
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Does Amyloid-β Aggregation Cause Broad Disruption of Proteostasis?
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2023/08/does-amyloid-%ce%b2-aggregation-cause-broad-disruption-of-proteostasis/
Researchers here speculate on the ability of insoluble amyloid-β aggregates to be broadly disruptive of the solubility of many other proteins, and thus disruptive to cell and tissue function. Is this important in aging? The evidence here shows the existence of the mechanism in a lower species, but that doesn't ...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 13, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Developing Therapies to Treat Aging is No Less Challenging than Other Areas of Biotech
The biotech industry experiences a high failure rate, if we wish to define failure as failing to achieve the original goals of the research program that gave rise to a company. The article noted here opens with many examples to give a sense of the prevalence of companies in the early aging-focused space that altered their course to give a return to their investors by other means, after it proved too challenging to achieve the original vision. This is par for the course: the development of novel medical biotechnology is both very difficult and highly regulated. The grail of producing new medicine that is accepted by the reg...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 11, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
