Fight Aging! Newsletter, June 28th 2021
In conclusion, in our prospective community-based study, aging-related biomarkers were associated with measures of subclinical atherosclerosis cross-sectionally and with all-cause mortality prospectively, supporting the concept that these biomarkers may reflect the aging process in community-dwelling adults.
The Role of Aging Macrophages in Skin Inflammation
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2021/06/the-role-of-aging-macrophages-in-skin-inflammation/
The immune system is complex and ages in complex ways, pressed by the lifetime burden of infection and rising levels of molecular damage that trigger man...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 27, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Provoking Innate Immune Clearance of Protein Aggregates Improves Cognition in a Squirrel Monkey Model of Alzheimer's Disease
A novel pulsed approach to immunotherapy targeting Alzheimer's disease has been shown to reduce both amyloid-β and tau aggregates in old squirrel monkeys, as well as improve cognitive function. This species offers a potentially less problematic and artificial animal model for the condition, in that aged squirrel monkeys naturally develop amyloid-β aggregates, unlike mice which must be engineered into exhibiting specific features of Alzheimer's pathology. Thus it is hoped that cognitive improvements following therapy in this species will be more likely to also occur in human patients.
Researchers have demonstrate...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 23, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, June 14th 2021
In conclusion, a number of high-income countries, changes in health expectancies over time have not kept pace with the growth in life expectancy. That is, people are living longer but disability and poor health are occupying an increasing proportion of later life. Our findings suggest that countries still need to make significant progress to achieve the WHO's Decade of Healthy Ageing goal of healthier, longer lives for all.
Progress on Understanding Why Human Growth Hormone Receptor Variants are Associated with Greater Longevity
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2021/06/progress-on-understanding-why-human-gr...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 13, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Aducanumab Approved by FDA to Treat Alzheimer's Disease
The underside of the approval of aducanumab, an immunotherapy that clears amyloid-β from the brain, is very much a textbook case of regulatory capture. While the treatment does clear amyloid-β, it doesn't help patients all that much. Benefits observed in trials were marginal to the point of non-existence. The arm-wrestling under the hood has nothing to do with the welfare of patients and everything to do with maintenance of bureaucracy and control for the sake of bureaucracy and control on one side versus rent seeking on the other. An ugly business.
The silver lining is that now it will be easier to work on combin...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 8, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Politics and Legislation Source Type: blogs
Trojan Horse Virus Makes Tumors Destroy Themselves
Researchers at the University of Zurich have developed a virus-based therapy that causes a tumor to destroy itself. They modified an adenovirus, which is a common virus that typically infects the respiratory tract and which is already widely used in medicine, to deliver genetic material that codes for an anti-cancer protein. In a sneaky move, the researchers designed the therapy so that the virus would infect tumor cells, forcing them to destroy themselves.
Cancer therapies are constantly evolving. Immunotherapies, which include antibodies that stimulate the immune system to destroy cancer cells, are the latest class of...
Source: Medgadget - May 19, 2021 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Genetics Materials Medicine Oncology Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 17th 2021
This study is consistent with previous evidence showing that inflammaging, or age-related inflammation, is naturally heightened in the nervous system. Moreover, the authors disproved their hypothesis that anti-inflammatory microglia-specific genes are responsible for the elevated inflammatory response in aged brains since the expression of anti-inflammatory mediators was elevated in middle-aged brains following infection. Thus, the cause for the increase in pro-inflammatory genes remains to be elucidated.
Mixed Results in Animal Studies of Gene Therapy Targeting Axonal Regrowth
https://www.fightaging.org/archi...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 16, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
In Search of Treatments for Alzheimer's Disease in the Lymphatic System of the Brain
That the brain has a lymphatic system that drains into the body is a comparatively recently discovery, a development of the last decade of research. It isn't the only way in which fluids drain from the brain - see, for example, the work on the cribriform plate path for drainage of cerebrospinal fluid - but there are a limited number of such pathways outside the vascular system. The vascular system itself is separated from the brain by the blood-brain barrier that surrounds every blood vessel that passes through the central nervous system. This barrier controls the entry and exit of molecules and cells, limiting the degree ...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 14, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Arming T Cells with IL-24 Improves the Ability to Destroy Cancerous Cells
Altering T cells of the adaptive immune system to enable recognition of cancerous cells is a mainstream area of research these days. The approach of adding chimeric antigen receptors to T cells, tailored to a cancer, is well established for blood cancers, but still challenging for solid tumors, characterized a wide variety of cancerous cells and signatures. Researchers here show that genetic modification of T cells to produce IL-24 allows these immune cells to effectively destroy cancerous cells that lack recognizable surface features, so long as they are close to cancerous cells that can be recognized. Further, the proces...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 10, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 26th 2021
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,
please visit:
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! - April 25, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Calorie Restriction as an Adjuvant Cancer Treatment
Calorie restriction and intermittent fasting have been extensively studied in the context of aging, and most of the age-slowing interventions so far tested in animal studies are derived in some way from a knowledge of the stress response mechanisms triggered by a lowered calorie intake. The long term effects of calorie restriction and fasting in short-lived species are quite different from those in long-lived species: only the short-lived species exhibit a meaningful extension of life span, as much as 40% in mice. Yet the short-term effects on metabolism and cellular mechanisms are very similar. The beneficial response to ...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 19, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Tau Immunotherapy for Alzheimer's Disease is Proving to be as Challenging as Amyloid Immunotherapy
Alzheimer's disease is characterized by the aggregation of first amyloid-β and then tau protein in later stages. It took many years and many attempts to produce immunotherapies capable of clearing amyloid-β from the brain, only to find that this doesn't in fact help patients to any great degree. Amyloid-β may be a side-effect of the causative mechanisms - such as infection, or chronic inflammation - or only important in the earliest stages of the development of Alzheimer's. By the time tau aggregation happens, a different disease process has become dominant. One of the next options is to target tau protein with the same...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 19, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 5th 2021
In this study, the research team designed a way to identify small molecules that improve the function of ABCA1 in the body while avoiding unwanted effects to the liver. The researchers honed in on a specific small molecule, CL2-57, due to its ability to stimulate ABCA1 activity with positive effects on liver and plasma triglycerides. The use of this compound showed improved glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, as well as reduced weight gain, among other beneficial effects.
Age-Related Upregulation of Autophagy as a Possible Contribution to Bat Longevity
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2021/04/age-rel...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 4, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Finding the Limits of Amyloid Clearance as a Treatment for Alzheimer's Disease
Alzheimer's disease is associated with a slow buildup of amyloid-β aggregates in the brain over the years of later life. The amyloid cascade hypothesis puts this process as the first step in the development of Alzheimer's disease, setting the stage for later neuroinflammation, tau aggregation, and cell death in the brain. This view of the condition has yet to lead to meaningful therapies, however. Several immunotherapy approaches have succeeded in clearing a meaningful degree of amyloid-β in human trials. Clinical improvement in those patients was very limited at best, even given a generous interpretation of the data.
...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 29, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, March 15th 2021
In conclusion, PLG attenuates high calcium/phosphate-induced vascular calcification by upregulating P53/PTEN signaling in VSMCs.
Tsimane and Moseten Hunter-Gatherers Exhibit Minimal Levels of Atrial Fibrillation
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2021/03/tsimane-and-moseten-hunter-gatherers-exhibit-minimal-levels-of-atrial-fibrillation/
Epidemiological data for the Tsimane and Moseten populations in Bolivia shows that they suffer very little cardiovascular disease in later life, despite a presumably greater lifetime burden of infectious disease (and consequent inflammation) than is the case for people ...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 14, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Age-Associated B Cells Contribute to Autoimmunity and Chronic Inflammation
The immune system becomes disordered and dysfunctional with age in numerous different ways. The B cell component accumulates inflammatory and problematic cells that are known as age-associated B cells. Here, researchers show that these errant B cells produce antibodies that provoke autoimmunity. B cell aging is a problem with a solution demonstrated in animal models: just destroy all B cells. Mammals can get by without B cells for at least a short period of time, and the B cell population regenerates quite rapidly following clearance even in later life. The newly replaced B cells do not exhibit the problems of their destro...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 11, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
