Still No Success Worthy of the Name in Anti-Amyloid Immunotherapies to Treat Alzheimer's Disease
Work on immunotherapies that can clear amyloid-β from the brain, an approach to treating Alzheimer's disease, continues to slowly grind out incremental benefits. First, the prospective treatments failed to clear amyloid-β, then they failed to show any degree of patient benefits, and now the latest trial data indicates a minor slowing of progression in Alzheimer's patients. It is unclear where the ceiling lies in this slow and painful process. Amyloid-β clearance is in principle a good idea, and implementations may become useful, given time and better understanding. It is certainly the case that an expensive therapy that...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 5, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Alzheimer's Disease as Innate Autoimmunity
The failure of amyloid-β clearance via immunotherapy to produce benefits in Alzheimer's disease patients has spurred a great deal of theorizing, attempts to find a new way forward. Most researchers, from a survey of the field, continue to believe that amyloid-β aggregation is an important contributing factor in at least the early development of Alzheimer's. However, an increasing emphasis on immune dysfunction and chronic inflammation is creeping into modified versions of the amyloid cascade hypothesis, alongside different interpretations of the role of amyloid-β in this process, based on its participation in the innate...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 4, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, October 3rd 2022
In conclusion, based on the analysis of proteomics and transcriptome, we identified four SRMs that may affect aging and speculated their possible mechanisms, which provides a new target for preventing aging, especially skin aging.
A Popular Science Article on the State of Epigenetic Clocks
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/09/a-popular-science-article-on-the-state-of-epigenetic-clocks/
This popular science article is a good view of the present state of development and use of epigenetic clocks, covering the issues as well as the promise. Epigenetic age can be measured, with many different clocks...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 2, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Cytotoxic T Cells Become More Effective at Killing Cancer Cells With Age
Researchers here note that cytotoxic T cells undergo age-related changes in protein expression that make them more effective in the task of destroying cancer cells, an unusual example of a component of the immune system improving with age. Overall, an aged immune system is impaired in numerous ways, and is worse at protecting the individual against the onset of cancer. Identifying specific populations of immune cells that can effectively destroy cancer cells, if given direction and greater numbers, is relevant to the production of better immunotherapies, however.
The older someone is, the more likely they are to g...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 28, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Amyloid- β in the View of Alzheimer's as a Condition Driven by Persistent Infection
Amyloid-β is an anti-microbial peptide, a part of the innate immune system's attempt to disrupt the activities of infectious pathogens. Some data suggests that Alzheimer's disease, characterized in its early and preclinical stages by slow aggregation of misfolded amyloid-β in ever larger amounts, is driven by persistent infection. It is by no means certain that this is the case, but it does place the aggregation of amyloid-β in a somewhat different light than was originally the case, when it was thought of as molecular waste and little more.
Given that amyloid-β is performing a useful function, reducing or elimi...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 27, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 26th 2022
This study examined the dose-response association between daily step count and intensity and incidence of all-cause dementia among adults in the UK. This was a UK Biobank prospective population-based cohort study (February 2013 to December 2015) with 6.9 years of follow-up (data analysis conducted May 2022). A total of 78,430 of 103,684 eligible adults aged 40 to 79 years with valid wrist accelerometer data were included. Registry-based dementia was ascertained through October 2021.
We found no minimal threshold for the beneficial association of step counts with incident dementia. Our findings suggest that approxima...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 25, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
A Powerful Partnership: AI and Humans Take on Healthcare Challenges
The following is a guest article by Christopher Larkin, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Concord Technologies.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is pervasive in our daily decisions. We are assisted by AI-powered solutions that map optimal travel routes, deliver targeted online search results, manage vital banking functions, and even guide our driving.
Healthcare is another area that has become increasingly influenced using data and algorithms that make human-like conclusions. While much of medicine was once bogged down by legacy systems and paper files, the widespread digitization of records has streamlined processes a...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - September 22, 2022 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: AI/Machine Learning Analytics/Big Data C-Suite Leadership Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System AI Solutions Artificial Intelligence Charles Graeber Christopher Larkin Concord Technologies The Breakthrough Source Type: blogs
Immunotherapy Destroys Activated Fibroblasts to Reduce Fibrosis
Researchers here report on an approach to treating fibrosis via vaccination to target distinctive molecular features of activated fibroblasts, the cells that generate the scar-like deposits of excess collagen that are characteristic of fibrosis. This scarring disrupts tissue structure and function. At the present time, there are no truly effective treatments for fibrosis in the clinic, and it is a problem characteristic of old age that affects numerous vital organs, such as heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys. Approaches that can efficiently reverse the progression of fibrosis are very much needed.
Fibrosis is the fi...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 22, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 19th 2022
Conclusion
Use of the Khavinson peptides and melatonin in combination in this way, at this dose, negatively impacts the thymus, producing a reduction in active tissue and increase in atrophy to fatty tissue. The degree to which this atrophy occurred is greater than one would expect to take place over nine months of aging at this stage of life.
Why did this outcome occur, given the animal studies showing thymic regrowth, and the studies showing reduced later life mortality following use of thymogen? We can only speculate. Firstly, the dose makes the poison, and the dosing here may have been too high, too frequ...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 18, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
More on TREM2 Antibodies as a Potential Alzheimer's Treatment
TREM2 is a receptor found on microglia in the brain, and in recent years researchers have found that targeting it with antibodies can enhance clearance of amyloid-β in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. The microglia, responsible for clearing molecular waste, are stimulated to greater activity by this interaction with TREM2. The usual caveats apply here, such as the artificiality of mouse models for this condition, and the fact that successful clearance of amyloid-β via immunotherapy in Alzheimer's patients has not resulted in meaningful improvement to symptoms. Nonetheless, work on amyloid-β clearance continues, with...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 15, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
SENS Research Foundation Annual Reports for 2022
The SENS Research Foundation has published its annual reports for 2022, for those interested. SENS, the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, is both (a) a laundry list of forms of cell and tissue damage that cause aging, with supporting evidence from the past century of scientific research into aging, and (b) a laundry list methods of intervention that should produce rejuvenation. Aging is damage accumulation, and rejuvenation is repair of that damage.
Funding for SENS programs, and initiatives to produce therapies based on the SENS view of damage repair, remain as relevant as ever. In fact, even more re...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 14, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 1st 2022
In this study, we used the recently released Infinium Mouse Methylation BeadChip to compare such epigenetic modifications in C57BL/6 (B6) and DBA/2J (DBA) mice. We observed marked differences in age-associated DNA methylation in these commonly used inbred mouse strains, indicating that epigenetic clocks for one strain cannot be simply applied to other strains without further verification. Interestingly, the CpGs with highest age-correlation were still overlapping in B6 and DBA mice and included the genes Hsf4, Prima1, Aspa, and Wnt3a. Furthermore, Hsf4, Aspa, and Wnt3a revealed highly significant age-associated DNA methyla...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 31, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Doubling Down on the Failure of Amyloid- β Clearance
After decades of work, researchers have finally achieved therapies that can effectively clear amyloid-β aggregates from the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease. Unfortunately clinical trials have shown no robust benefit to patients as a result. As illustrated by today's open access paper, a sizable contingent in the research community feel that the evidence for amyloid-β aggregation to be the root of the condition remains convincing. Failure means, in their eyes, that the challenge is more difficult than hoped, and the answer should be an increased effort to run longer clinical trials, find more and better anti-a...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 28, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, July 18th 2022
In conclusion, we show that PVS morphology in mice is variable and that the structure and function of pia suggests a previously unrecognized role in regulating CSF transport and amyloid clearance in aging and disease.
Reversing Ovarian Fibrosis in Mice
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/07/reversing-ovarian-fibrosis-in-mice/
Researchers here provide evidence for ovarian fibrosis to be an important mechanism in limiting the age at which female mammals can remain fertile. Interestingly, existing antifibrotic drugs can produce some reversal of this fibrosis, enough to restore ovulation in mice. Fibro...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 17, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Discussing the Accelerated Aging of Cancer Survivors
It is well known that cancer survivors who underwent chemotherapy or radiotherapy exhibit a shorter life expectancy, greater chance of unrelated cancer incidence, and greater risk of age-related disease. The most reasonable hypothesis at present is that these undesirable outcomes are the result of an increased burden of senescent cells. Historically, cancer treatments have been in large part designed to force cancerous cells into senescence, those that are not killed outright by the therapy. Since these cancer therapies are toxic to cells, they also tend to cause off-target cell death and senescence. It is possible that si...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 12, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
