More on the Debate Over the Classification of Aging as a Disease
Whether or not aging is clearly listed as a disease in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO) only matters because medical research and development is heavily regulated. Since aging isn't classified as a disease, there is no clear roadmap to obtaining regulatory approval to treat aging with a working rejuvenation therapy, and therefore no investor is willing to commit to funding that work. What happens instead is that the range of biotech companies presently working to produce age-slowing and rejuvenating therapies pick a specific age-related disease to start wi...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 26, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Politics and Legislation Source Type: blogs
Transparency Ecosystem in Healthcare
The following is a guest article by Paul Ketchel, Chief Executive Officer at MDsave.
Cost transparency is a driving force in the American market. Whether consumers are looking to purchase a latte, a plane ticket, or surgery, they increasingly expect to pay an “out-the-door” price– something that includes all labor and materials as well as the finished product or service. When polled, 66% of Americans indicated that they would shop for care if prices were publicly disclosed. And in pursuit of competitively and transparently-priced services, some patients attempt to shop locally; more and more, however, consumers flock...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - September 6, 2022 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: Ambulatory Communication and Patient Experience Health IT Company Healthcare IT Revenue Cycle Management Cost Transparency Health Catalyst Healthcare Price Transparency MDsave Paul Ketchel Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 29th 2022
This study demonstrates that adoptive astrocytic Mt transfer enhances neuronal Mn-SOD-mediated anti-oxidative defense and neuroplasticity in the brain, which potentiate functional recovery following ICH.
First Generation Stem Cell Therapies Remain Comparatively Poorly Understood
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/08/first-generation-stem-cell-therapies-remain-comparatively-poorly-understood/
We are something like thirty years into the increasingly widespread use of first generation stem cell therapies. Cells are derived from a variety of sources, processed, and transplanted into patients. Near all...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 28, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Distributed Full Disclosure Medical Development
In a time of rapid progress in biotechnology, the Hippocratic pledge of "first do no harm" kills a lot of people. It just doesn't kill them as directly as more obvious means. Taken to its extreme, "first do no harm" is a strong precautionary principle, it forbids progress, it forbids the testing of new therapies. While we are not at the point of forbiddance yet, regulators have been heading in that direction for years. Officials at the FDA and similar regulatory bodies are willing to accept great ongoing suffering and death in the service of reducing the risk of harm due to new therapies to as close to zero as possible. Th...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 26, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Politics and Legislation Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 24th 2022
In conclusion, senolytic drugs have shown promising results in the elimination of senescent cells and in alleviating various diseases in animal models. However, in patients, there is a paucity in data on the efficacy and safety of senotherapeutics from clinical trials, including systemic effects and side-effects. In this regard it is important to assess the specificity of senolytics in killing targeted senescent cells and their cytotoxic effects, to identify reliable markers for intervention responses, to elucidate interactions with comorbidities and other drugs, and to standardise administration protocols.
FOXO3...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 23, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Request for Startups in the Rejuvenation Biotechnology Space, 2022 Edition
For some years now, I've offered a yearly set of suggested projects for new startups in the rejuvenation biotechnology space. Or, alternatively, it might be viewed as a series of lengthy complaints about the slow pace of process towards human rejuvenation, given the many opportunities that exist. That slow pace is particularly galling in the case of the lowest-hanging fruit, a range of therapies that have been practical to carry out for at least a few years now, and yet have still not been meaningfully assessed for their ability to produce at least some degree of rejuvenation in aged humans. Given that the level of funding...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 17, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Investment Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 17th 2022
In conclusion, fibroblasts in monolayers cultured with soluble pentosidine and tridimensional in vitro skin constructs exposed to the combination of AGEs and UVA promote an inflammatory state and an alteration of the dermal compartment in relation to an elastosis-like environment. (Source: Fight Aging!)
Source: Fight Aging! - January 16, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
The Cambrian Biopharma Approach to Obtain Regulatory Approval of Drugs to Treat Aging
The approach outlined here by the Cambrian Biopharma principals isn't exactly a secret: at least the first part of the process is exactly the playbook for nearly every company working on interventions that target the mechanisms of aging. Since there is no established regulatory path to treat aging as a medical condition, companies must seek approval to treat a specific age-related condition. They pick the best choice of the scores that could be treated by slowing or reversing one or more mechanisms of aging. Most groups stop the future planning at that point, as the likely next step following regulatory approval will be wi...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 13, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Politics and Legislation Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 22nd 2021
This study nicely illustrates the importance of the cellular metabolic state of myeloid cells: it highlights that not only the availability of glucose, but also its channeling into different pathways (glycolysis versus glycogen synthesis) contributes to maintaining proper myeloid function.
On the Ability of Redundant Blood Vessels to Lower Cardiovascular Mortality
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2021/11/on-the-ability-of-redundant-blood-vessels-to-lower-cardiovascular-mortality/
A few strategies offer the possibility of growing additional redundant blood vessels, though this is far from rigorously p...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 21, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Results From a Small, Informal Trial of Telomerase and Klotho Gene Therapy for Alzheimer's Disease
Bioviva was at one point developing telomerase gene therapies, work that has transitioned into the medical tourism industry via Integrated Health Systems rather than proceeding towards regulatory approval. The institutional communities of science and funding strongly disapproved of the self-experiment undertaken by the Bioviva founder, and the way that self-experiment was popularized in order to build the company. I think this a pity, given the long history of self-experimentation by noted figures in the scientific community. Nonetheless, we live in an era that frowns upon self-experimentation as a part of the path to prog...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 17, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Medical Tourism and the Best Interests of the Critically Ill Child in the Era of Healthcare Globalisation
Neera Bhatia (Deakin University), Giles Birchley (University of Bristol), Medical Tourism and the Best Interests of the Critically Ill Child in the Era of Healthcare Globalisation, Med. L. Rev. 2020 (2020): In this article, we examine emerging challenges to medical... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - September 7, 2021 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 24th 2021
In conclusion, we showed that addition of resistance exercise training, but not dietary EAAs, to the myostatin inhibition further increased muscle mass through the attenuation of muscle protein breakdown with proportionate improvements in muscle strength. Interestingly, addition of dietary EAAs to the myostatin inhibition with or without resistance exercise training improved muscle quality. Thus, dissection of the underlying mechanisms behind the combined positive effect of dietary EAAs and resistance exercise training on muscle mass and quality can shed light on the discovery of effective therapeutics against muscle wasti...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 23, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Telomerase Based Therapies and Neurodegenerative Disease
Telomerase gene therapy is an aspirational goal for a number of companies and research groups, and may presently be available via medical tourism in a limited, expensive, and probably not very efficient fashion. Groups such as Telocyte would like to run human trials of telomerase gene therapy for neurodegenerative conditions. Much of this is focused on the primary activity of telomerase, lengthening of telomeres and thus increased cell activity in older tissues. Telomerase, however, has other functions, not as well explored, that may still be relevant to aging and age-related disease. It may act to protect mitochondrial fu...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 19, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 10th 2021
This study suggests that some of those changes contribute to age-related hypertension, providing yet another reason to put resources into the near term development of therapies that can reverse the aging of the gut microbiome, such as flagellin vaccination or fecal microbiota transplantation.
"Previous studies from our lab have shown that the composition of the gut microbiota in animal models of hypertension, such as the SHRSP (spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone) rat model, is different from that in animals with normal blood pressure. Further, transplanting dysbiotic gut microbiota from a hypertensive animal ...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 9, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
The Gatekeepers of Medical Regulation are Horrified by Freedom, Responsibility, and Progress
Much pearl-clutching is in evidence in a recent article on the existence of groups, such as Libella Gene Therapeutics, attempting to prototype telomerase gene therapies via patient paid trials, or such as Integrated Health Systems and BioViva, trying to develop markets for such therapies via medical tourism. The gatekeepers of medical regulation stand in opposition to the idea that patients and their supporters can make responsible decisions about risk, based on the available data. Medicine is somehow a privileged space, different from every other human endeavor, in which only the anointed priesthood are allowed to determi...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 4, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Politics and Legislation Source Type: blogs
