Removing Senescent Cells Makes Chemotherapy More Effective
Cellular senescence is protective against cancer, at least initially. When cells become senescent due to potentially cancer-inducing damage, shutting down replication and secreting pro-inflammatory signals reduces the risk of cancer and attracts the immune system to clear out other potentially cancerous cells that have not become senescent. When senescent cells linger in larger numbers, however, they begin to aid cancer by changing the environment into one that favors the growth of cancerous tissue. Thus clearing senescent cells in conjunction with traditional cancer treatments is more effective for patients than the treat...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 1, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
More on CCL17 as a Target to Reduce Inflammation in Cardiovascular Disease
Atherosclerosis is the buildup of fatty plaques in the walls of blood vessels, impeding blood flow and eventually rupturing to produce a heart attack or stroke. It is the single largest cause of human mortality. Atherosclerosis is in part an inflammatory condition, accelerated by the state of chronic inflammation that arises in later life. In this context, levels of CCL17 have been shown to rise with age, while inhibition of CCL17 has been shown to reduce chronic inflammation and slow the progression of atherosclerosis. This outcome is achieved via effects on T cell behavior; CCL17 is expressed on the surface of dendritic ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 31, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Putting West Virginia Students on the Path to Scientific Careers
Credit: NIGMS.
Two NIGMS-funded programs are teaming up to shape the future of science and technology in West Virginia (WV). One engages high school students in science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine (STEM+M); introduces them to research; and provides direct access to college through tuition waivers. In the other program, undergraduate students are paired with a researcher at their institution for a paid internship—an important step toward a career in science.
The Health Sciences & Technology Academy
“We liken our students to rosebuds. As they grow, you see them blossom into self-confident lea...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - January 31, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Being a Scientist STEM Education SEPA Training Source Type: blogs
Senolytic CAR T Cell Therapy Improves Health in Aged Mice
To the degree that senescent cells in a tissue exhibit distinctive surface features, one can deploy technologies such as chimeric antigen receptor T cells to selectively destroy them. T cells will destroy whatever cell binds to the chimeric antigen receptor they are equipped with. This approach has been used with great success to treat cancers, and may also see some use in the clearance of senescent cells provided that the cost is somehow greatly reduced. At present it is a very expensive therapeutic modality, given that a patient's cells must be extracted, genetically engineered, cultured for weeks or more to expand their...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 31, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Building Biological Age Clocks from Immune and Redox Markers
In conclusion, the Immunity and Redox Clocks allow BA quantification in mice and both the ImmunolAge and RedoxAge in mice relate to lifespan.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-51978-9 (Source: Fight Aging!)
Source: Fight Aging! - January 31, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Amyloid- β Biochemistry as a Cause of Blood-Brain Barrier Leakage in Alzheimer's Disease
Alzheimer's disease is a complex degenerative failure of a complex system, the brain. This complexity is illustrated by the continuing debate over which of the many identified mechanisms are the primary cause. Is it amyloid-β aggregation, or some aspect of the halo of biochemistry associated with that aggregation, or is it chronic inflammation, or cellular senescence in supporting cells of the brain, or vascular dysfunction and leakage of the blood-brain barrier, or neurofibrillary tangles, or the presence of persistent viruses. All of these mechanisms interact with one another, and the direction of causation between any ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 30, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Measuring Myelin Loss in the Aging Brain
Myelin acts as an insulating sheath for the axonal connections that exist between neurons, and is necessary for the correct function of these connections. Demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis are particularly debilitating due to the spreading and progressively worsening failure of the nervous system caused by loss of myelin. Unfortunately myelin is also lost to a lesser degree with advancing age, one of many consequences of accumulated molecular damage and maladaptive reactions to that damage. Here, researchers report on efforts to better measure the loss of myelin that occurs with age, comparing established w...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 30, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
The Prospects for Treating Neurodegenerative Conditions by Modifying the Gut Microbiome
The gut microbiome interacts with the body via a wide range of mechanisms, including induction of chronic inflammatory responses and delivery of both harmful and beneficial metabolites. With advancing age, the balance of populations making up the gut microbiome changes in ways that increase the harms while reducing the benefits. This may happen because the aged immune system becomes less able to clear problem microbes, but other mechanisms such as lifestyle changes and intestinal tissue aging may also contribute meaningfully. Fortunately, studies have demonstrated that making sizable, lasting changes to the gut microbiome ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 30, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Interactions Between Innervation, Vascular Aging, and Loss of Capillary Density in the Heart
One noted aspect of vascular aging is that the processes of angiogenesis become less effective with age, and as a consequence aged tissues lose capillary density. This harms function by reducing the supply of nutrients and oxygen to energy-hungry tissues such as muscles and brain, as well as putting stress on the remaining vasculature due to changes in the dynamics of blood flow. Accompanying this form of vascular aging is a progressive innervation, a loss of peripheral nervous system connections. These two complex processes interact strongly with one another, given the proximity of blood vessels and nerves, and signaling ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 29, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Mechanisms for the Benefits to Long Term Vascular Health Provided by Exercise
The vascular system responds favorably to exercise at any age. A large portion of the benefits of exercise derive from improvements to vascular function throughout the body, and physical fitness can be maintained further into old age than most people believe to be the case. The flip side of this point is that a sizable fraction of the declines of later life are a matter of disuse, people living a more sedentary life than is optimal for the health and function of muscles, heart, and brain. These the most energy-hungry tissues and those that see the worst outcomes from a decline in vascular function and consequently reduced ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 29, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Modest Effects on Cognitive Decline from Multivitamin Use
Setting aside cases of vitamin deficiency, the consensus on supplement use (including vitamins) in essentially healthy individuals is that it does little to nothing, or is even mildly harmful to long-term health. That mild harm might include use of antioxidants that diminish the beneficial response to exercise that is mediated in part by oxidative stress. As a counterpoint to the consensus, researchers here provide evidence for multivitamin use to modestly improve cognitive function in later life. Whether this result will hold up in other study populations is a question, and we'll likely be waiting a while on the answer. I...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 29, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 29th 2024
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! - January 28, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
A Tour of Geroscience, Largely Focused on Unambitious Goals in the Treatment of Aging
Geroscience is a philosophy of development, suggesting that aging can be slowed and we should work towards means to do so. In practice, geroscience is, more or less, the the name given to that part of the research and development community that aims to produce means to alter metabolism to modestly slow aging. It is best represented by the development of supplements and repurposing of very well studied drugs, near all of which produce smaller benefits to long-term heath than regular moderate exercise, and none of which can match the benefits provided by the practice of calorie restriction. It is entirely unambitious. This l...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 26, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
RNA Interference as a Mechanism in Alzheimer's Disease
It presently costs little to assess the transcriptomic state of a cell, the amounts and sequences of various RNA transcripts produced from DNA. Thus a fair amount of research into health, disease, and cell biochemistry is focused on this complex layer of cell behavior. It is comparatively easy to produce a great deal of data and identify differences between cells and cell states, but challenging to connect that to other mechanisms and higher level causes and consequences. The research here illustrates this point, in that the researchers can discuss changes in RNA transcripts observed in Alzheimer's disease, but do not disc...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 26, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Quantifying the Effects of Time Spent Sitting on Mortality
The study noted here provides an interesting addition to the debate over whether time spent sitting is harmful to health independently of its contribution to time spent being sedentary. Time spent sitting increases mortality, while time spent active or undertaking exercise decreases mortality. The results of this large epidemiological study quantify how much additional exercise is required to mitigate the mortality increase resulting from time spent sitting. The results also have the look of common sense at the end of the day; the intuition that one should compensate for a desk job with additional exercise outside work tur...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 26, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
