Aspects of Skin Aging Encourage Metastasis in Melanoma
There are many ways in which the aging of tissue makes cancer both more likely to occur and more aggressive once it does occur. Here researchers focus in on specific changes in aged skin tissue that make melanoma cancers more likely to become metastatic and spread to other organs. Interestingly, it is an indirect effect on cell signaling that is mediated by increased stiffness of the skin extracellular matrix, an issue in many aging tissues that has many root causes, not just the one noted here. Nonetheless, if metastasis could be shut down, then cancer would become a much more tractable problem, particularly if control of...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 19, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Reporting on a Nine Month Self-Experiment in Taurine Supplementation
Today's post is a report from the community on the impact of taurine supplementation on a few biomarkers of interest. Taurine is a dietary amino acid, and circulating levels of taurine influence any number of biological processes. Taurine levels decrease with age in a variety of species; in humans circulating taurine is halved by age 50. You might recall that supplementation with taurine was demonstrated to modestly extend life in mice and improve health in old non-human primates. This may be largely due to enhanced performance of the antioxidant glutathione, and you might recall that other approaches to upregulation of gl...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 18, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Self-Experimentation Source Type: blogs
Interesting Insight into the Relationship Between TP53, Telomerase, and Telomere Length
This study provides some insight into how these relationships play out in practice by sabotaging telomerase and p53, and observing the results.
Telomerase activity is restricted in humans and telomere attrition occurs in several tissues accompanying natural aging. Critically short telomeres trigger DNA damage responses and activate p53 which leads to apoptosis or replicative senescence. These processes reduce cell proliferation and disrupt tissue homeostasis, thus contributing to systemic aging. Similarly, zebrafish have restricted telomerase expression, and telomeres shorten to critical length during their lifesp...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 18, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Calorie Restriction Induces Plasminogen Production to Protect Muscle Tissue
This study also reports the expansion of satellite cells in human muscle with CR. This finding is critical to suggest translational relevance to the rodent data observed for more than a decade. Moreover, the increased expression of the plasminogen receptor Plg-RKT observed on human satellite cells during CR provided additional support for the theory that our rodent model is relevant to human biology.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2024.113881 (Source: Fight Aging!)
Source: Fight Aging! - March 18, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Towards a Better Understanding of the Role of the Gut Microbiome in Alzheimer's Disease
This article summarizes research presented at the virtual symposium and workshop, "New Approaches for Understanding the Potential Role of Microbes in Alzheimer's Disease." The objective of these events was to review the evidence base and catalyze research to address knowledge gaps in the hypothesis that infections or microbes play some causative role in the development or progression of Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's disease is a complex disease; this symposium was rooted in an understanding that its pathogenesis could be triggered by both microbe-dependent and microbe-independent pathways and the two are not mutually ex...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 15, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Lowered Iron Levels in Hematopoietic Stem Cells Reverse Some Age-Related Dysfunction
Researchers here report on a way to reverse some of the age-related dysfunction observed in the hematopoietic stem cell population resident in bone marrow. These cells are responsible for generating red blood cells and immune cells. Some fraction of the age-related decline in immune function derives from issues in the hematopoietic cell populations originating with hematopoietic stem cells. It seems that hematopoietic stem cells have a distinct iron metabolism, and iron accumulation produces dysregulation in these cells. Reducing the presence of iron in hematopoietic stem cells reverses some of these changes. In the bigger...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 15, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Efforts to Produce Drugs to Slow or Reverse Sarcopenia Benefit from the Semaglutide Hype
This popular science article is a reminder that all too little in this world happens for entirely rational reasons. Drugs aimed at slowing or reversing the age-related loss of muscle mass leading to sarcopenia are presently under development by a number of companies, though none of the candidates discussed are producing effect sizes that look very favorable in comparison to the effects of resistance exercise. These efforts will likely benefit from the present manufactured hype that attends the use of antidiabetic GLP1 receptor agonists for weight loss, as one of the side-effects of this drug is modest loss of muscle mass. ...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 15, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Reviewing the Path Towards Reprogramming as a Basis for Rejuvenation Therapies
In conclusion, while partial reprogramming holds great therapeutic potential, the real focus should be on rejuvenation research, defining its nature and ways to quantify it. Another critical issue is the ability to quantify biological age as reprogrammed older cells acquire younger states. Understanding rejuvenation is also key to translational success, as benefits of age reversal must be considered against risks. More research into safety and tissue-specific responses of this technique are required. (Source: Fight Aging!)
Source: Fight Aging! - March 14, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
SOX17 Allows Early Stage Colon Cancer to Evade the Immune System
Researchers here report on work that identifies SOX17 inhibition as a potential way to attack colon cancer in its early stages. Any successful cancer must have adopted one or more ways to suppress the immune system in order to grow past the earliest stages of a few cancerous cells. Interfering in those suppression mechanisms is a potential basis for therapy, as the researchers demonstrated here. Whether or not this line of work will make much further depends on whether an economically viable approach to SOX17 inhibition can be found, and whether or not it is a good target for many other forms of cancer.
Colon canc...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 14, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Further Progress Towards Regeneration of Sensory Hair Cells to Treat Deafness
In recent years, researchers have attempted to provoke the regeneration of lost sensory hair cells in the inner ear, a potential treatment for forms of deafness. Various genes related to the creation of these cells during development have been identified, and gene therapy interventions attempted in animal models. Progress has been made, but it is incremental, and the results not yet satisfactory. Noted here is a recent example of this sort of work, in which a cocktail of genes is employed rather than focusing on single gene interventions.
The transcription factors (genes) Gfi1, Atoh1, Pou4f3, and Six1 (known colle...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 14, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Is the Aging Hippocampus Particularly Vulnerable to Blood-Brain Barrier Dysfunction?
The hippocampus in the brain is vital to cognitive functions involving learning and memory. In today's open access paper, researchers review the evidence for the hippocampus to be particularly vulnerable to damaging mechanisms, including those involved in aging. It is tentatively suggested that physiological and biochemical differences in the hippocampus point to a greater fragility of the hippocampal blood-brain barrier as a common thread underlying pathological changes observed in aging and Alzheimer's disease. The blood-brain barrier is a specialized layer of cells that wrap blood vessels passing through the central ner...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 13, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Science Snippet: Examining Enzymes
Structure of a pyruvate kinase, an enzyme that adds a phosphate group to adenosine diphosphate (ADP) to make adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Credit: PDB 7UEH.
Every day, our cells must produce all the various molecules they need to stay alive. But the chemical reactions to create these molecules can’t occur without help—which is where enzymes come in. Enzymes are biological catalysts, meaning they speed up the rate of specific chemical reactions by reducing the amount of energy needed for the reaction to occur. Most enzymes are proteins, but some RNA molecules can also act as enzymes.
Thousands of different enzymes ...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - March 13, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Cells Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology Cellular Processes Proteins Science Snippet Source Type: blogs
Metformin and Galantamine Combination Modestly Improves Sarcopenia Symptoms
Therapies that reuse existing drugs with sizable bodies of human data tend to move more rapidly to the clinic than is the case for better, more ambitious approaches that break new ground. Greater speed in reaching the clinic means a lower cost of development, and this economic incentive is why so much of clinical development consists of drug reuse and only modestly effective therapies. In the case of sarcopenia, the age-related loss of muscle mass and strength, sizable funding is presently devoted to the development of small molecule therapies that do not produce greater gains than resistance exercise. A good deal of what ...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 13, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
An Example of Antihypertensive Drug Discovery Based on TRPV2 Biochemistry
This study represents a very important starting point for using this TRPV2 activation as a therapeutic strategy against diseases that cause excessive vasoconstriction, such as hypertension."
In a second study, the research group used computational techniques to identify a set of 270 molecules that, due to their physical and chemical characteristics, could interact with TRPV2, and grouped them by families according to how each of these molecules would bind to TRPV2. Then, by expressing the TRPV2 protein in yeast, a screening system was designed to test its effects. This made it possible to find a molecule (4-piperid...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 13, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
A Lengthy View of Everything that is Wrong with the Drug Development Industry
The primary problems with drug development are self-evident from the data. Firstly the process of drug development has become enormously more expensive over the past seventy years, a period in in which rapid technological progress has diminished the cost and effort required for any task in pharmacology and biotechnology by orders of magnitude. Secondly, the pace at which useful new medicines emerge in the clinic has diminished considerably, over the same period of technological progress in which the bounds of the possible have opened up enormously. The article I'll point out today is well worth reading, a lengthy treatment...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 12, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Politics and Legislation Source Type: blogs
