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

Towards Better Bioprinted Skin, Created and Applied During Surgery
Skin is a complex organ of many distinct layers, in which different cell types and structures interact to maintain function and ability to regenerate. Creating a skin-like structure is one thing, but introducing sweat glands, hair follicles, and other complex features is quite another. Still, the accessibility of skin and the frequency of serious injuries that remove large sections of skin makes the skin a good testbed for the development of improved bioprinting techniques that are capable of inserting complex small-scale structures, manufacturing the different layers of skin, and that can be used in situ, directly printin...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 12, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, March 4th 2024
In conclusion, HSV (but not CMV) infection may be indicative of doubled dementia risk. « Back to Top Increased Dietary Leucine Activates mTOR Signaling in Macrophages, Accelerating Atherosclerosis https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2024/02/increased-dietary-leucine-activates-mtor-signaling-in-macrophages-accelerating-atherosclerosis/ Leucine is an essential amino acid, only obtained from the diet rather than synthesized by our cells. Leucine supplementation has been proposed as a way to slow the loss of muscle mass with age, as leucine processing becomes dysregulated with aging in a way...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 3, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

NPTX2 Involved in Neurodegeneration Driven by TDP-43 Aggregation
Altered, misfolded forms of TDP-43 are thought to contribute to neurodegeneration in a number of age-related conditions, primarily amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia. As is the case for other misfolded proteins associated with neurodegeneration, aberrant TDP-43 may accumulate in much of the older population to levels sufficient to meaningfully contribute to cognitive decline. That TDP-43 has this negative impact is a relatively recent discovery, and in comparison to amyloid-β, tau, and α-synuclein little is known of the mechanisms by which TDP-43 aggregation causes dysfunction and death in brain ce...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 29, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Telomere Length as a Target for Therapy
Average telomere length in a tissue is some reflection of (a) stem cell activity and (b) pace of cell division. Telomeres, repeated DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes, lose some of their length with each cell division, and cells self-destruct or become senescent when telomeres become too short. This limits the ability of somatic cells to replicate, reducing the odds that a given cell will mutate to become cancerous by imposing a limit on cell activity and cell life span, enforcing turnover of cells in tissues. Stem cells, in comparison, are a small, well protected, privileged set of cell populations that use telomera...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 26, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 26th 2024
In conclusion, mTORC1 signaling contributes to the ISC fate decision, enabling regional control of intestinal cell differentiation in response to nutrition. « Back to Top Reviewing the Development of Senotherapeutics to Treat Aging https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2024/02/reviewing-the-development-of-senotherapeutics-to-treat-aging/ Senescent cells accumulate with age and contribute meaningfully to chronic inflammation and degenerative aging. Destroying these cells produces rapid and sizable reversal of age-related diseases in mice, demonstrating that the presence of senescence cells ...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 25, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

A Popular Science View of Recent Thinking on DNA Damage as a Cause of Aging
There are presently two views of the way in which stochastic DNA damage can contribute to aging. Most DNA damage occurs in inactive genes in cells that will not replicate many more times, and thus cannot possibly produce systemic consequences throughout large regions of the body. The first argument for a way in which random DNA damage can produce a broader effect is via somatic mosaicism, in which mutational damage occurs in stem cells, allowing those mutations to spread throughout tissue over time. It is unclear as to how to measure the contribution of this process to age-related loss of function, however, and its contrib...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 21, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Age-Related Changes in mTORC1-Related Nutrient Sensing Degrade Intestinal Stem Cell Function
In conclusion, mTORC1 signaling contributes to the ISC fate decision, enabling regional control of intestinal cell differentiation in response to nutrition. Link: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adi2671 (Source: Fight Aging!)
Source: Fight Aging! - February 19, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 19th 2024
This study aimed to explore the metabolic mechanisms and potential biomarkers associated with declining HGS among older adults. We recruited 15 age- and environment-matched inpatients (age, 77-90 years) with low or normal HGS. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) gene sequencing were performed to analyze the metabolome of serum and stool samples and the gut microbiome composition of stool samples. Spearman's correlation analysis was used to identify the potential serum and fecal metabolites associated with HGS. We assessed the levels of serum and fecal metabolites belonging to...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 18, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

MiR-145-5p Overexpression Improves Stem Cell Transplantation
In this study, we found that ADSCs isolated from old donors (O-ADSCs) presented inferior phenotypes and decreased miR-145-5p levels compared to those from young donors (Y-ADSCs). To interrogate the role of miR-145-5p in ADSCs, gain- and loss-of-function approaches were performed. The results indicated that miR-145-5p overexpression in O-ADSCs promoted cellular proliferation and migration, while reducing cell senescence. Further study demonstrated that miR-145-5p could regulate ADSCs function by targeting bone morphogenetic protein binding endothelial cell precursor-derived regulator (BMPER), which is a crucial modulator in...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 16, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

The Current State And Future Of Biohacking
For years at The Medical Futurist, we’ve covered countless digital health devices and technologies, and how they can empower patients in the digital health age. These share the common feature of augmenting the patient experience, and such augmentations can be taken to the next level via biohacking.  In this article, we’ll introduce the biohacking concept, illustrate it with examples of biohackers (you might be one already!) and contemplate its impact on the future of digital health. What is biohacking? As the term itself suggests, “biohacking” generally refers to the act of hacking or modifying biolog...
Source: The Medical Futurist - February 15, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Pranavsingh Dhunnoo Tags: TMF implants biohacking grinders Source Type: blogs

The 2024 Word of the Year: Missense
By MIKE MAGEE Not surprisingly, my nominee for “word of the year” involves AI, and specifically “the language of human biology.” As Eliezer Yudkowski, the founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and coiner of the term “friendly AI” stated in Forbes: “Anything that could give rise to smarter-than-human intelligence—in the form of Artificial Intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, or neuroscience-based human intelligence enhancement – wins hands down beyond contest as doing the most to change the world. Nothing else is even in the same league.”  Perhaps the ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 13, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech Biology Crispr DNA Mike Magee Source Type: blogs

Macrophages Disrupt Bone Regeneration by Provoking Stem and Progenitor Cell Senescence
In this study, we revealed that macrophages in calluses secrete prosenescent factors, including grancalcin (GCA), during aging, which triggers skeletal stem cell and progenitor cell (SSPC) senescence and impairs fracture healing. Local injection of human recombinant GCA in young mice induced SSPC senescence and delayed fracture repair. Genetic deletion of Gca in monocytes/macrophages was sufficient to rejuvenate fracture repair in aged mice and alleviate SSPC senescence. Mechanistically, GCA binds to the plexin-B2 receptor and activates Arg2-mediated mitochondrial dysfunction, resulting in cellular senescence. Depletion of...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 12, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 12th 2024
In conclusion, frailty is a dynamic process, and improved frailty and remaining robust are significantly associated with lower risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular death in older people. « Back to Top Greater Individual Wealth Correlates with Longer Life Expectancy https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2024/02/greater-individual-wealth-correlates-with-longer-life-expectancy/ Individual wealth correlates with life expectancy, with an effect size that is in the same ballpark as those related to lifestyle choices involving exercise, diet, and consequences thereof. It remains unclear...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 11, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Advocating for Epigenetic Reprogramming as a Potential Rejuvenation Therapy
Partial epigenetic reprogramming emerges from the intersection of understanding how cells behave in cancerous tissue and during embryonic development. In the developing embryo there is a point at which adult germline cells convert themselves into embryonic stem cells, discarding forms of damage and dysfunction characteristic of adult cells and restoring a youthful pattern of the epigenetic markers attached to the genome that control its shape in the cell nucleus and thus gene expression. Some of the genes involved are known to also operate in cancers, in which replication and reprogramming runs wild, but which use many of ...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 6, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs