Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

[GIThruster]

Could be a huge breakthrough:

http://www.sciencealert.com/new-alzheim ... y-function

[williatw]

Live for ever: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’


Fixing the ‘problem’ of ageing is the mission of Silicon Valley, where billions is pouring into biotech firms working to ‘hack the code’ of life – despite concerns about the social implications




Bodybuilder Ernestine Shepherd, 78, attributes her youthful looks to diet and exercise. But scientists now say they will soon be able to do much more with drugs.

One drug already in clinical trials is rapamycin, which is normally used to aid organ transplants and treat rare cancers. It has been shown to extend the life of mice by 25%, the greatest achieved so far with a drug, and protect them against diseases of ageing including cancer and neurodegeneration.

In Palo Alto in the heart of Silicon Valley, hedge fund manager Joon Yun is doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation. According to US social security data, he says, the probability of a 25-year-old dying before their 26th birthday is 0.1%. If we could keep that risk constant throughout life instead of it rising due to age-related disease, the average person would – statistically speaking – live 1,000 years. Yun finds the prospect tantalising and even believable. Late last year he launched a $1m prize challenging scientists to “hack the code of life” and push human lifespan past its apparent maximum of about 120 years (the longest known/confirmed lifespan was 122 years).

Yun believes it is possible to “solve ageing” and get people to live, healthily, more or less indefinitely. His Palo Alto Longevity Prize, which 15 scientific teams have so far entered, will be awarded in the first instance for restoring vitality and extending lifespan in mice by 50%. But Yun has deep pockets and expects to put up more money for progressively greater feats. He says this is a moral rather than personal quest. Our lives and society are troubled by growing numbers of loved ones lost to age-related disease and suffering extended periods of decrepitude, which is costing economies. Yun has an impressive list of nearly 50 advisers, including scientists from some of America’s top universities.

Yun’s quest – a modern version of the age old dream of tapping the fountain of youth – is emblematic of the current enthusiasm to disrupt death sweeping Silicon Valley. Billionaires and companies are bullish about what they can achieve. In September 2013 Google announced the creation of Calico, short for the California Life Company. Its mission is to reverse engineer the biology that controls lifespan and “devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives”. Though much mystery surrounds the new biotech company, it seems to be looking in part to develop age-defying drugs. In April 2014 it recruited Cynthia Kenyon, a scientist acclaimed for work that included genetically engineering roundworms to live up to six times longer than normal, and who has spoken of dreaming of applying her discoveries to people. “Calico has the money to do almost anything it wants,” says Tom Johnson, an earlier pioneer of the field now at the University of Colorado who was the first to find a genetic effect on longevity in a worm.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015 ... -longevity

[williatw]

The Human Upgrade

Tech titans’ latest project: Defy death


For centuries, explorers have searched the world for the fountain of youth. Today’s billionaires believe they can create it, using technology and data.

Seated at the head of a table for 12 with a view of the city's soaring skyline, Peter Thiel was deep in conversation with his guests, eclectic scientists whose research was considered radical, even heretical.

It was 2004 and Thiel had recently made a tidy fortune selling PayPal, which he co-founded, to eBay. He had spent what he wanted on himself — a posh penthouse suite at the Four Seasons Hotel and a silver Ferrari — and was now soliciting ideas to do good with his money.



The Human Upgrade:

Using their ideas and their billions, the visionaries who created Silicon Valley’s biggest technology firms are trying to transform the most complicated system in existence: the human body.

Illustration by Sébastien Thibault


Among the guests was Cynthia Kenyon, a molecular biologist and biogerontologist who had garnered attention for doubling the life span of a roundworm by disabling a single gene. Aubrey de Grey, a British computer scientist turned theoretician who prophesied that medical advances would stop aging. And Larry Page, co-founder of an Internet search darling called Google that had big ideas to improve health through the terabytes of data it was collecting.

The chatter at the dinner party meandered from the value of chocolate in one’s diet to the toll of disease on the U.S. economy to the merits of uploading people’s memories to a computer versus cryofreezing their bodies. Yet the focus kept returning to one subject: Was death an inevitability — or a solvable problem?

A number of guests were skeptical about achieving immortality. But could science and technology help us live longer, to, say, 150 years? Now that, they agreed, was a worthy goal.



Within a few months, Thiel had written checks to Kenyon and de Grey to accelerate their work. Since then he has doled out millions to other researchers with what he calls “breakout” ideas that defy conventional wisdom.

“If you think you can only do very little and be very incremental, then you’ll work only on very incremental things. It’s self-fulfilling,” Thiel, who is 47 and estimated to be worth $2.2 billion, said in an interview. “It’s those who have an optimism about what can be done that will shape the future.”

He and the tech titans who founded Google, Facebook, eBay, Napster and Netscape are using their billions to rewrite the nation’s science agenda and transform biomedical research. Their objective is to use the tools of technology — the chips, software programs, algorithms and big data they used in creating an information revolution — to understand and upgrade what they consider to be the most complicated piece of machinery in existence: the human body.

The entrepreneurs are driven by a certitude that rebuilding, regenerating and reprogramming patients’ organs, limbs, cells and DNA will enable people to live longer and better. The work they are funding includes hunting for the secrets of living organisms with insanely long lives, engineering microscopic nanobots that can fix your body from the inside out, figuring out how to reprogram the DNA you were born with, and exploring ways to digitize your brain based on the theory that your mind could live long after your body expires.

“I believe that evolution is a true account of nature,” as Thiel put it. “But I think we should try to escape it or transcend it in our society.”

The road to 150

The big challenge of aging research is that to make it work the way people want it to scientists would have to figure out a way to extend all human systems simultaneously and shut them all down at pretty much the same time. Otherwise you would be replacing one way of dying with another. Some argue that the world is already in a crisis of life extension. People are living longer than in the past but for many their final years are painful, as their bodies and minds are ravaged by cancer, Alzheimer’s and other diseases of aging.


De Grey, who used the contributions from Thiel to start the SENS Research Foundation, a Mountain View, Calif.-based institute that conducts research on aging in its own labs and funds grants for academics, is focusing on cellular and molecular damage that accumulates throughout a person’s life.

“Think of a machine with moving parts,” he explained. “We’re trying to change what the body can tolerate.”

Kenyon, a longtime University of California at San Francisco professor who recently joined Calico, the Google-funded health venture start-up that aims to “cure” death, now is focused on the idea that “there seem to be life-extending processes that exist in nature, and they can be coaxed out of animals,” she said.

“They are just naturally present in some species that live long,” she said. Kenyon explained that organisms have mechanisms that are “almost like a surveillance system for terrorism.”



You use a lot of mechanisms to search for anomalies in the environment,” she said. “If an animal sees a threat, it responds. . . . What’s really cool about this is that the mechanisms that protect it from danger can also protect it from the ravages of time itself. What if you could fool an animal into thinking there is a threat when there really isn't?” she said.

For all the thought Thiel has given to how to combat aging, he says he does not have a lot of specific ideas about what he would do if he could live significantly longer.

Instead of living each day as his last, he says, he lives it like he’ll live forever.

“If you did this, you might start working on some great projects you might otherwise not have attempted because you didn’t think you’d finish,” Thiel said. “You’d treat strangers a lot better because you’d likely see them again. You’d be a much better steward of the Earth than if you thought it was your last day and you were having a crazy party or something.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/nation ... efy-death/

[williatw]

Conceptually Viable Brute Force Radical Life Extension by Swapping All Old Cells for Young Cells


A team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators has made the first steps towards development of bioartificial replacement limbs suitable for transplantation They had used decellularization technique to regenerate kidneys, livers, hearts and lungs from animal models, but this is the first reported use to engineer the more complex tissues of a bioartificial limb.

They took the leg from recently deceased rat and then:

* Over a period of 52 hours, infusion of a detergent solution removes cells from a rat forelimb, leaving behind the cell-free matrix scaffolding onto which new tissues can be regenerated.

* it is put in a specially designed bioreactor and after 2 weeks it is recellularized

* they graft some skin onto the fledgling leg, and the doctors had themselves their own, home-grown rat limb (minus the bones and cartilage).

* they attached it to a rat

What if instead of taking the leg of dead rat you took the leg of an old rat and recellularized it with its own stem cells.

So if this process were made to work with humans, then all of the organs, limbs and muscles could be recellularized with youthful cells







After vascular and muscle progenitors have been introduced into a decellularized rat limb, it is suspended in a bioreactor, which provides a nutrient solution and electrical stimulation to support and promote the growth of new tissues. (Bernhard Jank, MD, Ott Laboratory, Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Regenerative Medicine)

An old person who be placed into a bioreactor and progressively get every cell rejuvenated. This would be an expensive procedure but one that would only need to be performed once every 40-50 years.

You could have wearable bioreactors that work on rejuvenating different body parts. A few weeks rejuvenating each limb one at time, and then other body sections. Then a final rejevation of the core body in a whole body tube.




If you could control the locations of recellularization and progressively recellularize the whole body, then it would something like the Star Wars procedure for Luke Skywalker. An old person who be placed into a bioreactor and progressively get every cell rejuvenated






http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/06/concep ... .html#more

[hanelyp]

...
An old person who be placed into a bioreactor and progressively get every cell rejuvenated. This would be an expensive procedure but one that would only need to be performed once every 40-50 years.
...

deja-vu. A web comic I've been reading (http://www.quantumvibe.com/strip) has a major character go through a similar process.

[williatw]

Systemic attenuation of the TGF-β pathway by a single drug simultaneously rejuvenates hippocampal neurogenesis and myogenesis in the same old mammal

ABSTRACT

Stem cell function declines with age largely due to the biochemical imbalances in their tissue niches, and this work demonstrates that aging imposes an elevation in transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) signaling in the neurogenic niche of the hippocampus, analogous to the previously demonstrated changes in the myogenic niche of skeletal muscle with age. Exploring the hypothesis that youthful calibration of key signaling pathways may enhance regeneration of multiple old tissues, we found that systemically attenuating TGF-β signaling with a single drug simultaneously enhanced neurogenesis and muscle regeneration in the same old mice, findings further substantiated via genetic perturbations. At the levels of cellular mechanism, our results establish that the age-specific increase in TGF-β1 in the stem cell niches of aged hippocampus involves microglia and that such an increase is pro-inflammatory both in brain and muscle, as assayed by the elevated expression of β2 microglobulin (B2M), a component of MHC class I molecules. These findings suggest that at high levels typical of aged tissues, TGF-β1 promotes inflammation instead of its canonical role in attenuating immune responses. In agreement with this conclusion, inhibition of TGF-β1 signaling normalized B2M to young levels in both studied tissues.

http://www.impactjournals.com/oncotarge ... B0%5D=3851

[paperburn1]

So where can I get a bottle of this stuff?

[williatw]

So where can I get a bottle of this stuff?

Drug makes old tissue cleverer

TGF-beta1 levels in microglia of the brain
Microglia in the young brain (top) show little TGF-beta1,(green) as opposed to old brain (bottom).

The team then injected into the blood a chemical known to block the TGF-beta1 receptor and thus reduce the effect of TGF-beta1. This small molecule, an Alk5 kinase inhibitor already undergoing trials as an anticancer agent, successfully renewed stem cell function in both brain and muscle tissue of the same old animal, potentially making it stronger and more clever, Conboy said.

http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/05/13/dru ... ng-brains/

They are being cagey about what this "small molecule" drug might be.

[paperburn1]

WE may not live forever but our children may.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/253 ... picks=true

and here is how
http://gizmodo.com/everything-you-need- ... 1702114381
And here is the Boring explanation
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/evolu ... ne-drives/

[DeltaV]

Genes for a longer, healthier life found
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-12-g ... -life.html

[williatw]

New Epigenome Analysis and Engineering Technologies for Reversal of Aging - George Church





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktxCNQ_mNv0

[williatw]

LAUNCHING THE MOONSHOT FOR CANCER 2020

HISTORIC NATIONAL COALITION FORMED TO ACCELERATE NEXT GENERATION IMMUNOTHERAPY IN CANCER

LARGE PHARMA, BIOTECH, MAJOR PAYER, FORTUNE 50 COMPANY, ACADEMIA AND COMMUNITY ONCOLOGISTS JOIN FORCES TO ANNOUNCE LAUNCH OF CANCER MOONSHOT 2020 PROGRAM

LARGE PHARMA, BIOTECH, MAJOR PAYER, FORTUNE 50 COMPANY, ACADEMIA AND COMMUNITY ONCOLOGISTS JOIN FORCES TO ANNOUNCE LAUNCH OF CANCER MOONSHOT 2020 PROGRAM

•Nation’s first insurance coverage of next generation whole genome sequencing and proteomic diagnostic platform in cancer patients‎.

•Next generation sequencing ‎and precision medicine evolving from research to the clinical trial and cancer care setting

•Coalition to design, initiate and complete randomized clinical trials at all stages of cancer in up to 20 tumor types in as many as 20,000 patients in multiple phase 1 to 3 trials by year 2020‎

•Beneficiaries and patients will undergo next-generation molecular sequencing and gain access to over 60 novel and approved molecules to be tested as immunotherapy combinations in 20,000 cancer patients with cancer across all tumor types: The QUILT Program



San Francisco – January 11, 2016 – Today, leaders from large pharma including Celgene and Amgen, biotech including NantWorks, NantKwest, Etubics, Altor Bioscience, and Precision Biologics, major academic cancer centers and community oncologists announced the launch of ‎The National Immunotherapy Coalition (NIC), a historic alliance--in collaboration with Independence Blue Cross, one of the nation’s largest payers and Bank of America, one of the largest self-insured companies in the U.S.--with a singular focus: accelerating the potential of combination immunotherapies as the next generation standard of care in patients with cancer.

This unprecedented collaboration of multinational pharmaceutical, biotechnology companies, academic centers and community oncologists will make possible access to over 60 novel and approved agents under exploration in the war against cancer and will enable rapid testing of novel immunotherapy combination protocols, forming the basis of ‎ The Cancer MoonShot 2020 (http://www.CancerMoonShot2020.org). The NIC will design, initiate and complete randomized clinical trials in cancer patients with cancer at all stages of disease in up to 20 tumor types in as many as 20,000 patients by the year 2020.

http://www.cancermoonshot2020.org/

[choff]

My doctor put me on this stuff.

http://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2 ... ging-drug/

You guys may be stuck with me for a long time.

[williatw]

My doctor put me on this stuff.

http://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2 ... ging-drug/

You guys may be stuck with me for a long time.

Why don't you go for broke old man what you really want from your doctor is metformin and Rapamycin:

The trial aims to test the drug metformin, a common medication often used to treat Type 2 diabetes, and see if it can delay or prevent other chronic diseases. (The project is being called Targeting/Taming Aging With Metformin, or TAME.) Metformin isn’t necessarily more promising than other drugs that have shown signs of extending life and reducing age-related chronic diseases. But metformin has been widely and safely used for more than 60 years, has very few side effects and is inexpensive.

One of the most promising groups of drugs is based on a compound called rapamycin. It was first used to suppress the immune system in organ transplant recipients, then later found to extend lifespan in yeast and worms. In 2009, mice were added to the list when the drug was found to lengthen the animals' lives by up to 14 per cent, even though they were started on the drug at 600 days old, the human equivalent of being about 60.

The most commonly used medicine for type 2 diabetes, metformin, also seems to extend the lifespan of many small animals, including mice, by around 5 per cent.


Rapamycin seems to have a much stronger longevity effect (14% vs 5% for metformin) albeit with more potential negative side-effects.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3504&start=150

[williatw]

My doctor put me on this stuff.

http://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2 ... ging-drug/

You guys may be stuck with me for a long time.

Or if are feeling really bold consider Deprenyl:

Joseph Knoll on his eBook: "How Selegiline ((-)-Deprenyl) Slows Brain Aging"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k52SNt45yzQ


I remember it making a splash as an anti-ageing drug in LEF magazine back in the '90's but haven't heard much lately.

Deprenyl: understudied, little-known anti-aging drug

Deprenyl is a neuro-protective drug discovered in Hungary more than 30 years ago. It has prolonged life span in many rodent studies, and also in dogs. In the 1990s, under the brand name Selegiline(also Eldepryl and Zelapar) it became a standard treatment for Parkinson’s Disease. Parkinson’s patients who take Selegiline live longer than matched patients who take only the other standard treatment (L-Dopa). More recently the same drug (branded as Emsam) has been prescribed for depression and ADD. There is a small cult of people who take it daily for life extension, with good rationale (in my estimation). But it has an effect on mood and personality that not everyone will appreciate.

http://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2 ... ging-drug/