Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

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williatw
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by williatw »

kurt9 wrote:I told my wife about this last night. I have my doubts about telomere shortening being the cause of aging (I think its mostly mitochondrial DNA damage and a few other things - essentially the SENS hypothesis). However, I read Dr. Fossel's book, which argues rather persuasively that telomere shortening is the cause of aging. We'll know in another year or two.
Even if it (the Telomerase) therapy doesn't "cure aging" I would settle for a 25% increase in life expectancy (the claimed result in old mice given the therapy according to the video). Roughly comparable results in humans would work out to well over a decade increase in life expectancy. And of course there are others working on stem cell therapies, replacement organ "bio printing", senolytic therapies to remove senescent cells, etc. that will advance during your extended life. Aubrey Degrey has estimated that there is only a few years difference in age between the first person who will live to be 150 and the first one who will live to be a 1000; and that both are likely alive right now.

Update from different source:

In the current study, a component of telomerase, mTERT, increased lifespan by 24 percent in mice treated at one years of age and by 13 percent in mice treated at two years of age. Researchers used an adeno-associated virus to introduce the mTERT gene therapy to the aged mice. Accessible to a large range of tissues, the authors reported significant improvements in many independent biomarkers of aging.

http://www.isagenixhealth.net/telomeras ... n-in-mice/

So a middle age mouse benefits more than an old mouse does; hardly surprising. Using the lower figure 13% X 78.74(life exp. 2012 U.S.) yields approx. 10years. So maybe some hundreds of thousand dollars or more for a 10yr improvement if your really old and maybe almost twice that if you are younger; assuming mouse results translate to humans, and not counting other unrelated longevity treatments one might be getting.



kurt9 wrote:In which case, it looks like my wife and I will be taking our summer holiday in Fiji either next year or in summer of 2018.
If this is really "garage-level" level biochemistry than given sufficient funding you should be able to scale it up very quickly; costs will also rapidly decline if this really works in humans.
Last edited by williatw on Wed May 25, 2016 1:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

Diogenes
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by Diogenes »

TDPerk wrote:@ Kurt9
Diogenes wrote:Ah, Libertarians. :)
Because some people have a problem with liberty.

Yes, they seem to think it consists of Drugs and Sexual excess.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

Diogenes
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by Diogenes »

Betruger wrote: Nietzche or not, it is the freedom to choose. The freedom to have time to find oneself, instead of being crushed under the political steamroller of material scarcity and the rube goldberg clap trap that society has built around the false pretense that people must die so soon.

The freedom to engineer themselves or to reach the peaceful acceptance of their mortality. The freedom to choose, IN THEIR OWN TIME.

Human existence under the current state, under the bondage of society, is a caricature of what it ultimately must be even if only to become something else afterwards. Curing aging is a means to that end. It reveals many of the artifices, of the hitherto "meanings" of life for what they are, under the influence of the pro-aging trance, and it forces people to face their true selves in the greater cosmic context. Some will understand it and others won't.
There is no obligation, only opportunity.

It's an imperative for all the right humane reasons and denying it for the sake of status quo is like that saying - living to eat instead of eating to live.


It is difficult to reply to such an argument. But I think this is probably a better response than I could have made.


https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/20 ... gs-slaves/
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

Diogenes
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by Diogenes »

williatw wrote:
Very essence of conservatism seems to be a deep seated fear of change;

No, it is an opposition to change that shows no indication of being an improvement. Conservatism is not opposition to change, it is opposition to meaningless or detrimental change. It is opposition to not improving things, or making them worse instead of better.





williatw wrote:
status quo 150K dying a day is "reassuring" in that it (death) is the way it has always been and deep seated fear/suspicion of what would happen if it (death) ever left us.

What is reassuring about it is that it applies to the powerful too. They already have enough of a leg up on the rest of us. One can hardly pry their unearned money and influence away from them nowadays, imagine how much harder it would be if they were to always remain strong and vibrant.





williatw wrote:
And it is not just curing aging and/or delaying death; as I have stated, given the ability to repair/replace will come the inevitable "upgrades" both physical and mental. Initially just to further reduce death rates improve health beyond reversing/preventing aging, but at some point the improvements will be for their own sake. One must wonder if that process of upgrading continues apiece, will what is left at some point even be human any longer; at least in terms of how most of us would define the term for whatever that is worth. Must confess to ambivalent feelings about that idea.

Perhaps they will evolve into machines? Perhaps this is how Skynet begins. :)
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

Diogenes
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by Diogenes »

kurt9 wrote:Something else you need to know. Bioviva is essentially a "garage-level" effort, sort of like the two Steves in 1977. All of Bioviva's gene therapies were developed for a measly $250K and her home is listed as the business address. I and my contacts in Asia could come up with $250K if our lives depended on it. If I had an idea for repairing mitochondrial DNA that is not already being worked on (they already are), my friends and I would do it ourselves.

The significance of this is that bio-engineering and by implication, radical life extension, is a "garage-level" DIY activity. This, of course, renders political "debate" about the "ethics" of life extension irrelevant. If small groups of people (like me and my Asian contacts) can develop life extension on our own, why the f**k do we need to "debate" it with anyone? We just do it.

My slogan iss: I don't have to convince you of anything. I just have to do it.

And let us hope this assessment is correct. Let us also hope that it becomes sufficiently ubiquitous in knowledge and materials such that they cannot outlaw it.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

williatw
Posts: 1912
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by williatw »

Diogenes wrote:
williatw wrote:
Very essence of conservatism seems to be a deep seated fear of change;

No, it is an opposition to change that shows no indication of being an improvement. Conservatism is not opposition to change, it is opposition to meaningless or detrimental change. It is opposition to not improving things, or making them worse instead of better.


Ahh..but as I am sure you well know almost any significant change can potentially be detrimental so it quickly defaults to fear of just about any non-trivial change. Even good changes like largely eradicating smallpox from a large part of the world by the first half of the 20th century no doubt had the negative consequence of exacerbating the population explosion in the 2nd half of the 20th Century for instance. Best case scenario is where positive consequences out weight negative consequences.
williatw wrote:
status quo 150K dying a day is "reassuring" in that it (death) is the way it has always been and deep seated fear/suspicion of what would happen if it (death) ever left us.
Diogenes wrote:What is reassuring about it is that it applies to the powerful too. They already have enough of a leg up on the rest of us. One can hardly pry their unearned money and influence away from them nowadays, imagine how much harder it would be if they were to always remain strong and vibrant.


Perhaps..but the same technology that would keep us alive would also much more easily devise ways of killing us. And that would apply to the high and mighty, who although better protected would also likely be bigger targets; don't forget all those who covet what they have, impatiently waiting for what they perceive as their "deserved" inheritance. To say nothing of the straight up revolutionary/terrorist types. We are not talking about true immortality, those long lived will still be very mortal.

Diogenes wrote:Perhaps they will evolve into machines? Perhaps this is how Skynet begins. :)
Yeah..probably inevitably; although they might still look like impossibly "beautiful" high performing idealized versions of human beings, but inside their "guts" increasingly bio-mechanical and/or nano-tech. Just perfect for interacting with and controlling (or being controlled) by the robotic drones/computers etc. around them.
Last edited by williatw on Wed May 25, 2016 1:35 am, edited 2 times in total.

williatw
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by williatw »

Diogenes wrote:And let us hope this assessment is correct. Let us also hope that it becomes sufficiently ubiquitous in knowledge and materials such that they cannot outlaw it.
Let's say this works out. Does that mean you and Mrs. Diogenes might be taking a Fiji "vacation" in the next few years?

Diogenes
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by Diogenes »

williatw wrote:
Diogenes wrote:And let us hope this assessment is correct. Let us also hope that it becomes sufficiently ubiquitous in knowledge and materials such that they cannot outlaw it.
Let's say this works out. Does that mean you and Mrs. Diogenes might be taking a Fiji "vacation" in the next few years?

I don't know of anyone who would not attempt to extend their life and health. Of course I and my family would pursue such a course if it became possible.


Perhaps this will even provide an Impetus to speed colonization of Mars and/or Venus? We will certainly have to find some sort of solution for the extra population that this would produce.


Let us hope it is a voluntary solution, and not a final one.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

williatw
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by williatw »

Diogenes wrote:I don't know of anyone who would not attempt to extend their life and health. Of course I and my family would pursue such a course if it became possible.


Good glad to here your conservative bias against change doesn't cloud your self-interest; nothing wrong with self interest per see; I believe that altruism is nothing more than selfishness taking the long view (don't know who said that first).

Diogenes wrote: We will certainly have to find some sort of solution for the extra population that this would produce.


As live expectancies increase populations tend to stabilize and eventually decline look at what is happening in Europe and especially Japan; longest life expectancy in the world (or close to it) and a collapsing demographic. Don't think you have to worry about the "population explosion" ; we are talking about achieving actuarial escape velocity not immortality. True immortality doesn't exist "Dio" and likely never will.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity_escape_velocity

Diogenes wrote: Perhaps this will even provide an Impetus to speed colonization of Mars and/or Venus? Let us hope it is a voluntary solution, and not a final one.
An affluent high-tech long lived population would eventually immigrate to designer space colonies probably at some point; earth in the centuries to come with a declining (not growing) population would increasingly become like a big national park with maybe a few large cities left; more for the tourist to experience; most of the long lived well-to-do living in the aforementioned space colonies inhabiting a ring roughly in earth's orbit around the Sun, the internal environment within probably modeled after the most attractive regions on Earth. The start of the eventual Dyson Swarm of our own.

DeltaV
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by DeltaV »

Avemar (Fermented Wheat Germ Extract) for various types of cancer:

(Click "References")
https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integ ... m-extract#

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20155632

Diogenes
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by Diogenes »

williatw wrote:
Diogenes wrote:I don't know of anyone who would not attempt to extend their life and health. Of course I and my family would pursue such a course if it became possible.


Good glad to here your conservative bias against change doesn't cloud your self-interest;



I have no bias against "change". I have a bias against D@mn fool ideas that people call "change" but which are not any sort of progress as measured by any objective measure.

williatw wrote: nothing wrong with self interest per see; I believe that altruism is nothing more than selfishness taking the long view (don't know who said that first).



Altruism is acting in the belief that there is something greater than oneself. Would that we could see more of that.



williatw wrote:
Diogenes wrote: Perhaps this will even provide an Impetus to speed colonization of Mars and/or Venus? Let us hope it is a voluntary solution, and not a final one.
An affluent high-tech long lived population would eventually immigrate to designer space colonies probably at some point;

I think I saw that movie.

Image



Didn't seem to turn out all that well.

williatw wrote: earth in the centuries to come with a declining (not growing) population would increasingly become like a big national park with maybe a few large cities left; more for the tourist to experience; most of the long lived well-to-do living in the aforementioned space colonies inhabiting a ring roughly in earth's orbit around the Sun, the internal environment within probably modeled after the most attractive regions on Earth. The start of the eventual Dyson Swarm of our own.

Can I come and live in your world? The view would seem to be so much better than what I see from the window of my mind's eye. :)
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

williatw
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by williatw »

Diogenes wrote:Can I come and live in your world? The view would seem to be so much better than what I see from the window of my mind's eye. :)

The problem Diogenes is that you tend to be a pessimist who thinks of himself as a realist; a common psychological tendency of pessimism IMHO. Most optimists at least perceive their bias most pessimists don't. For instance you concede the demographic "collapse" occurring in Europe and especially Japan but only see it from a negative point of view. You seem to intentionally miss the point that is shows that an increasing life expectancy in the developed world seems to produce declining population not an explosion. This strongly implies that increasing the life expectancy/affluence world wide would be the best answer to those concerned with the population explosion; the demographic problems would actually improve over time (eventually).


There needs to be a cull of Malthusians every five years or so. In the interests of preventing overpopulation. And a pretty memorial to these heroes.
– Antoine Clarke

http://www.samizdata.net/2016/05/samizd ... e-day-701/

DeltaV
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by DeltaV »

Diogenes wrote:I think I saw that movie.

Image



Didn't seem to turn out all that well.
Huh? The underdog rebels won!

Diogenes
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by Diogenes »

williatw wrote:
Diogenes wrote:Can I come and live in your world? The view would seem to be so much better than what I see from the window of my mind's eye. :)

The problem Diogenes is that you tend to be a pessimist who thinks of himself as a realist; a common psychological tendency of pessimism IMHO. Most optimists at least perceive their bias most pessimists don't. For instance you concede the demographic "collapse" occurring in Europe and especially Japan but only see it from a negative point of view. You seem to intentionally miss the point that is shows that an increasing life expectancy in the developed world seems to produce declining population not an explosion. This strongly implies that increasing the life expectancy/affluence world wide would be the best answer to those concerned with the population explosion; the demographic problems would actually improve over time (eventually).


I sometimes wonder if I am being too cynical, but then reality usually comes along and gives me a good smack to remind me that one cannot be too cynical.


I am optimistic about some things, but not regarding society or culture. We are heading into Roman territory right now, but during an era replete with nukes, bio-weapons, and incredible toxins. Have you ever read the book " When war comes" ?


Yes, our science and technology get better, but our management of society has just been getting worse. We have become barbarians with a near infinite ability to kill each other.



williatw wrote: There needs to be a cull of Malthusians every five years or so. In the interests of preventing overpopulation. And a pretty memorial to these heroes.
– Antoine Clarke

http://www.samizdata.net/2016/05/samizd ... e-day-701/

Now that is a good quote. I have long thought that Liberalism is just a form of Malthusian philosophy. There is a lot of overlap.

Liberals think there are too many people. Check.

Liberals support abortion, which eliminates people. Check.

Liberals support homosexuality, which prevents making people. Check.

Liberals support gun control, which helps to cull the population due to murder. Check.

Liberals would rather supply water to the Delta Smelt than it would to farmers who grow food for people. Check.


And so on. Them being Malthusians would explain a lot. All of their ideas and policies seem to be geared towards reducing the human population.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

williatw
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Re: Factor X have we finally found the fountain of Youth?

Post by williatw »

Image

Engineers design programmable RNA vaccines

Tests in mice show the vaccines work against Ebola, influenza, and a common parasite.


Anne Trafton | MIT News Office
July 4, 2016


This nanoformulation approach allows us to make vaccines against new diseases in only seven days, allowing the potential to deal with sudden outbreaks or make rapid modifications and improvements,” says Daniel Anderson, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES).
Tests in mice show the vaccines work against Ebola, influenza, and a common parasite.


MIT engineers have developed a new type of easily customizable vaccine that can be manufactured in one week, allowing it to be rapidly deployed in response to disease outbreaks. So far, they have designed vaccines against Ebola, H1N1 influenza, and Toxoplasma gondii (a relative of the parasite that causes malaria), which were 100 percent effective in tests in mice.

The vaccine consists of strands of genetic material known as messenger RNA, which can be designed to code for any viral, bacterial, or parasitic protein. These molecules are then packaged into a molecule that delivers the RNA into cells, where it is translated into proteins that provoke an immune response from the host.

In addition to targeting infectious diseases, the researchers are using this approach to create cancer vaccines that would teach the immune system to recognize and destroy tumors.

“This nanoformulation approach allows us to make vaccines against new diseases in only seven days, allowing the potential to deal with sudden outbreaks or make rapid modifications and improvements,” says Daniel Anderson, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES).

Anderson is the senior author of a paper describing the new vaccines in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of July 4. The project was led by Jasdave Chahal, a postdoc at MIT’s Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and Omar Khan, a postdoc at the Koch Institute; both are the first authors of the paper.

Customizable vaccines

Most traditional vaccines consist of an inactivated form of a virus or other pathogen. These vaccines usually take a long time to manufacture, and for some diseases they are too risky. Other vaccines consist of proteins normally produced by the microbe, but these don’t always induce a strong immune response, requiring researchers to seek an adjuvant (a chemical that enhances the response).

RNA vaccines are appealing because they induce host cells to produce many copies of the proteins they encode, which provokes a stronger immune reaction than if the proteins were given on their own. The idea of using messenger RNA molecules as vaccines has been around for about 30 years, but one of the major obstacles has been finding a safe and effective way to deliver them.

Khan decided to package RNA vaccines into a nanoparticle made from a branched molecule known as a dendrimer. One key advantage of this material is that the researchers can give it a temporary positive charge, which allows it to form close associations with RNA, which is negatively charged. Khan can also control the size and pattern of the final structure. By inducing the dendrimer-RNA structure to fold over itself many times, Khan generated spherical vaccine particles with a diameter of about 150 nanometers. That makes them of similar size as many viruses, enabling the particles to enter cells by exploiting the same surface proteins that viruses use for this purpose.

By customizing the RNA sequences, the researchers can design vaccines that produce nearly any protein they want. The RNA molecules also include instructions for amplification of the RNA, so that the cell will produce even more of the protein.

The vaccine is designed to be delivered by intramuscular injection, making it easy to administer. Once the particles get into cells, the RNA is translated into proteins that are released and stimulate the immune system. Significantly, the vaccines were able to stimulate both arms of the immune system — a T cell response and an antibody response.

In tests in mice, animals that received a single dose of one of the vaccines showed no symptoms following exposure to the real pathogen — Ebola, H1N1 influenza, or Toxoplasma gondii.

“No matter what antigen we picked, we were able to drive the full antibody and T cell responses,” Khan says.

The researchers also believe that their vaccines would be safer than DNA vaccines, another alternative that scientists are pursuing, because unlike DNA, RNA cannot be integrated into the host genome and cause mutations.

“The option of rapidly creating a completely synthetic formulation that can be effective as a vaccine is an important addition to currently available vaccine strategies,” says Hidde Ploegh, an MIT professor of biology, a member of the Whitehead Institute, and an author of the paper, who added that it will be important to assess safety and cost.

Rapid deployment

The ability to rapidly design and manufacture these vaccines could be especially beneficial for fighting influenza, because the most common flu vaccine manufacturing method, which requires the viruses to be grown inside chicken eggs, takes months. This means that when an unexpected flu strain appears, such as the 2009 pandemic-causing H1N1 virus, there is no way to rapidly produce a vaccine against it.

“Typically a vaccine becomes available long after the outbreak is over,” Chahal says. “We think we can become interventional over the course of a real outbreak.”

Joseph Rosen, a professor of surgery at Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine and adjunct professor of engineering at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering, describes the new approach to vaccine development as “revolutionary,” because it could dramatically reduce the amount of time needed to respond to disease outbreak.

“This could not only be applicable to the bugs they talked about, but could also be applicable for something even more important, which is an unknown virus,” says Rosen, who was not involved in the research. “In response to a pandemic, whether natural, accidental, or intentional, they could produce a vaccine in a week.”

Khan and Chahal plan to start a company to license and commercialize the technology. In addition to the vaccines they have already designed, they hope to create vaccines for Zika virus and Lyme disease.

They are also working on cancer vaccines. At a recent “Mission: Possible” competition hosted by the Koch Institute, Khan and Chahal were part of a team that ended up withdrawing from the competition because an outside funder, the Advanced Medical Research Foundation, offered to support them.

For that project, the researchers designed vaccines that target genes that are normally turned on only during embryonic development. These genes, dormant in adults, often become reactivated in a type of cancer known as non-small cell lung tumors.

“We are all excited about the potential of this new approach to provide a new way of vaccine delivery,” says Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT and an author of the paper.

Other authors of the paper include Whitehead Institute researchers Justine McPartlan, Lucas Tilley, Saima Sidik, and Sebastian Lourido; Koch Institute technical assistant Jonathan Tsosie; and U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases researchers Christopher Cooper and Sina Bavari.

The research was funded by the Department of Defense Office of Congressionally Directed Medical Research’s Joint Warfighter Medical Research Program, MediVector Inc., the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency/Joint Science and Technology Office program in vaccines and pre-treatments.
This is almost incalculable huge if it pans out.

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