For 25 years, scientists at Northwestern Medicine have been studying people aged 80 years and older – dubbed “SuperAgers” – to uncover what makes them stand out.
In a new study, researchers show that these individuals display memory performance comparable to those at least 30 years younger, defying the long-held belief that cognitive decline is an unavoidable part of aging.
The study was published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia.
Several widely used epigenetic clocks have been developed for mice and other species, but a persistent challenge remains: different mouse clocks often yield inconsistent results. To address this limitation in robustness, we present EnsembleAge, a suite of ensemble-based epigenetic clocks. Leveraging data from over 200 perturbation experiments across multiple tissues, EnsembleAge integrates predictions from multiple penalized models. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that EnsembleAge outperforms existing clocks in detecting both pro-aging and rejuvenating interventions. Furthermore, we introduce EnsembleAge HumanMouse, an extension that enables cross-species analyses, facilitating translational research between mouse models and human studies. Together, these advances underscore the potential of EnsembleAge as a robust tool for identifying and validating interventions that modulate biological aging.
Some experts warn that this radical change may remain out of reach for many, due to societal and economic challenges.
A new study led by researchers from Oxford Population Health has shown that a range of environmental factors, including lifestyle (smoking and physical activity) and living conditions, have a greater impact on health and premature death than our genes.
The researchers used data from nearly half a million UK Biobank participants to assess the influence of 164 environmental factors and genetic risk scores for 22 major diseases on ageing, age-related diseases, and premature death. The study is published in Nature Medicine.
Clinical validation of stem cell reactivation approach positions Pelage as leader in regenerative medicine and aging
LOS ANGELES—(BUSINESS WIRE)— #HairLoss —Pelage Pharmaceuticals, a clinical-stage regenerative medicine company, today announced positive results from its Phase 2a clinical trial of PP405 — a topical therapy for androgenetic alopecia advancing through the FDA clinical development pathway. PP405 is designed to reactivate dormant hair follicle stem cells, offering a potential first-in-class approach for both men and women experiencing hair loss.
In a world first, researchers from Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University have successfully grown human kidney organoids – a synthetic 3D organ culture – using kidney tissue stem cells.
The synthetic kidney organs matured and stayed stable for 34 weeks, which is the longest-lasting and purest set of kidney organoids ever developed.
Prof. Benjamin Dekel, Director of the Pediatric Nephrology Unit and the Stem Cell Research Institute at the Safra Children’s Hospital at Sheba Medical Center and Director of the Sagol Center for Regenerative Medicine at Tel Aviv University led the study. Doctoral student Dr. Michael Namestannikov, a graduate of the Physician-Researcher track at Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Medicine, and Dr. Osnat Cohen-Sontag, a research associate at Sheba Medical Center, participated in the research.
What would you do if medicine offered no answers?
Liz Parrish didn’t wait for FDA approval. She became the first person in the world to take multiple gene therapies, using her own body to test a future that medicine wasn’t ready for.
Since then, she’s taken 10 gene therapies, helped over 300 people treat conditions once considered untreatable, and challenged one of the biggest assumptions in healthcare:
👉 Should we treat aging the same way we treat disease?
In this talk, Liz shares how her personal decision created ripple effects across the world — and why gene therapy may be the first real step toward extending not just health span, but lifespan.
What you’ll hear:
The venerable Ralph Merkle joins Max Marty on stage at Vitalist Bay.
Key topics covered:
- Why cryonics is still “0.00001%” of people despite decades of advocacy — and Merkle’s admission that believing rational arguments would work was his biggest mistake.
- The wild Dora Kent story.
- The organizational split in 1992 that affected growth for over a decade.
- Why Merkle’s success probability hasn’t changed since the 80s.
- Whether preserving your information pattern is enough or if you need “continuity of consciousness”.
And more.
Links:
• Cryosphere Discord server: https://discord.com/invite/ndshSfQwqz.
• Cryonics subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/cryonics/
In a major new finding almost a decade in the making, researchers at Harvard Medical School say they’ve found a key that may unlock many of the mysteries of Alzheimer’s disease and brain aging — the humble metal lithium.
Lithium is best known to medicine as a mood stabilizer given to people who have bipolar disorder and depression. It was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1970, but it was used by doctors to treat mood disorders for nearly a century beforehand.
Now, for the first time, researchers have shown that lithium is naturally present in the body in tiny amounts and that cells require it to function normally — much like vitamin C or iron. It also appears to play a critical role in maintaining brain health.