Lifeboat Foundation

A triple drug combination has been used to extend the lifespan of fruit flies by 48% in a new study led by UCL and the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing.

The three drugs are all already in use as medical treatments: lithium as a mood stabiliser, trametinib as a cancer treatment and rapamycin as an immune system regulator.

The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), suggest that a combination drug treatment may one day be helpful at preventing age-related diseases in people.

Click on photo to start video.

A follow on study from their previous human trial targeting IPF. This time the researchers ran a study to see how senolytics influenced diabetic kidney disease and if it actually removes senescent cells in humans.

Senescent cells, which can release factors that cause inflammation and dysfunction, the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP), accumulate with ageing and at etiological sites in multiple chronic diseases. Senolytics, including the combination of Dasatinib and Quercetin (D + Q), selectively eliminate senescent cells by transiently disabling pro-survival networks that defend them against their own apoptotic environment. In the first clinical trial of senolytics, D + Q improved physical function in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a fatal senescence-associated disease, but to date, no peer-reviewed study has directly demonstrated that senolytics decrease senescent cells in humans.

Continue reading “For the September Journal Club we are taking a look at the new human trial data from the recent senolytics trial at the Mayo Clinic” »

At our 2019 Ending Age-related Diseases conference in New York City, we had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Michael West, the CEO of AgeX Therapeutics.

Dr. West can rightfully be called a pioneer in his field with a substantial background in biomedical and biotechnology corporations. After completing his PhD at Baylor College of Medicine, he founded Geron Corporation in 1990, where he launched and directed programs in telomere biology as it relates to cancer, aging, and human embryonic stem cell technology. He subsequently established the research group that went on to isolate human embryonic stem cells for the first time.

Continue reading “An Interview with Dr. Michael West” »

Humanity+ is the world’s largest transhumanist organization that advocates ethical use of technology and evidence-based science for radical life extension.

Aging is the biggest risk factor for cancer, but the mechanisms linking these two processes remain unclear. Using GTEx and TCGA data, we compared genes differentially expressed with age and genes differentially expressed in cancer among nine human tissues. In most tissues, aging and cancer gene expression pattern changed in the opposite direction. The exception was thyroid and uterus, where we found transcriptomic changes in the same direction in aging and in their corresponding cancers. The overlapping sets between genes differentially expressed with age and genes differentially expressed in cancer across tissues were enriched for several processes, mainly cell cycle and the immune system. Moreover, cellular senescence signatures, derived from a meta‐analysis, changed in the same direction as aging in human tissues and in the opposite direction of cancer signatures. Therefore, transcriptomic changes in aging and in cellular senescence might relate to a decrease in cell proliferation, while cancer transcriptomic changes shift toward enhanced cell division. Our results highlight the complex relationship between aging and cancer and suggest that, while in general aging processes might be opposite to cancer, the transcriptomic links between human aging and cancer are tissue‐specific.

Great Diet Information: #Longevity

Inflammation is also called the silent killer. It is silent because as your body struggles with inflammation, it also does all it can to maintain balance. This means that symptoms are sometimes hard to decipher and can even be hidden for some time.

Inflammation can be a good thing

Continue reading “Top 21 Anti Inflammatory Foods You Need To Add To Your Diet” »

Researchers at the Buck Institute, including Dr. Judy Campisi, have published a new study that shows, for the first time, that senescent cells are associated with age-related blood clots [1].

As we get older, increasing numbers of our cells enter into a state known as cellular senescence. Senescent cells do not divide or support the tissues of which they are part; instead, they emit a range of potentially harmful chemical signals known as the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP), which encourages nearby healthy cells to enter the same senescent state.

The presence of high levels of SASP reduces tissue repair, increases chronic inflammation, and can even raise the risk of cancer and other age-related diseases.

A new study shows that scientists might be able to not only slow the process of aging but actually reverse it, Benjamin Button-style.

Volunteers in a California study were given a cocktail of three common drugs for one year— a growth hormone and two diabetes medications. Scientists had been testing the drugs in the hope of regenerating the thymus gland.

But upon further analysis, they found that participants had lost an average of 2.5 years on their “epigenetic clock,” measured by analyzing marks on a person’s genomes, according to the journal Nature. Participants’ immune systems also showed signs of rejuvenation.