Lifeboat Foundation

Why on Earth would you ever want to be less than completely healthy?

Recently, Reason of Fight Aging! pointed out psychological research revealing a certain conservatism in terms of what people consider to be the “ideal” levels of happiness, intelligence, longevity, and even health.

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that significant numbers of people in the studies weren’t too keen on the idea of living much longer than the average (around 90 years), and even under the assumption of eternal youth, their preference didn’t go past 120 on average; after all, LEAF wouldn’t be in business if the idea of healthy life extension wasn’t so inexplicably frowned upon. What’s really flabbergasting, though, is that even health—health!—is apparently something you can have too much of; on a scale from 0 (“completely unhealthy”) to 100 (“completely healthy”), the average preference gravitated somewhere between 80 and 90. These results provide us with an occasion for reflection.

Continue reading “Too healthy for your own good?” »

Senolytics have been in the news a great deal ever since van Deursen and his team conducted a landmark 2011 study showing that removing senescent cells could delay age-related ill health in mice [1]. Since then, interest in what was once a niche topic has continued to grow at an ever-increasing pace. Now, there are many researchers engaged in exploring senescent cells and their role in aging and disease.

Lately, there has been enthusiastic interest in developing therapies to remove these problematic senescent cells, but are there potentially better ways to deal with senescent cells beyond periodically purging them with senolytic drugs and therapies?

LEAF’s monthly rejuvenation roundup is out!

July is here, and our upcoming conference in New York City is only a handful of days away! If you haven’t done so already, go and get your ticket now so that you can enjoy the June roundup fully relaxed, knowing that your seat is secured.

About our NYC conference

Continue reading “Rejuvenation Roundup June 2018” »

Data from Italian centenarians suggests a “mortality plateau”.

Google sister company Calico and drug giant AbbVie are chipping in another $1 billion to cure diseases associated with aging, the companies said Tuesday.

Senolytics developed by UNITY Biotechnology are currently in Phase-1 clinical trials.

Today we are pleased to announce that UNITY Biotechnology is going into human clinical trials with the first true rejuvenation therapy that directly targets one of the processes of aging: senescent cells.

The quiet revolution

Continue reading “The First Rejuvenation Therapy Reaches Human Trials” »

The secret of life extension from vampires.

Getting older and dying is so inconvenient. Eating a healthy diet and exercising is a good start in warding off death, but if you’re looking to truly up your immortality game, the answer is simple: teen blood. For a whopping $8,000, the old and the wealthy can receive a blood transfusion from a teenager. Yes, you read that right.

At Ambrosia’s clinics in San Francisco and Tampa, Florida, the wrinkled are receiving what founder Dr. Jesse Karmazin simply refers to as a “young blood treatment.” Patients are administered a transfusion of around 0.66 gallons of blood acquired from donors between the ages of 16 and 25.

Continue reading “Why Older People Are Using the Blood of Teenagers to Live Longer” »

Jeanne Louise Calment lived for 122 years and 164 days, the oldest verified age of any person, ever. Her interviews revealed a portrait of the centenarian in high spirits: “I’ve only ever had one wrinkle, and I’m sitting on it,” she told reporters when she turned 110.

Calment died in 1997 in Arles, France, where she spent much of her impressively long life. No one else, according to accurate records, has lived beyond 120 years.

Whether there’s a limit to the human life span is an age-old question. An actuary named Benjamin Gompertz proposed in 1825 that mortality rates accelerate exponentially as we grow older.

Continue reading “A New Study Is Questioning The Limits of Human Lifespan” »

An interview with regenerative medicine luminary Dr. Anthony Atala.

After meeting him at the Astana Global Challenges Summit 2018, we’ve kindly been granted an interview by Dr. Anthony Atala, M.D., Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the W. Boyce Professor and Chair of Urology at Wake Forest University.

Dr. Atala is one of the most influential names in the field of regenerative medicine and biotechnology. His research focuses on growing human cells and tissues for use in transplants, and given the constant dire need for organ donors worldwide, his work is poised to improve—and save—the lives of millions. He and his team have already successfully engineered and transplanted bladders into living patients, and as he’s told us himself, more types of tissue have been engineered and tested in models; hopefully, they will one day be usable in patients as well.

Continue reading “Dr. Anthony Atala — Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine” »