The topic for the December Journal Club was the recently published paper Fisetin is a senotherapeutic that extends health and lifespan. This commonly available supplement, a plant-based polyphenol, appears to influence aging in mice by clearing senescent cells, which are one of the hallmarks of aging.
There is certainly plenty of justification for moving this compound to human trials where reliable data can be recorded and to see if the effects observed in mice and human cell lines are seen in people. We discuss how running human studies offers low-hanging fruit and could be reasonably easy and safe to do given its superb safety profile.
If you would like to take a look at the data yourself, you can find the open access paper here.
Literature
Yousefzadeh, M. J., Zhu, Y., McGowan, S. J., Angelini, L., Fuhrmann-Stroissnigg, H., Xu, M., … & McGuckian, C. (2018). Fisetin is a senotherapeutic that extends health and lifespan. EBioMedicine, 36, 18-28.
Oliver Medvedik, Co-founder of
Genspace citizen science laboratory in Brooklyn NY, earned his Ph.D. at Harvard Medical School in the Biomedical and Biological Sciences program. As part of his doctoral work he has used single-celled budding yeast as a model system to map the genetic pathways that underlie the processes of aging in more complex organisms, such as humans.
Prior to arriving in Boston for his doctoral studies, he has lived most of his life in New York City. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in biology from Hunter College, City University of New York. Since graduating from Harvard, he has worked as a biotechnology consultant, taught molecular biology to numerous undergraduates at Harvard University and mentored two of Harvard’s teams for the international genetically engineered machines competition (IGEM) held annually at M.I.T.
Oliver is also the Director of
The Maurice Kanbar Center for Biomedical Engineering at the Cooper Union, New York City. The Maurice Kanbar Center for Biomedical Engineering is open to all Cooper Union faculty and students working on bioengineering projects requiring equipment and space for tissue culture, genetic engineering, biomechanics, and related research. Faculty that is currently using the facility are pursuing groundbreaking biomedical research in such fields as biomedical devices, tissue engineering, obstructive sleep apnea biomechanics also collaborating with several major New York City-based hospitals. The Kanbar Center continues to provide space for undergraduate teams participating in the international genetically engineered competition (iGEM) during the summer, as well as space for courses that offer a biological laboratory component.
5 Comments
Homnes
December 19, 2018
Thank you for these interesting prospects !
What do you think the results of using Fisetin will be on fitness and health for an average fit 60 years old person ?
Robert
January 1, 2019
Yea, I’d like to know the answer to this question as well since I will be 60 at end of year also.
Cure
January 7, 2019
Post a list of research projects that would be good to work on.
Oliver Medvedik
January 8, 2019
After reading a number of articles on fisetin, I am very optimistic about it’s translation to human health. I’m currently doing some more digging to see what would be a good dose, along with an appropriate carrier, for human testing. I think that a high enough dose mixed with a carrier that ensures optimal bioavailability, ie. blood delivery, taken for a relatively short length of time should have measurably beneficial effects if everything that has been published regarding animal trials is directly translatable. The extremely low toxicity of the compound, with no acute toxicities noted , and that people have been taking lower doses as supplements for long periods of time with no ill effects that I am aware of bodes very well for a much higher dosage trial. Either it will work or it won’t.
Steve Hill
January 8, 2019
It could be the low hanging fruit as we talked about last Journal Club I hope the data for it comes out soon. Scripps published D&Q data late last year too I will send the paper over, its an n=14 human study.
Write a comment: