A small update from the MMTP project team following meeting the lead investigator Dr. Alexandra Stolzing in Berlin recently.
Hi everyone, it has been a while and as we have recently spoken to Dr. Alexandra Stolzing at the Undoing Aging conference in Berlin about the MMTP we wanted to give a small update.
Dr. Stolzing has advised that the project is still going through the animal welfare review and regulatory process in Germany. The fact it has taken so long is deeply frustrating to the entire research team as well those people such as me who helped get the project started. We have spoken to a number of our backers about the challenge we are facing to launch the mouse testing phase of the experiment and they share our frustration too. Dr. Stolzing is determined to continue pushing to get this study approved and through the strict regulations here in the European Union. We can only apologize for this disappointing delay to the experiment but we are working hard to get things started.
The positive news is while we were waiting the research team decided to conduct an in vitro study on various human cell lines testing combinations of senolytic compounds up to three at once to see if there were synergistic or additive effects from mixing the compounds into senolytic “cocktails”. The idea behind the cocktails approach is based on the hypothesis proposed by Dr. Peter de Keizer which suggests that because different types of senescent cells use different pro-survival pathways to evade destruction, no single senolytic can remove them all. In using multiple senolytics which each target a different pro-survival pathway the hope was to get a more thorough senescent cell clearance.
We have now finished this in vitro study and a student from the research team is currently summarizing the data for his Ph.D. Once this is done the team will write the paper and it will be submitted to a journal for publication, the data at this point will be open access for everyone to enjoy. We hope that conducting this useful in vitro study will go some way towards making up for the delay on the mouse phase of the experiment and we will keep you posted on progress as more information comes in from Dr. Stolzing and her research team.
Thank you once again to all our generous supporters who helped make the project a reality, and we hope that it leads to some interesting results once the research team publishes its findings.
Thanks
The MMTP Team
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