Genetic and epigenetic studies abound this month, with a small molecule study making waves throughout the rejuvenation world. Let’s see what’s happened in July.
LEAF News
Peter Fedichev Explains His Theory of Aging: Peter Fedichev, co-founder and CEO of Gero, is a relative newcomer to the field of geroscience with a background in physics and not in biology. However, Peter has firmly established himself and Gero in the longevity landscape by twice publishing in Nature, entering a lucrative collaboration with Pfizer, and proposing a new aging-related theory.
How Life Noggin Educates Millions – Pat Graziosi aka Blocko: In this episode of Making Time, host Ryan O’Shea sits down with Pat Graziosi, the creative mind behind the hugely popular educational YouTube channel, Life Noggin, and the voice of its main character, Blocko.
Journal Club
Editing Mitochondrial DNA: The Journal Club returned on 25th July at 12:00 Eastern time to the Lifespan.io Facebook channel. Editing mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has long been a challenge and systems such as CRISPR, which make editing regular DNA faster and easier, are very difficult to use when it comes to mtDNA.
Advocacy and Analysis
Free Courses in Longevity Medicine: One of the challenges of making longevity and rejuvenation research a mainstream field is getting it accepted into healthcare practice. It turns out that healthcare professionals are often not aware of the amazing things being developed in labs right now.
Longevity and DeSci Recap – July 2023: We’re back with the latest edition of the brand-new Longevity and DeSci Recap. Here, you’ll find the latest interviews, insights, and research in the longevity tech sphere, covering topics such as blockchain, DAOs, cryptocurrency, DeSci, and events that have been happening over the past month.
Research Roundup
Stem Cell Signals Encourage Blood Vessel Formation in Mice: Researchers publishing in Aging have outlined how biochemical signals derived from created stem cells encourage blood vessels to form new branches in naturally aged mice.
Taurine Increases Median Lifespan in Mice by 12%: In a new study published in Science, taurine supplementation led to a significant lifespan extension in mice and health benefits in non-human primates.
Microbial Composition May Affect Lifespan: New research published in Scientific Reports suggests that microbes in the human gut and mouth can impact how long people live. Bacteria and other microbes are often associated with diseases, but disease-causing microbes are only a minority. The majority of microbes are harmless or beneficial to humans.
Creatine on the Brain: A Review: A review recently published in Sports Medicine has discussed a considerable number of research papers that describe the effects of the muscle-building supplement creatine on the brain.
Cellular Senescence Drives Regeneration in Cnidarians: Scientists have demonstrated that full-body regeneration in cnidarians, a group of animals that includes the jellyfish and hydra, can be driven by signals from senescent cells. This might be the original purpose of cellular senescence.
The Longevity Factor Klotho Improves Memory in Monkeys: Researchers have explained in Nature Aging how klotho, a factor associated with longevity, improves the cognitive abilities of rhesus macaques. Klotho had previously been found to improve cognitive function in mice.
Using Proteins and RNA to Determine How Old You Are: A paper published in Aging goes into detail about the proteins and RNA pieces that increase and decrease with aging, suggesting a multiple-clock approach to biomarkers.
Better Health in Older Adults, One Step at a Time: Research published in Experimental Gerontology suggests that even smaller amounts of daily physical activity can benefit people over 60.
Senolytics Restore Regeneration in Killifish: Researchers publishing in npj regenerative medicine have found that destroying senescent cells through a well-known senolytic combination gives older killifish back some of their regenerative abilities.
Aerobic, Resistance Training Differently Affect Skin Aging: According to a study published in Nature Scientific Reports, while both aerobic and resistance exercise improve some aspects of skin aging, only the latter is able to increase skin thickness.
Making Genetically Engineered Stem Cells Viable: Researchers publishing in Cell Stem Cell have announced a new method of accurately and rapidly cloning genetically engineered stem cells. While the accuracy of genetic modification through the well-known CRISPR/Cas9 system continues to improve, the technology remains imperfect.
Rejuvenating Cells Using A New Small Molecule Approach: A team led by renowned Harvard geroscientists David Sinclair and Vadim Gladyshev has reported successful chemically induced partial cellular reprogramming in vitro. The researchers have also developed a novel cellular rejuvenation assay.
Finding The Genes for Longevity in Mammals: Researchers have analyzed the activity of genes in the livers, kidneys, and brains of over a hundred mammals and found genes that are consistently associated with longevity. Between the shortest-living and the longest-living mammal, there is a more than 100-fold difference in lifespan.
Repairing the Long-Term Damage of Smoking: Researchers publishing in Aging Cell have described how treating the increased senescent cell burden that comes with cigarette smoke exposure can repair some of the damage.
New System-Specific Epigenetic Clocks Revealed: A group of researchers led by Morgan Levine of Altos Labs has created a set of methylation clocks that can detect various aging patterns.
Metformin Protects Against Muscle Atrophy in Clinical Trial: Researchers publishing in Aging Cell have documented a human clinical trial showing that metformin reduces atrophy caused by long periods of bed rest. Long periods of disuse cause muscles to atrophy and accelerate the age-related muscle wasting known as sarcopenia.
Review Links Statins to Insulin Resistance and Diabetes: A systematic review lends support to the idea that statins, which are life-saving, cholesterol-lowering drugs, are associated with an increased risk of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
Vigorous Weekend Exercise May Be Enough: A study suggests that “weekend warriors”, people who only exercise for one or two days a week, enjoy similar cardiovascular benefits as those who exercise more regularly.
Some Age-Related Gene Expression Changes May Extend Life: In a recent paper published in Nucleic Acids Research, researchers analyzed the organs of several mammalian species, exploring gene expression patterns associated with maximum lifespan and finding surprising correlations.
Psychedelic Drugs for Alzheimer’s Treatment: A review article published in European Neuropsychopharmacology has described how and why psychedelic compounds may be useful in treating neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Young Brain Cells Outcompete Old Cells in a Mouse Model: In a mouse model of Huntington’s disease, scientists showed that injected young healthy brain cells can outcompete and eventually replace old, diseased ones. The results might be relevant for other neurodegenerative diseases.
Genetically Engineering Cells to Respond to Electricity: A paper published in Nature Metabolism has described a method of genetically engineering cells to respond to electrical stimuli, allowing for on-demand gene expression.
Rejuvenating effects of young extracellular vesicles in aged rats and in cellular models of human senescence: This work not only identifies extracellular vesicles (EVs) as possible therapeutic candidates for a wide range of age-related pathologies, but also raises the question of whether EVs function as endogenous modulators of senescence.
Embryonic stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles rejuvenate senescent cells and antagonize aging in mice: These findings demonstrate that extracellular vesicle treatment can rejuvenate senescence both in vitro and in vivo and suggest their therapeutic potential.
Delayed-release rapamycin halts progression of left ventricular hypertrophy in subclinical feline hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: At day 180, the primary study outcome variable, maximum LV myocardial wall thickness at any location, was significantly lower in the low-dose DR rapamycin group compared to placebo.
Rutin is a potent senomorphic agent to target senescent cells and can improve chemotherapeutic efficacy: This study provides a proof of concept for rutin as an emerging natural senomorphic agent and presents an effective therapeutic avenue for alleviating age-related pathologies including cancer.
What is really known about the effects of nicotinamide riboside supplementation in humans: Collectively, oral nicotinamide riboside supplementation has displayed few clinically relevant effects, and there is an unfortunate tendency in the literature to exaggerate the importance and robustness of reported effects.
Predicting lifespan-extending chemical compounds for C. elegans with machine learning and biologically interpretable features: Overall, this work opens avenues for future work in employing machine learning to predict novel life-extending compounds.
Dietary flavonoids intake contributes to delay biological aging process: analysis from NHANES dataset: Flavonoid intake positively contributes to delaying the biological aging process, especially in the heart and liver.
Systemic inflammation and biological aging in the Health and Retirement Study: Greater systemic inflammation was positively associated with DNA methylation age acceleration for 10 of the 13 epigenetic clocks, after adjustment for sociodemographics and chronic disease risk factors.
Evaluation of potential aging biomarkers in healthy individuals: Markers that reflect the progression of biological aging vary with age. Their levels could be used in clinical practice, determining biological age, risk of age-related diseases and death of all causes.
Happy people live longer because they are healthy people: Much of the association between happiness and increased life expectancy could be explained by socio-demographic, lifestyle, health and functioning facto
rs, and especially psychological health and functioning factors.
News Nuggets
VitaDAO Launches VITA-FAST Tokens: VitaDAO, the global community accelerating research and development in longevity science, is pleased to announce the launch of the VITA-FAST tokens. This marks the first-ever opportunity for token holders to directly influence longevity research, setting a new precedent in the field of decentralized science (DeSci).