On some corners of the Internet, “Spooktober”, effectively a month-long Halloween, has just begun. Here at Lifespan.io, though, we talk about something scary all year long. Here’s what’s been done to fight aging last month.
LEAF News
EARD2023
Ending Age-Related Diseases 2023: Longevity/DeSci Success: The Ending Age-Related Diseases 2023 conference has ended, and it was a big success. This is the first of our conference videos: the opening talk from the event given by our President, Keith Comito.
EARD2023: Proving Your Philanthropy on the Blockchain: In this talk given at Ending Age-Related Diseases 2023, Weavechain CEO Omar ElNaggar goes into detail on how Weavechain worked together with Lifespan.io’s President Keith Comito to build dynamic PoP NFTs.
EARD2023: Using NFTs to Support Video Gaming for Good: In this talk, Lifespan.io President Keith Comito describes use cases for “Proof of Philanthropy” (PoP) dynamic NFTs – a new type of NFT that powers up based on tracked on-chain giving.
We have also prepared a gallery of photos from the event for you to enjoy and prepared a special post event booklet with some highlights.
Lifespan News
Age Reversal Pill: Emmett Short talks about David Sinclair’s serious effort to epigenetically rejuvenate cells by using small molecules, which would lead to the creation of a genuine age reversal pill. This technology could be significantly cheap and simple to produce.
Elon Musk and the Living Forever Curse: Ryan O’Shea ruminates on Elon Musk’s statement on living forever being a curse rather than a blessing.
Journal Club
Exporting a Longevity Mechanism Between Species: The Journal Club for August returned live to Facebook on September 5th at 12:00 Eastern hosted by Dr. Oliver Medvedik. This time, we took a look at a paper where researchers have transfered a lifespan- and healthspan-boosting mechanism from the naked mole rat, a very-long lived rodent, to mice.Extracellular Vesicles Improve Cardiac Health in Old Rats: The Journal Club returned with Dr. Oliver Medvedik on September 29th at 12:00 Eastern time on our Facebook page. We took a look at a recent study published in Nature, in which extracellular vesicles derived from neonatal cardiac progenitors produced significant rejuvenation in old rats and human cells.
Advocacy and Analysis
Two Industries in One Field: While rejuvenation therapies that aim to prevent, stop, or even reverse aging and age-related diseases are gradually moving towards becoming a reality, the field has a problem. Our community has long had two distinctly different groups in its ranks.
Is There a Single Essence of Aging?: In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Dr. Jesse Poganik and Prof. Vadim Gladyshev of Harvard Medical School have presented an opinion proposing a consensus understanding of aging.
ARDD 2023: The Mother of All Longevity Conferences: Once a year, Copenhagen becomes a Mecca for the longevity community. Hundreds of people flock to the picturesque Danish capital to attend the Aging Research and Drug Discovery Meeting (ARDD) for five full days of talks by geroscientists and biotech leaders, mingling and networking with like-minded longevity enthusiasts, and not-so-healthy late night-outs.
Research Roundup
Extracellular Vesicles Improve Cardiac Health in Old Rats: In a new study published in Nature, extracellular vesicles derived from neonatal cardiac progenitors produced significant rejuvenation in old rats and human cells.
Fisetin Reduces Senescence in the Brains of Sheep: A study published in Antioxidants has found that the senolytic fisetin significantly decreases cellular senescence in the brains of sheep.
Biomarkers of Aging for Facilitating Future Research: The Biomarkers of Aging Consortium, an initiative uniting about 200 geroscientists around the goal to inform and guide the use of biomarkers of aging, has put out its first paper.
Impact of Plant-Based Diets on Biological Aging: In new research published in BMC Medicine, the authors recruited a large cohort of participants in order to assess how plant-based foods affect aging trajectories.
A Metformin and Galantamine Combination for Sarcopenia: Researchers associated with Rejuvenate Biomed and publishing in JCI Insight have conducted multiple experiments on a combination of metformin and galantamine in animal models. These preclinical experiments are intended to be a prelude to a human trial for sarcopenia.
Taking Up Exercise Late in Life May Prevent Fitness Decline: According to a new study published in Aging Cell, previously sedentary old people who took up an exercise program were able to improve their fitness and maintain it for at least four years.
Jumping Genes Influence the Speed of Aging in Worms: According to a newly published paper in Nature Communications, transposable elements impact aging in C.elegans. Transposable elements are often referred to as mobile genetic elements or jumping genes, as these DNA pieces can change their position in the genome.
Having a Hobby Might Lead to a Healthier Life: A new publication in Nature Medicine has provided evidence from multiple countries supporting the idea that older people who have hobbies are healthier and less likely to have depression.
How Pollution Makes Aging Worse: A review paper published in GeroScience has detailed a substantial amount of research into the ways that environmental pollutants accelerate aging.
A Potential Exercise Mimetic to Restore Youthful Memory: Researchers have identified a platelet-derived factor that improves cognition in mice and published their findings in Nature Communications.
Senolytics as a Potential Back Pain Treatment: In a recent paper, researchers from McGill University in Canada have investigated how a combination of two senolytics, RG-7112 and o-Vanillin, influences the intervertebral disc cells of back pain patients.
Creating a Noise Clock to Measure Biological Age: Publishing in Aging, the Conboy research lab has outlined the problems with existing machine learning-based clocks and created a new clock based on epigenetic noise.
Developing a Treatment for Arthritis from Stem Cell Signals: Resarchers publishing in Aging have found that extracellular vesicles (EVs) derived from human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) reduce inflammatory markers in chondrocytes, which are responsible for building and maintaining human cartilage.
An Unexplored Link Between Inflammation and Alzheimer’s: An article in GeroScience describes a previously unexplored relationship between FABP7, an inflammatory molecule that binds to fatty acids, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Human Clinical Trials of NMN for Safety and Effectiveness: In a recent paper, researchers reviewed the literature for human clinical trials that address NMN’s safety and anti-aging effects. These studies were done using different doses of NMN, and they differed in length, number, and age of participants.
Restoring Heart Regeneration With a Metabolic Switch: In a recent article in Nature, researchers have restored cardiac regeneration to adult mice by disabling fatty acid oxidation, discovering a potential pathway for human treatments. As heart muscle cells (myocytes) mature, they make a metabolic switch from glycolysis to the oxidation of fatty acids.
Study: Waist-to-Hip Ratio Predicts Mortality Better Than BMI: A new study suggests that waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) has a more linear correlation with all-cause mortality than either body mass index (BMI) or fat mass index (FMI) and might replace BMI as a metric of choice.
Senolytic therapy in mild Alzheimer’s disease: a phase 1 feasibility trial: In summary, central nervous system penetrance of dasatinib was observed with outcomes supporting safety, tolerability and feasibility in patients with Alzheimer’s.
Association between life’s essential 8 and biological ageing among US adults: LE8 and its subscale scores were strongly negatively related to biological ageing. Encouraging optimal cardiovascual health levels may be advantageous in preventing and slowing down ageing.
The effect of polyphenols on DNA methylation-assessed biological age attenuation: the DIRECT PLUS randomized controlled trial: To the researchers’ knowledge, this is the first clinical trial to indicate a potential link between polyphenol intake, urine polyphenols, and biological aging.
Inverse J-Shaped Relationship of Dietary Carbohydrate Intake with Serum Klotho in NHANES 2007–2016: A non-linear inverse J-shaped relationship exists among the general U.S. middle-aged and older population between the carbohydrate energy percentage and serum Klotho levels, with the highest levels observed at 48.92% to 56.20% carbohydrate intake.
Oral supplementation with fish cartilage hydrolysate in an adult population suffering from knee pain and function discomfort: These data provide insights on the mode of action of fish cartilage hydrolysate in humans and contribute to explain how it may relieve pain and improve joint function in subjects with knee discomfort.
Omega-3 Fatty Acids, Cognition, and Brain Volume in Older Adults: This exploratory study found that among healthy, cognitively older adults, increased levels of omega-3 FAs are associated with better memory, processing speed, and structural brain measures.
Use of Antihypertensives, Blood Pressure, and Estimated Risk of Dementia in Late Life: Antihypertensive use was associated with decreased dementia risk compared with individuals with untreated hypertension through all ages in late life.
Metformin combined with rapamycin ameliorates podocyte injury in idiopathic membranous nephropathy through the AMPK/mTOR signaling pathway: Metformin combined with rapamycin decreased proteinuria and improved renal fibrosis and podocyte autophagy via AMPK/mTOR pathway in IMN rats.
Mesenchymal-derived extracellular vesicles enhance microglia-mediated synapse remodeling after cortical injury in aging Rhesus monkeys: These mechanisms may act to preserve synaptic cortical motor networks and balanced, normative function to support functional recovery after injury.
Neuronal activation of Gaq EGL-30/GNAQ late in life rejuvenates cognition across species: C. elegans is a powerful model to identify mammalian regulators of memory, leading to the identification of a pathway that improves memory in extremely old mice.
Application of mesenchymal stem cells for anti-senescence and clinical challenges: The authors review the recent progresses of MSC-based therapies in the research of age-related diseases and the challenges in clinical application.
Periodic ethanol supply as a path toward unlimited lifespan of Caenorhabditis elegans dauer larvae: Based on the comparison of the model with experimental data for fixed ethanol concentration, the researchers proposed the range of feeding protocols that could lead to even longer dauer survival, and it can be tested experimentally.
News Nuggets
Turning Back the Clock With mRNA Telomerase Therapy: Since its launch in 2016, Rejuvenation Technologies, located in Mountain View, California, has been developing a therapeutic to restore telomeres in humans. The company has been in stealth mode for a number of years, but there is finally some news!
SENS Research Foundation Returns with Ending Aging Forum: SRF has hosted its second Ending Aging Forum on September 21st and 22nd, at 9 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time. This event was a great opportunity to catch up with SRF’s team and to hear the exciting things that SRF has been working on this past year. It was also a great showcase not only for the senior researchers but also for the students currently working at the foundation.
Coming Up
Going to Wonderland with Microdose Psychedelic Insights: Microdose Psychedelic Insights, the leading guide to the business of psychedelics, is pleased to partner with us for its upcoming Wonderland Conference.