Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical

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?

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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

On the off chance you’ve missed the news about it, Ending Age-Related Diseases: Investment Prospects & Advances in Research is our first conference to be held in New York City. It will take place on July 12th at Cooper Union, and it will feature talks and panels with several great speakers, such as Dr. Vera Gorbunova from Rochester University, Dr. Vadim Gladyshev from Harvard Medical School, Dr. Aubrey de Grey from SENS Research Foundation, Dr. Kelsey Moody from Ichor Therapeutics, and many more. You can get your ticket here, and remember that Lifespan Heroes get 75% off the ticket price!

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Babylon Health’s AI-powered robo-docs could save insurers and governments billions.

Ali Parsa’s AI-powered robo-docs could save insurers and governments billions. He’s already transformed a swathe of Britain’s socialized healthcare system, now he’s bringing it to the United States.

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A being that can consciously alter its own DNA via technological intervention (i.e. cybernetic means) is what our Second Womb has been nurturing. We have used civilization to protect ourselves while we crack the code of our biological being. We started in the womb of the cave. Then moved on to the womb of the hut. Then the village, the city, and the state. All thew hile, we have been tinkering with our own DNA and the DNA of other species. To me, this is the real posthuman or transhuman — it is the creature that is actively editing its own biological blueprint through tech. This is what we’ve been doing since we started augmenting our bodies with clothing and animal skins. We’ve been modifying our ability to endure the slings and arrows of the cosmos.

What is human civilization? It is difficult to assert that other animals do not create their own civilizations — termites for instance meet some criteria for being categorized as cyborgs (building temperature-controlled mega structures). Animals communicate, express feelings, and have personalities. Octopi arrange furniture for would-be mates. Others engage in mating rituals. Some mourn the dead. Birds can solve simple math. Critters scheme, enterprise, forge bonds, and even produce art. What do we do that animals do not?

To our credit, we are the only animals that record, share, and develop history upon structures and materials outside of our bodies. We harness energy for massive projects. We farm, but again, so do leaf-cutter ants. But we create genetically novel vegetables and animals. We alter the global climate. Our enterprises are global, and given time and opportunity, our projects will eventually become exostellar. We do all this rather ferociously. Human history is a rather short explosion of civilization-building activities, and yet it might already have irrevocably altered the future of all life on this planet. No other creature has created a circumstance quite like that of human beings and our anthropocene project. For instance, unless we clean up the environment, the next few generations of plant and animal life are going to have be extremely resilient to radiation, Styrofoam, plastics, and other run-offs squeezed out from the human project. That is just a fact of life now on earth.

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One day, 3D bioprinting will be used for printing out entire new organs to replace our old, knackered ones. This week, Chicago-based biotech startup Biolife4D announced a milestone on the road to this goal: Its ability to bioprint human cardiac tissue. Here’s why that’s important.

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You can generate electricity from oil, you can produce it from natural gas, you can make it from nuclear energy, and you can channel it from the sun, via solar energy conversion systems. You can even generate electricity from photosynthetic bacteria, also known as cyanobacteria, based on a new innovation developed at the Technion. As published in a study in the journal, Nature Communications, the Technion researchers have developed an energy-producing system that exploits both the photosynthesis and respiratory processes that cyanobacteria undergo, with the harvested energy leveraged to generate electricity based on hydrogen.

The study was conducted by three Technion faculty members: Professor Noam Adir from the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Professor Gadi Schuster from the Faculty of Biology, and Professor Avner Rothschild, from the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering. The work involved collaboration between Dr. Gadiel Saper and Dr. Dan Kallmann, as well as colleagues from Bochum, Germany and the Weizmann Institute of Science. It was supported by various bodies, including the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP), the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI), the Technion Hydrogen Technologies Research Lab (HTRL), the Adelis Foundation, the Planning and Budgeting Committee’s I-CORE program, the Israel Science Foundation, the USA-Israel Binational Science Fund (BSF) and the German research fund (DFG-DIP).

Scientists have long considered cyanobacteria a possible energy source. Cyanobacteria belong to a family of bacteria common to lakes, seas, and many other habitats. The bacteria use photosynthetic mechanisms that enable them to generate energy from sunlight. They also generate energy in the dark, via respiratory mechanisms based on digestion and degradation of sugar.

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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

In our collective imagination, revolutions start with a bang; however, more often than not, real-life technological revolutions start quietly and unbeknownst to most people. This is pretty much what’s going on with the therapies that aim to prevent or reverse age-related diseases by targeting the aging processes directly.

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