Scientists at UC San Francisco are learning how immune cells naturally clear the body of defunct—or senescent—cells that contribute to aging and many chronic diseases. Understanding this process may open new ways of treating age-related chronic diseases with immunotherapy.
In a healthy state, these immune cells —known as invariant Natural Killer T (iNKT) cells—function as a surveillance system, eliminating cells the body senses as foreign, including senescent cells, which have irreparable DNA damage. But the iNKT cells become less active with age and other factors like obesity that contribute to chronic disease.
Finding ways to stimulate this natural surveillance system offers an alternative to senolytic therapies, which to date have been the primary approach to removing senescent cells. It could be a boon to a field that has struggled with how to systemically administer these senolytics without serious side effects.
We’ve updated our list of top longevity conferences and events for 2021, adding 4 new ones and removing 3 that are no longer happening:
Update 5/10/2021: This post has been updated since we originally published it in August 2020. Several new longevity conferences have been added and several which are no longer happening have been removed.
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Usually, when you approach a random stranger and immediately begin talking about things like DNA methylation rates and NAD+ precursors, you’re lucky if all you get is a weird look.
Everyone faces stress occasionally, whether in school, at work, or during a global pandemic. However, some cannot cope as well as others. In a few cases, the cause is genetic. In humans, mutations in the OPHN1 gene cause a rare X-linked disease that includes poor stress tolerance. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Linda Van Aelst seeks to understand factors that cause specific individuals to respond poorly to stress. She and her lab studied the mouse gene Ophn1, an analog of the human gene, which plays a critical role in developing brain cell connections, memories, and stress tolerance. When Ophn1 was removed in a specific part of the brain, mice expressed depression-like helpless behaviors. The researchers found three ways to reverse this effect.
To test for stress, the researchers put mice into a two-room cage with a door in between. Normal mice escape from the room that gives them a light shock on their feet. But animals lacking Ophn1 sit helplessly in that room without trying to leave. Van Aelst wanted to figure out why.
Her lab developed a way to delete the Ophn1 gene in different brain regions. They found that removing Ophn1 from the prelimbic region of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), an area known to influence behavioral responses and emotion, induced the helpless phenotype. Then the team figured out which brain circuit was disrupted by deleting Ophn1, creating overactivity in the brain region and ultimately the helpless phenotype.
The unprecedented study involves using the gene-editing technique CRISPR to edit a gene while it’s still inside a patient’s body. In exclusive interviews, NPR talks with two of the first participants.
A team of international researchers, including Dr. Rich Crane from the Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter, have developed a new method to extract metals, such as copper, from their parent ore body.
The research team has provided a proof of concept for the application of an electric field to control the movement of an acid within a low permeability copper-bearing ore deposit to selectively dissolve and recover the metal in situ.
This is in contrast to the conventional approach for the mining of such deposits where the material must be physically excavated, which requires removal of both overburden and any impurities within the ore (known as gangue material).
7:01 they talk about Church’s comments of ending aging by 2030. Also this appears to be a part one.
In this video Professor Church talks about his theory of aging and touches on his ideas on the future of aging.
George Church is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, a Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT. Professor Church helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 and the Personal Genome Project in 2005. He is widely recognized for his innovative contributions to genomic science and his many pioneering contributions to chemistry and biomedicine. He has co-authored 580 paper, 143 patent publications & the book “Regenesis”.
George Church Links. Professor Church’s Lab at Harvard. https://arep.med.harvard.edu/
Professor Church’s Book on Amazon. Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves. https://amzn.to/3vTAVKo.
Twitter Link. https://twitter.com/geochurch. *********************************************************************************** If you would like to support our channel, we’d love a coffee…thank you! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mhealthspan.
Excerpts from an interview with Dr. María Blasco, Director of the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), where she covers how telomeres shortening induce aging, how artificially lenghtening telomeres has proven to extend lifespan in animal models like mice, and what the impact will be in human health and lifespan once the techniques (gene therapies) get effectively translated into humans.
The interview took place on May 6, 2021 as part of a program organized by the Madrid Planetarium, to contribute to a better orientation of the students of the last years of high school when deciding which university studies further engage.
The language used is not intended for an audience of scientists but rather accessible to all audiences.
The entire interview was made in Spanish but I ADDED S/T in ENGLISH FOR THE EXCERPTS SHOWN in this video.
In the description is the link to the entire interview which as I said was made in Spanish.
Extractos de entrevista realizada a la Dra. María Blasco, Directora del Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas de España (CNIO). La entrevista tuvo lugar el día 06 de mayo del 2021 como parte de un programa organizado por el Planetario de Madrid, para contribuir a una mejor orientación de los estudiantes de los últimos cursos de bachillerato a la hora de decidir sus estudios universitarios. El lenguaje usado no es pensado en una audiencia de científicos sino más bien accesible para todo público. Para ver la entrevista completa hacer clic aquí: https://youtu.be/SDCk7yFSyqY
In English: Excerpts from an interview with Dr. María Blasco, Director of the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO). The interview took place on May 6, 2021 as part of a program organized by the Madrid Planetarium, to contribute to a better orientation of the students of the last years of high school when deciding their university studies. The language used is not intended for an audience of scientists but rather accessible to all audiences.
I still don’t get how there seems to be No organized effort anywhere to achieve the ability to 3D print a perfect genetic match of all organs by 2025 — 2030. You would think some government somewhere would want to work round the clock on this.
NIBIB-funded engineers at the University of Buffalo have fine-tuned the use of stereolithography for 3D printing of organ models that contain live cells. The new technique is capable of printing the models 10–50 times faster than the industry standard-;in minutes instead of hours-; a major step in the quest to create 3D-printed replacement organs.
Conventional 3D printing involves the meticulous addition of material to the 3D model with a small needle that produces fine detail but is extremely slow —taking six or seven hours to print a model of a human part, such as a hand, for instance. The lengthy process causes cellular stress and injury inhibiting the ability to seed the tissues with live, functioning cells.
The method developed by the SUNY Buffalo group, led by Rougang Zhao, PhD, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, takes a different approach that minimizes damage to live cells. The rapid, cell friendly technique is a significant step towards creating printed tissues infused with large numbers of living cells.
