At the Ending Age-Related Diseases 2019 Conference in New York City, we had the opportunity to interview Dr. Justin Rebo from the drug discovery biotech company BioAge.
BioAge is developing a drug discovery platform that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to discover targets that have the potential to promote healthy lifespan (healthspan) by slowing down aging and the ill health that it brings.
As the vice president of in-vivo biology at BioAge, Dr. Rebo leads the company’s internal in-vivo platform to find and assess the viability of new druggable targets for aging diseases and biomedical regeneration. With considerable business as well as academic experience in the aging field under his belt, Justin joined the BioAge team in 2018.
A year old, and this video is titled with the “I-word”. But a very interesting talk.
It’s not every day that I get to post a video where I feel like I’m involved with something that may seriously improve and extend lives. I’m so grateful that somehow, I was brought into this process.
The ForbiddenKnowledgeTV newsletter and website attract a large number of physicians and health-practitioner subscribers and it’s been a real joy to make friends with the doctors on my list over the years. One leading physician who first contacted me, way back in August 2011 was Dr. Ron Klatz, Founder-President of the American Academy of Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine (A4M).
Last week, he asked me to edit this video of the first round table discussion of the American Association of Stem Cell Physicians, which had been live-streamed on August 11th and which he’d helped to moderate. It was shot completely unstaged and it was very rough-and-tumble and it needed a little cleaning-up. I said sure, without fully realizing what a treat I was in for, with this incredibly dynamic and inspiring group of scientists and physicians; who don’t normally speak to each other – let alone on camera – in a totally live, unscripted setting!
In 1996, Dr. Klatz and the A4M predicted that medical advancements were on pace to achieve life expectancies of 120 years or more, or what they call “Practical Immortality” by 2029. With the latest developments in stem cell technology and nutritional medicine, among others, this prediction is well on track.
This is a vital exchange of ideas, experience and wisdom in the field of life-extension, with recent insights about cellular biology, the immune system, supplements and restoring function to eyes, bones, nerves, hearts, etc. and forming a coherent voice to challenge oppressive US Federal regulation. This is exactly the sort of meeting of minds transmitted online that can catapult understanding and innovation.
Topics covered include why telomeres aren’t so hot anymore (but still valid), why CRISPR-Cas9 still has a ways to go; exomes, VSELs, protein aggregate disease and the roles of apoptosis, autophagy and the emerging class of senolytic drugs like Rapamycin; the overlooked importance of the gut microbiome, the benefits of calorie restriction and a “fasting-mimicking diet” that induces ketosis; supplementing with nutritional quercetin, resveratrol, sirtuin, pterostilbene, NAD+ and metformin; the newly-found TMAO marker; findings of the p53 gene and how stem cell therapies will help you in your ultimate battle with insulin resistance and sarcopenia.
Finally, the discussion turns spiritual. After all, what is the purpose of extending life? They talk about the importance of extending one’s healthspan and gaining more quality time to enjoy life, to enjoy friends and family, to live and to love and to accomplish what you want on this planet before you check out!
The Healthy Life Extension Society: https://heales.org
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The Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing (EHA) meeting for 3 days in Brussels proclaims the possibility and the imperative of a moonshot project to overcome all age-related diseases within 25 years by tackling aging as their root cause. The world has already faced the variety of challenges caused by an ageing population and the so called “Silver tsunami”, but Following major discoveries in science and biomedicine in recent years we are now on the edge of a paradigm shift from treatment to prevention and an improvement in healthy longevity. The defeat of aging lies within our collective grasp. It’s time to seize this remarkable opportunity!
Day 2
Rejuvenation strategies
Aubrey de Grey An overview of recent progress in projects performed or funded by SENS Research Foundation.
The idea that humans should merge with AI is very much in the air these days. It is offered both as a way for humans to avoid being outmoded by AI in the workplace, and as a path to superintelligence and immortality. For instance, Elon Musk recently commented that humans can escape being outmoded by AI by “having some sort of merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence.”1 To this end, he’s founded a company, Neuralink. One of its first aims is to develop “neural lace,” an injectable mesh that connects the brain directly to computers. Neural lace and other AI-based enhancements are supposed to allow data from your brain to travel wirelessly to one’s digital devices or to the cloud, where massive computing power is available.
For many transhumanists, uploading is key to the mind-machine merger.
Perhaps these sorts of enhancements will turn out to be beneficial, but to see if this is the case, we will need to move beyond all the hype. Policymakers, the public, and even AI researchers themselves need a better idea of what is at stake. For instance, if AI cannot be conscious, then if you substituted a microchip for the parts of the brain responsible for consciousness, you would end your life as a conscious being. You’d become what philosophers call a “zombie”—a nonconscious simulacrum of your earlier self. Further, even ifmicrochips could replace parts of the brain responsible for consciousness without zombifying you, radical enhancement is still a major risk. After too many changes, the person who remains may not even be you. Each human who enhances may, unbeknownst to them, end their life in the process.
New interview with author and researcher Dr. Josh Mitteldorf who runs the aging research blog Aging Matters.
Interview with author and researcher Dr. Josh Mitteldorf who runs the aging research blog ‘Aging Matters’.
Dr. Josh Mitteldorf is an evolutionary biologist and a long-time contributor to the growing field of aging science. His work in this field has focused on theories of aging. He asks the basic question: why do we age and die?
Josh is the co-author of ‘Cracking the Aging Code: The New Science of Growing Old — And What It Means for Staying Young’ : “A revolutionary examination of why we age, what it means for our health, and how we just might be able to fight it.
In Cracking the Aging Code, theoretical biologist Josh Mitteldorf and award-winning writer and ecological philosopher Dorion Sagan reveal that evolution and aging are even more complex and breathtaking than we originally thought. Using meticulous multidisciplinary science, as well as reviewing the history of our understanding about evolution, this book makes the case that aging is not something that “just happens,” nor is it the result of wear and tear or a genetic inevitability. Rather, aging has a fascinating evolutionary purpose: to stabilize populations and ecosystems, which are ever-threatened by cyclic swings that can lead to extinction.
When a population grows too fast it can put itself at risk of a wholesale wipeout. Aging has evolved to help us adjust our growth in a sustainable fashion as well as prevent an ecological crisis from starvation, predation, pollution, or infection.
This dynamic new understanding of aging is provocative, entertaining, and pioneering, and will challenge the way we understand aging, death, and just what makes us human.“
Today, we have launched the MitoMouse project on our fundraising platform Lifespan.io. This project aims to reverse the damage that aging does to the mitochondrial DNA and to restore energy production in our cells with the goal of preventing age-related ill health.
The power stations of the cell
The mitochondria are the power stations of every single cell in our bodies, and they are responsible for converting the nutrients we absorb into energy. The mitochondria are so efficient at doing this that they are responsible for around 90% of the energy that our cells need to function and survive.
