Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: life extension

An excellent interview. Fossel and Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Foundation are in disagreement about telomerase.

https://www.singularityweblog.com/michael-fossel/ ‎

Michael Fossel‘s dream is to reverse human aging and since 1996 he has been a strong and vocal advocate of experimenting with telomerase therapy as a potential way of intervention in a wide variety of medical conditions related to aging. In addition, Fossel is one of those unique people who are a real pleasure to not only see speaking from the stage but also to meet in person. And having done both of these, I can honestly say that Michael is as much an impassioned expert speaker as he is a compassionate human being. Not only that but he is also a generous host, who loves entertaining guests visiting his fabulous house near Rapid Falls, Michigan and I have to admit I had tons of fun socializing with him both in front and behind camera. So, all in all, it was a lot of fun meeting and interviewing Dr. Fossel for my Singularity 1 on 1 podcast.

During our 1 hour discussion with Michael we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: his dream to reverse aging and the desirability and feasibility thereof; the Hayflick limit of cell division and Aubrey de Grey’s concerns that telomerase therapy may cause cancer; the distinction between reversing aging and living forever; his “non-sexy” tips on healthy living; his take on cryonics and transhumanism…

My favorite quotes that I will take away from this interview with Michael Fossel are:

“Ageing is dynamic, not static”

“Never mind the low-hanging fruit. […] Go for the important one!”

“The reason to do this [reverse aging] is not to double somebody’s lifespan. The reason to do this is because people out there are hurting. They are frightened. They are terrified by the things that happen to them when they get disease. The reason to do this is because we are human and we should be working at this. It’s not playing God, it is working at being human. It’s compassion. It’s not a matter of living longer, it is a matter of making people healthy again.”

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The prominent Transhumanist, Zoltan Istvan, discusses about his future involvement in the Transhumanist community, e.g., possibly running for the 2020 US Presidency.

Check out his webiste: zoltanistvan.com

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When I founded the Life Extension® group in 1977, our unique purposes attracted a lot of media attention.

A question reporters often asked me was:

“Why do you want to live so long?”

Rather than respond to the obvious, I made it clear that if people followed healthier lifestyles, they could add about 15 years to their lifespans.

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The exact causes of aging are still not understood, and it is unclear why some species live less than 1 d, while others can live more than 400 y. Research suggests that telomeres are related to the aging process, but a clear relationship between the life span of a species and initial telomere length has not been observed. Here, we measure the telomere lengths of a variety of different species. We find that, in fact, there is no strong correlation between the life span of a species and initial telomere length. However, we find a strong correlation between the telomere shortening rate and the life span of a species.

Telomere shortening to a critical length can trigger aging and shorter life spans in mice and humans by a mechanism that involves induction of a persistent DNA damage response at chromosome ends and loss of cellular viability. However, whether telomere length is a universal determinant of species longevity is not known. To determine whether telomere shortening can be a single parameter to predict species longevities, here we measured in parallel the telomere length of a wide variety of species (birds and mammals) with very different life spans and body sizes, including mouse (Mus musculus), goat (Capra hircus), Audouin’s gull (Larus audouinii), reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus), bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), American flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber), and Sumatran elephant (Elephas maximus sumatranus). We found that the telomere shortening rate, but not the initial telomere length alone, is a powerful predictor of species life span.

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The Longevity industry will dwarf all other industries in both size and market capitalization and will require unprecedented sophistication in its approach for assessment and forecasting from the start to neutralize challenges and manifest opportunities

The Longevity Industry is not just about biotechnology and biomedicine. Rather, it consists of several distinct segments: Geroscience, Biomedicine, AgeTech and Finance. Despite this seemingly clear market segmentation, many of these sectors intersect with various domains of science and technology, such as advanced biomedicine, preventive medicine, digital health, AI, financial systems, pension systems and government national strategies.

One of the biggest challenges in assessing the Longevity industry is the extreme broadness of the sector. Hundreds of sectors, industries and domains of science and technology must be analyzed in order to obtain a concrete and comprehensive understanding of the dynamics, trends and direction of the industry. This situation is entirely unique to the Longevity industry. Due to this extreme level of complexity, realistic assessment and forecasting is extremely challenging, and the methods currently being applied for assessment of the biotech and biomedical industries are completely inadequate.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of2F3xgImi0

Is comprehensive damage repair feasible? A debate at Undoing Aging 2019 between Vadim Gladyshev, Harvard Medical School and Aubrey de Grey, SENS Research Foundation.

PLEASE LIKE & SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE FROM MY NMN CHANNEL

Vadim N. Gladyshev is a professor at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an expert and pioneer in antioxidant/redox biology. He is known for his characterization of the human selenoproteinencoded by 25 genes. He has conducted studies on whether organisms can acquire cellular damage from their food;the role selenium plays as a micro-nutrient with significant health benefits;In 2013 he won the NIH Pioneer Award.

Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey is an English author and biomedical gerontologist. He is the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation and VP of New Technology Discovery at AgeX Therapeutics, Inc.

Acknowledgements:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3rI_ysqB8I&feature=youtu.be

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A recently released study from Maria Blasco and her team of researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) shows that the rate of telomere shortening is strongly correlated with the maximum lifespan of animal species.

Telomeres

Telomeres, which are simply repeating segments of DNA on the ends of our chromosomes, serve two critical functions: They protect the ends of our chromosomes, preventing genetic damage, and they serve as a clock, limiting the number of times that our cells can divide. This limit, known as the Hayflick limit, serves as a basic defense against cancer. However, telomere attrition is a primary hallmark of aging and leads to cellular senescence and other age-related disorders.

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