Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: life extension

A team of researchers led by Principal Investigator Dr. Jan Gruber from Yale-NUS College has discovered a combination of pharmaceutical drugs that not only increases healthy lifespan in the microscopic worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), but also delays the rate of ageing in them, a finding that could someday mean longer, healthier lives for humans.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed international journal Developmental Cell on 8 October 2018, lays crucial groundwork for further research into designing combinations that produce the same effect in mammals.

“Many countries in the world, including Singapore, are facing problems related to ageing populations,” said Dr. Gruber, whose lab and research team made the discovery. “If we can find a way to extend healthy lifespan and delay ageing in people, we can counteract the detrimental effects of an ageing population, providing countries not only medical and , but also a better quality of life for their people.”

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Cancer is the poster child of age-related diseases, and a recent study sheds light on why the risk of cancer rises dramatically as we age.

Abstract

For many cancer types, incidence rises rapidly with age as an apparent power law, supporting the idea that cancer is caused by a gradual accumulation of genetic mutations. Similarly, the incidence of many infectious diseases strongly increases with age. Here, combining data from immunology and epidemiology, we show that many of these dramatic age-related increases in incidence can be modeled based on immune system decline, rather than mutation accumulation. In humans, the thymus atrophies from infancy, resulting in an exponential decline in T cell production with a half-life of ∼16 years, which we use as the basis for a minimal mathematical model of disease incidence. Our model outperforms the power law model with the same number of fitting parameters in describing cancer incidence data across a wide spectrum of different cancers, and provides excellent fits to infectious disease data.

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In support of the NAD+ Mouse Project over at Lifespan.io, Dr. David Sinclair will be doing an AMA on Reddit Futurology Tuesday, October 23, 2018 from 11:00 – 12:00 AM EDT. Dr. Sinclair will be answering questions from the community about his work with NAD+ biology, Sirtuins, and why the NAD+ Mouse Project is important for aging research. To ask your question please visit the AMA thread on Reddit Futurology here.

For those not familiar with NAD+ biology we did the NAD+ World series recently which explores this area of the biology of aging. We also took a look at why NAD+ appears to decline as we age and what is one of the most likely reasons for this.

Dr. Sinclair and his team at Harvard Medical School are currently hosting the NAD+ Mouse Project with us at Lifespan.io which is aiming to conduct long-term studies into the ability of NAD+ precursor molecule, NMN, to delay or even reverse some aspects of aging.

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Pharmacist turned Entrepreneur with Ira Pastor

Congratulations to the Forest Organics team and their awesome new site — https://www.myforestorganics.com/

Earlier this year, we hosted the Ending Age-Related Diseases 2018 conference at the Cooper Union, New York City. This conference was designed to bring together the best in the aging research and biotech investment worlds and saw a range of industry experts sharing their insights.

Joe Betts Lacroix of Y Combinator and Vium discusses the different ways in which entrepreneurs can focus on overcoming the diseases of aging, namely direct, indirect, and money-first approaches, and the strengths and weakness of each.

Joe was the primary technical founder of hardware/software startup OQO, which entered the Guinness Book of World Records for building the smallest fully featured PC. His experience spans from biotech research to electronics design. Very experienced in invention, prosecution and monetization of intellectual property, he has over 80 patents granted and pending in fields ranging from biophysics and safety systems to antennas, thermal systems, user interfaces, and analog electronics. He has written numerous peer-reviewed publications in fields such as biophysics, genetics, electronics, and robotics. Joe holds a Harvard A.B., an MIT S.M. and a Caltech research fellowship.

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Two of the methods he said humans might use were “body part renewal” and linking bodies with machines so that people are living their lives through an android.

But after Dr Pearson’s predictions, immortality may now be a step nearer following the launch of a new start-up.

Human is hoping to make the immortality dream a reality with an ambitious plan.

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Earlier this year, we hosted the Ending Age-Related Diseases 2018 conference at the Cooper Union in New York City. This conference was designed to bring together the best in the aging research and biotech investment worlds and saw a range of industry experts sharing their insights.

Dr. James Peyer is the founder and Managing Partner of Apollo Ventures, an early-stage life science investor and company builder that focuses on breakthrough technologies for treating age-related diseases.

He discusses the strategic paths to bringing longevity-promoting therapeutics to market as quickly as possible, with a particular focus on engaging pharmaceutical companies via disease-focused, proof-of-concept trials.

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