Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: life extension

SENS Research Foundation co-founder Aubrey de Grey believes in a world in which we no longer age. At a London event, he explained that he believes the first person who will live to be 1,000 has already been born, and we’ll solve this “aging problem” within 20 years.

Aging has plagued biological organisms since life first began on planet Earth and it’s an accepted and universally understood part of life. Sure, things like climate change pose significant threats to society, but aging will almost certainly still exist even if we ever manage to stop damaging our environment.

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Dr. Aubrey de Grey Summarizes Rejuvenation Research at the MIT Technology Review. To learn more about the work of Dr. Aubrey de Grey and the SENS Foundation visit http://www.sens.org/

Since the dawn of medicine, aging has been doctors’ foremost challenge. Three unsuccessful approaches to conquering it have failed: treating components of age-related ill health as curable diseases, extrapolating from differences between species in the rate of aging, and emulating the life extension that famine elicits in short-lived species. SENS Research Foundation is spearheading the fourth age of anti-aging research: the repair of age-related damage, that is, rejuvenation biotechnology.

The Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) approach was first proposed in 2002. “Senescence,” here, refers to the actuarial phenomenon—the trend that individuals within a population suffer from an increasing morbidity and mortality rate in (typically exponential) relation to their chronological age. “Negligible” is used in a statistical sense: we consider a level of senescence negligible if no age-related contribution to mortality is statistically demonstrable within a population, given the “background noise” of age-independent mortality (such as unfortunate encounters with motor vehicles). Finally, by “Engineered,” we indicate that this state is achieved by the deliberate application of biomedical therapies, and is not the normal situation. The goal of SENSE is thus unambiguously defined; we seek methods to convert a population experiencing a non-negligible level of senescence into one experiencing a negligible level.

To see how the goal of negligible senescence could be “engineered,” it is useful to consider a situation in which human ingenuity and perseverance has already achieved an analogous result. Motor vehicles experience a process of wear-and-tear essentially similar to organismal aging; the paint flakes, windowpanes chip, rust infiltrates the pipework, and so forth. Nonetheless, as vintage car owners will attest, it is entirely possible to keep one functional for an essentially indefinite period. Critically, this is achieved not by preventing the wear but by repairing the damage that does occur at a rate sufficient to ensure that the function of the machine is never irretrievably compromised.

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Summary: Cryonics has long been a non-starter due to technical limitations. A week-old radical proposal by a Russian cryonics firm to freeze people before death, combined with technological advances in Cryopreservation: Also called cryobanking. The process of cooling and storing cells, tissues, or organs at very low or freezing temperatures to save them for future use. Used in cryonics and the storage of reproductive cells in fertility treatments. [Source – NCI].” class=” glossaryLink “cryopreservation are shaking up the cryonics industry. When will cryonics be ready for prime time? [Author: Brady Hartman. This article first appeared on LongevityFacts.com. Follow us on Reddit | Google+ | Facebook. ]

Google’s most famous technologist, Ray Kurzweil, has signed up for cryonics, saying:

“My primary strategy for living through the 21st century and beyond is not to die”

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Summary: Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases are partially caused by the build-up of garbage due to a breakdown of the cellular housekeeping process known as autophagy. British scientists just discovered what may be the key to stopping this collapse in cellular housekeeping. [Author: Brady Hartman. This article first appeared on LongevityFacts.com. Follow us on Reddit | Google+ | Facebook. ]

Scientists at King’s College London (KCL) discovered new mechanisms of cell death in neurodegenerative disorders, which may be involved in the leading causes of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. The novel research was published Wednesday in the journal Current Biology.

If the findings are expanded, the discovery could lead to new treatments for delaying the progression of previously incurable neurodegenerative conditions.

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Summary: Cryonics firm CryoGen makes a radical new proposal to freeze people before death, known as ‘mercy freezing.’ Customers will pay for the Cryopreservation: Also called cryobanking. The process of cooling and storing cells, tissues, or organs at very low or freezing temperatures to save them for future use. Used in cryonics and the storage of reproductive cells in fertility treatments. [Source – NCI].” class=” glossaryLink “cryopreservation using a new blockchain based cryptocurrency called the CRYO. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts.com. Author: Brady Hartman. Follow us on Reddit | Google+ | Facebook. ]

Cryonics is legally allowed only after death, and during this time the body starts to decay. Cryopreservation should ideally be performed within a few minutes of the patient’s demise. This happens less than half the time for current cryonics clients, and their tissues start turning to mush before freezing.

A Russian-Swiss company named CryoGen plans to solve that problem by freezing people before death, calling it ‘mercy freezing.’ CryoGen is building a cryonics lab in Switzerland, a country where euthanasia is legal. According to a white paper on CryoGen’s website.

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Summary: Scientists discover that the anti-aging protein SIRT1 could be targeted to rejuvenate T cells in our aging immune systems. [Author: Brady Hartman] This article first appeared on LongevityFacts.com. Follow us on Reddit | Google+ | Facebook.

Anti-aging proteins in the sirtuin family have long been shown to protect against age-related diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurodegeneration. A new research study by scientists at the Gladstone Institutes now reveals that the protein called SIRT1 could also be targeted to rejuvenate aging immune system cells. SIRT1 is commonly known for being activated by naturally occurring substances found in red wine.

In the new study, published Wednesday in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, the researchers found that SIRT1 is also involved in how immune system cells develop with age. The Gladstone scientists wanted to find out how the anti-aging protein SIRT1 affects the immune cells known as cytotoxic T cells. Also called killer T cells, these cells are highly specialized guardians of the immune system, and their role is to kill cancer cells, damaged cells, or those cells infected by a virus. More specifically, a cytotoxic T cell is a type of white blood cell and also a type of lymphocyte. To treat tumors, these can be separated from other blood cells, grown in a laboratory, and then given to a patient to kill cancer cells. Melanie Ott, a senior author of the new study, and a Gladstone Senior Investigator said.

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We wanted to draw attention to an interesting paper that we saw today; this one argues that there are two broad Faustian bargains that people make while attempting to live longer. The first involves questionable products, and the second involves treating the symptoms of aging rather than the cause.

The First Faustian Bargain – Anti-aging

The first bargain is the promise made by the “anti-aging” industry, the supplement sellers who do not state outright but strongly imply that their elixirs could add years to your life. We have all seen the supplement blends with fancy names that often contain a mixture of compounds that we could obtain separately at far lower cost. These supplements are marketed as miracles, while their ingredients are only supported by mouse studies or sometimes not even that.

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The amount of protein recommended by international guidelines is not sufficient to maintain muscle size and strength in older men, according to a new study.

Researchers say their findings mean should aim to have high quality at every meal.

The size of our skeletal muscles – the muscles we use to move our body – and our ability to perform everyday tasks naturally decline with age from the around the fifth decade. Severe loss can lead to frailty, loss of independence and a greater risk of dying.

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On August 13, 2017, during the final day at RAADfest 2017.

Q&A session with an extraordinary group of gerontologists, futurists, speakers, scientists and advocates of Radical Life Extension (RLE):

Panelists from left to right: Aubrey De Grey, Bernadeane, Bill Andrews, Bill Faloon, Natasha Vita-More, Jim Strole, José Luis Cordeiro, Neal VanDeree and Liz Parrish.

David Kekich joined the panel via web conference media, and Joe Bardin served as moderator (seated at the very left of the panel)

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