Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: life extension

Decline of the immune system is one of the areas SENS are working on, with just over a week left for the Winter Fundraiser and Triple donation match now is the time to support their work!

Immunosenescence is a key process in aging and rejuvention or replacement of the thymus which gradually wastes away as we age exposing us to pathogens is an important step in dealing with age-related diseases. SENS is working on these problems so if you want to see solutions please consider donating to our Winter Fundraiser today on the link below:

http://www.sens.org/donate

“As we age and are exposed to persistent pathogens, especially cytomegalovirus, ever more of the T cell population becomes specialized in ways that remove the ability to deal with new threats. A flood of new immune cells would help to restore the balance, and in recent years researchers have demonstrated that transplanting a young and active thymus into an old mouse does in fact restore measures of immune function, and extends life span as well.”

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Google Tech Talk with the SENS Research Foundation!

Commentary about our recent Google Tech Talk about the MitoSENS project from FightAging!

“As the clock ticks on this year’s SENS rejuvenation research fundraiser — less than two weeks to go now, and plenty left in the matching fund for new donations — it is good to be reminded of the progress that the SENS Research Foundation has accomplished with the charitable funding of recent years. With that in mind, today I’ll point you to a recent Google Tech Talk that provides a layperson’s introduction to one of the projects that our community has funded, fixing the problem of mitochondrial damage in aging. The point of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) research programs is to accelerate progress towards specific forms of therapy that can bring aging under medical control.”

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This cartoon depicts turning back the aging clock through cellular regeneration of progeria mice (credit: Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte Lab/Salk Institute)

Salk Institute scientists have extended the average lifespan of live mice by 30 percent, according to a study published December 15 in Cell. They did that by rolling back the “aging clock” to younger years, using cellular reprogramming.

The finding suggests that aging is reversible by winding back an animal’s biological clock to a more youthful state and that lifespan can be extended. While the research does not yet apply directly to humans, it promises to lead to improved understanding of human aging and the possibility of rejuvenating human tissues.

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Aging as a disease or Uber-disease is gaining traction and pressure is mounting on the WHO to include it as it fits their definition of a disease state.

Failing to classify aging as a disease is slowing progress and costing lives. We need to change the paradigm.

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Even the robots are getting involved in science smile

It looks like the folks at CellAge are using robots to help them with their research and you can get one of these awesome “Marty” robots too when you support their project at Lifespan.io.

You can check out the campaign here at Lifespan.io:

https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/cellage-targeting-senescent-cells-with-synthetic-biology/

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Tissue engineering and Stem cells are a large part of the rejuvenation biotechnology toolkit. Here we have yet more progress and this time the pacemaker cells are replicated for possible use in biological pacemaker therapies.

“Scientists from the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University Health Network, have developed the first functional pacemaker cells from human stem cells, paving the way for alternate, biological pacemaker therapy.”

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A 14-year-old girl who said before dying of cancer that she wanted a chance to live longer has been allowed by the high court to have her body cryogenically frozen in the hope that she can be brought back to life at a later time.

The court ruled that the teenager’s mother, who supported the girl’s wish to be cryogenically preserved, should be the only person allowed to make decisions about the disposal of her body. Her estranged father had initially opposed her wishes.

During the last months of her life, the teenager, who had a rare form of cancer, used the internet to investigate cryonics. Known only as JS, she sent a letter to the court: “I have been asked to explain why I want this unusual thing done. I’m only 14 years old and I don’t want to die, but I know I am going to. I think being cryo‐preserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up, even in hundreds of years’ time.

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Hype aside demonstration that epigentic reprogramming can reverse some of the aging process is an important step forward for progress. We can expect to see this moving to human trials in the next decade or so making the future an exciting possibility.

Science is increasingly coming to the conclussion that aging is amenable to intervention and that it is a plastic process that we can manipulate. More research in this week shows that aging is indeed elastic and is not a one way process at all. The sooner society accepts what the data from the labs is showing the sooner we can cure age-related diseases for healthier longer lives!

“We did not correct the mutation that causes premature aging in these mice,” lead researcher Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte said in a recent statement. “We altered aging by changing the epigenome, suggesting that aging is a plastic process.”

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More progress on the cancer front! Controlling cancer effectively is a critical part of rejuvenation biotechnology and therefore all cancer progress is of great interest to our community. If there was a poster child of aging diseases, cancer would be at the front of the queue.

“The results could lead to new treatments—not only for a variety of cancers, but also other diseases that arise from faulty proteinases, such as Alzheimer’s, asthma, multiple sclerosis and arthritis.”

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Biologist Daisy Robinton talks about engineering aging and the possibilities new technology offers.

Harvard University biologist Daisy Robinton reveals how science is helping us understand how and why we age.

Daisy Robinton is a scientist at Harvard University researching mechanisms of stem cell identity at the intersection of cancer and developmental biology. Daisy’s passion for the effective translation of science has fuelled her years of teaching and speaking, and in 2011 Daisy founded the Science in the News Spring Public Lecture Series at Harvard. Daisy consults to numerous biotech startups in the US and UK and for projects ranging from feature film screenplays on the future of medicine and longevity to the “Future of Making” via bioengineering with IDEO.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

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