Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: life extension

Most science starts off at the fringe and slowly makes it way to the mainstream. Cryopreservation is commonly achieved in a laboratory setting, but for many years serious applications remained confined to science fiction. Is it time to change how we see cryonics?

The science of freezing things

Scientific research requires great storage, and huge amounts of material including cells are frozen every day to be used at the later date. If you follow the correct protocols, many forms of life can be re-awakened after their cryogenic sleep. DMSO, propylene glycol and glycerol help abolish problems like ice crystals which can rupture cells, and storage temperatures can drop to below −120 oC. At these levels biological reactions are essentially halted.

Read more

In the Holy Bible, Jesus Christ taught us how to attain eternal life. In John 6:71, for example, Jesus Christ said: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

A Russian scientist, however, believes that he can have eternal life through the power of science, more specifically through the power of 3.5-million-year-old bacteria.

Read more

Intestinal worms that can reduce inflammation. Could we GMO a probiotic worm to help reduce aging?

Intestinal worms have an incredibly bad reputation. The thought of them sneaking around inside our bodies and eating us from the inside is pretty unpleasant. But for decades, results coming out of lab after lab have shown that some kinds of helminths can be extremely beneficial to their host, and aren’t parasites at all.

Just 100 years ago, before toilets and running water were commonplace, everybody had regular exposure to intestinal worms. Thanks in part to modern plumbing, people in the industrialized world have now lost almost all of their worms, with the exception of occasional pinworms in some children.

Intestinal worms are properly called “helminths,” which most dictionaries will tell you are parasites. Exploiting their hosts, draining resources, sucking the life out of the body – that’s what parasites do, by definition. Indeed, many helminths, including the porcine tapeworm and the human hookworm, are known to cause disease and even death in the human population. Parasitic worms are still a big problem in some parts of the world.

Read more

Large amounts of precious resources are being spent on encouraging weight loss and healthy living. While the intention of trying to reinforce healthy living is laudable, the evidence is that our resources are being wasted on minimal benefits.

Society considers obesity a big threat that needs to be overcome, but being thin is seen as a panacea

The diseases caused by biological aging carry on incessantly taking the lives of 100 000 people every day. While age 87 is the most common age of death for people in the western world, little progress has occurred during the past decades.

Read more

A very interesting article about the state of funding for aging research and about Buck and ex Geron Mike West.

As I mentioned in last week’s letter, I traveled to San Francisco last Monday with my friend Patrick Cox, who writes our Transformational Technology Alert newsletter. We had dinner with Dr. Mike West of Biotime and then spent the next morning at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Pat and I decided we would jointly report on what we learned. He has already written his part, which was published last week. I am going to reproduce portions of that letter, which highlight the conversation with Brian Kennedy and his team at the Buck Institute, and then add my own thoughts about our conversation with Mike West the previous night.

(Note that I am excerpting Patrick’s paid letter, which includes comments on companies in his portfolio, rather than his free weekly Transformational Technologies Tech Digest service. We agreed that it was important to do so in this one case, given the huge significance of the research involved and the Buck Institute’s relationship to it.)

Essentially, we looked at two aspects of aging. The Buck Institute is focused on how to slow down the aging process and reduce the symptoms (such as chronic diseases) that come with aging. Dr. Mike West and his colleagues, as well as a few other firms and researchers, are focused on using our own pluripotent stem cells in ways that would allow us to repair organs in our bodies, thus giving us the opportunity to “grow younger” again. (It’s not quite that simple, as I’ll try to explain later.)

Read more

This is our chance to make a real difference to how ageing research progresses and how people view ageing.

We need fifty people to make a real change in funding policy so we can work towards healthy longevity.

https://www.facebook.com/…/draft-zero-gsap-ageing-and-healt… (please make sure to complete the 6 first lines at least before sending to the email indicated there).

WHO GSAP draft, healthy longevity and biomedical aging research.

Read more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9dj1s3N4cE

Adam Alonzi has made another excellent film about the power of gene therapy.

Narrated and produced by Adam Alonzi. Music arranged by Leslee Frost. Sponsored by BioViva Sciences Inc.

Alzheimer’s Disease.
Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive, neurodegenerative disorder. It is the leading cause of dementia. Typically the condition affects short-term memory, but as it advances it can result in disorientation, mood disorders, language difficulties and behavioral issues. Over time, body functions are lost, leading to death.

Current treatment options are extremely limited and the outlook is poor for sufferers with the average life expectancy being 3–9 years from diagnosis. According to RAND Corp, the average annual cost of care for someone with Alzheimer’s disease is $41,689 to $56,290.

BioViva’s Therapy — Telomerase AAV gene therapy.

We are exploring therapies with the gene that creates telomerase to rejuvenate the microglia cells that support the Neurons with the aim of combating Alzheimer’s disease and restoring healthy function to the brain once more. There is mounting evidence to indicate this gene plays an active role in protection from Tau Pathology and various experiments have encouraged us to pursue this therapy with the goal of eliminating the suffering this disease brings.

Dr Michael Fossel wrote this excellent article about the potential of this therapeutic approach which appears in H+ Magazine here. The work of his company Telocyte and Bioviva also feature in this piece and clearly explains the potential of this therapy and the reasoning behind it.

We are currently being sponsored by the Maximum Life foundation to develop this therapy but we need your support to make it a reality. To learn more please visit the Alzheimer’s project page at Maximum Life Foundation here or you can support this work on the donate button directly below, all support is greatly appreciated to help us beat Alzheimer’s.

Read more

Transhumanism featured in The Times of London, a major UK paper. Sorry, you do need a subscription, I think:

Zoltan Istvan is campaigning for the White House by promising voters everlasting life. He is the Transhumanist party’s presidential nominee and he is touring the US in a vehicle shaped like a coffin that he calls the immortality bus.

He believes that technology will eventually allow humans to live for ever. His message, he says, is connecting with the millennial generation who were born from the early 80s onwards. But he has little money and his bus, which is very old, keeps breaking down. “I know what the chances are,” he told me of his attempt to capture the Oval…

Read more

Nice interview by The Longevity Reporter about BioViva Sciences Inc.

Liz Parrish isn’t your average CEO. A passionate advocate for change, her.
company BioViva is leading the fight for healthy longevity with pioneering.
gene therapies targeting Alzheimer’s, sarcopenia and even aging itself.
Parrish dreams big, but she’s a woman of action. She’s even demonstrated.
her commitment by testing cutting-edge therapies on herself. Could her.
efforts change how we think about aging? Is gene therapy the future or are.
we moving too fast? We caught up with the woman herself to find out more.

Read more