Lifeboat Foundation

Maybe the science is finally catching up with BioViva CEO Elizabeth Parrish.

As a therapeutic approach, however, gene therapy suffers somewhat from the undue weight of exuberant expectations. For years people have speculated about applications going beyond restoration of lost body function and into biological enhancement, such as longevity. Some now categorize gene therapy as belonging to the realm of transhumanism—the use of medical and surgical interventions to enhance the body, or give it extra capabilities, as opposed to treating things that go wrong.

Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) scientists working on CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing technology have developed a method to increase efficiency of editing while minimizing DNA deletion sizes, a key step toward developing gene editing therapies to treat genetic diseases.

CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) technology is used to alter DNA sequences and modify gene function. CRISPR/Cas9 is an enzyme that is used like a pair of scissors to cut two strands of DNA at a specific location to add, remove or repair bits of DNA. By modifying gene function, scientists hope to treat genetic diseases by halting a diseased cell’s ability to continue replicating the defective DNA. CRISPR/Cas9 is the most versatile genetic manipulation available and has a wide range of potential applications. While CRISPR/Cas9 mainly generates short insertions or deletions at the target site, it may also make large DNA deletions around the specific target site. These large deletions cause safety concerns and may decrease functional editing efficiency.

The WFIRM team is looking for ways to reduce the chances of this happening. The research described in their recent paper, published recently in Nucleic Acids Research, sought to address the generation of unpredictable on-target long DNA deletions and find a way to guard against them, said lead author Baisong Lu, Ph.D., of WFIRM.

Amid much speculation and research about how our genetics affect the way we age, a University of California, Berkeley, study now shows that individual differences in our DNA matter less as we get older and become prone to diseases of aging, such as diabetes and cancer.

In a study of the relative effects of genetics, aging and the environment on how some 20,000 human genes are expressed, the researchers found that aging and environment are far more important than genetic variation in affecting the expression profiles of many of our genes as we get older. The level at which genes are expressed — that is, ratcheted up or down in activity — determines everything from our hormone levels and metabolism to the mobilization of enzymes that repair the body.

“How do your genetics — what you got from your sperm donor and your egg donor and your evolutionary history — influence who you are, your phenotype, such as your height, your weight, whether or not you have heart disease?” said Peter Sudmant, UC Berkeley assistant professor of integrative biology and a member of the campus’s Center for Computational Biology. “There’s been a huge amount of work done in human genetics to understand how genes are turned on and off by human genetic variation. Our project came about by asking, ‘How is that influenced by an individual’s age?’ And the first result we found was that your genetics actually matter less the older you get.”

A new study finds that drinking two to three cups of ground, instant, or decaffeinated coffee each day is associated with a longer lifespan and lower risk of cardiovascular disease compared with avoiding coffee.

The Transhumanist FAQ was developed in the mid-1990s and in 1998 became a formal FAQ through the inspirational work of transhumanists, including Alexander Chislenko, Max More, Anders Sandberg, Natasha Vita-More, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Arjen Kamphius, and many others. Greg Burch, David Pearce, and Anders Sandberg kindly offered extensive editorial comments. The presentation in the cryonics section was, and still is, directly inspired by an article by Ralph Merkle. Ideas, criticisms, questions, phrases, and sentences to the original version were contributed by (in alphabetical order): Alex ([email protected]), Brent Allsop, Brian Atkins, Scott Badger, Doug Bailey, Harmony Baldwin, Damien Broderick, Greg Burch, David Cary, John K Clark, Dan Clemensen, Damon Davis, Jeff Dee, Jean-Michel Delhotel, Dylan Evans, [email protected], Daniel Fabulich, Frank Forman, Robin Hanson, Andrew Hennessey, Tony Hollick, Joe Jenkins, William John, Michelle Jones, Arjen Kamphius, Henri Kluytmans, Eugene Leitl, Michael Lorrey, [email protected], Peter C. McCluskey, Erik Moeller, J. R. Molloy, Max More, Bryan Moss, Harvey Newstrom, Michael Nielsen, John S. Novak III, Dalibor van den Otter, David Pearce, [email protected], Thom Quinn, Anders Sandberg, Wesley R. Schwein, [email protected], Allen Smith, Geoff Smith, Randy Smith, Dennis Stevens, Derek Strong, Remi Sussan, Natasha Vita-More, Michael Wiik, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and [email protected].

Over the years, this FAQ has been updated to provide a substantial account of transhumanism. Extropy Institute (ExI) was a source of information for the first version of the Transhumanist FAQ, version 1.0 in the 1990s. The Transhumanist Manifesto, conceived by Natasha Vita-More in 1983 and revised in 1998–2020 to include advances of the growing worldview, was published in the CD placed onboard the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft in its mission to Saturn.

Humanity+, also known as WTA, adopted the FAQ in 2001 and Nick Bostrom added substantial information about future scenarios. With the contributions of close to hundred people from ExI, Aleph, DeTrans, Transcedo, WTA, and the UK Transhumanist Association, new material has been added and many old sections have been substantially reworked. In the preparation of version 2.0, the following people have been especially helpful: Eliezer Yudkowsky, who provided editorial assistance with comments on particular issues of substance; Dale Carrico who proofread the first half of the text; and Michael LaTorra who did the same for the second half; and “Reason” who then went over the whole document again, as did Frank Forman, and Sarah Banks Forman. Useful comments of either substance or form have also been contributed by (in alphabetical order): Michael Anissimov, Samantha Atkins, Milan Cirkovic, José Luis Cordeiro, George Dvorsky, James Hughes, G.E.

28 to 34% lifespan increase in mice. I wonder if there would be side effects as a recent study showed Rapamycin and Metformin canceled each other’s side effects.

In a new study published in Aging Cell, researchers have tested several individual drugs and a combination of rapamycin plus acarbose as potential life extension agents in genetically heterogeneous mice [1].

Identification of successful anti-aging interventions is arguably one of the most challenging research problems to date. In addition to the complexity of aging, researchers have to deal with the biological heterogeneity of animals even within the same species and research reproducibility issues due to different experimental designs and approaches.

Continue reading “Combination of Rapamycin and Acarbose Extends Lifespan” »

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Today there might not be a cure to save your life. What if the cure were available tomorrow? Biostasis (cryonics) is a possibility for keeping you around long enough for the cure.

One of the hallmarks of aging, cellular senescence is what happens when aging cells do not die in the usual way (a process known as apoptosis) and start to accumulate in our bodies. The accumulation of these “senescent” cells is implicated in diseases including dementias, atherosclerosis, cancers, diabetes and arthritis. But senescence is not just part of the aging process – it tends to occur in individuals who develop frailty and multiple illnesses, and this can occur at any point during life.

In 2015, a team of researchers at the Mayo Clinic, led by Dr James L Kirkland, published a seminal paper in Aging Cell that introduced a new class of drugs called senolytics. Based on the idea that removing senescent cells may enhance human healthspan, these drugs were identified based on their ability to selectively target and eliminate those cells.

Longevity. Technology: Since the discovery of the first senolytics, hundreds of others have since been identified or created, and senotherapeutics is now one of the hottest areas in longevity, with a host of clinical trials under way and companies pursuing senolytic therapies for a range of age-related conditions. But what does the man who started it all think about the therapeutic field he helped create? In the first of two articles, we bring you Dr Kirkland’s unique perspective on the world of senolytics.