Lifeboat Foundation

A multi-institute research team led by BGI-Research has used BGI Stereo-seq technology to construct the world first spatiotemporal cellular atlas of the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) brain development and regeneration, revealing how a brain injury can heal itself. The study was published as a cover story in the latest issue of Science.

The research team analyzed the development and regeneration of salamander brain, identified the key neural stem cell subsets in the process of salamander brain regeneration, and described the reconstruction of damaged neurons by such stem cell subsets. At the same time, the team also found that brain regeneration and development have certain similarities, providing assistance for cognitive brain structure and development, while offering new directions for regenerative medicine research and treatment of the nervous system.

In contrast to mammals, some vertebrates have the ability to regenerate multiple organs, including parts of the central nervous system. Among them, the axolotl can not only regenerate organs such as limbs, tail, eyes, skin and liver, but also the brain. The axolotl is evolutionarily advanced compared to other teleost, such as zebrafish, and its brain features a higher similarity to mammalian brain structure. Therefore, this study used the axolotl as an ideal model organism for research into brain regeneration.

Imagine being able to take a medicine that prevents the decline that comes with age and keeps you healthy. Scientists are searching for drugs that have these effects. The current most promising anti-aging drug is Rapamycin. It is known for its positive effects on life and health span in experimental studies with laboratory animals. It is often given lifelong to obtain the maximum beneficial effects of the drug. However, even at the low doses used in the prevention of age-related decline, negative side effects may occur. Plus, it is always desirable to use the lowest effective dose. A research group at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Aging in Cologne, Germany, has now shown in laboratory animals that brief exposure to rapamycin has the same positive effects as lifelong treatment. This opens new doors for a potential application in humans.

Research scientists are increasingly focused on combating the negative effects of aging. Lifestyle changes can improve the health of older people, but these alone are not sufficient to prevent the ills of older age. Repurposing existing medications for ‘geroprotection’ is providing an additional weapon in the prevention of age-related decline.

Currently, the most promising anti-aging drug is rapamycin, a cell growth inhibitor and immunosuppressant that is normally used in cancer therapy and after organ transplantations. “At the doses used clinically, rapamycin can have undesirable side effects, but for the use of the drug in the prevention of age-related decline, these need to be absent or minimal. Therefore, we wanted to find out when and how long we need to give rapamycin in order to achieve the same effects as lifelong treatment,” explains Dr. Paula Juricic. She is the leading investigator of the study in the department of Prof. Linda Partridge, director at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Aging.

The trial was only on 8 people, but it appears to have worked well across the board.

Published in GeroScience, a groundbreaking study from the renowned Conboy lab has confirmed that plasma dilution leads to systemic rejuvenation against multiple proteomic aspects of aging in human beings.

This paper takes the view that much of aging is driven by systemic molecular excess. Signaling molecules, antibodies, and toxins, which gradually accumulate out of control, cause cells to exhibit the gene expression that characterizes older cells.

Continue reading “Plasma Dilution Appears to Rejuvenate Humans” »

Foresight Existential Hope Group.
Program & apply to join: https://foresight.org/existential-hope/

In the Existential Hope-podcast (https://www.existentialhope.com), we invite scientists to speak about long-termism. Each month, we drop a podcast episode where we interview a visionary scientist to discuss the science and technology that can accelerate humanity towards desirable outcomes.

Xhope Special with Foresight Fellow Morgan Levine.

Morgan Levine is a ladder-rank Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology at the Yale School of Medicine and a member of both the Yale Combined Program in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, and the Yale Center for Research on Aging. Her work relies on an interdisciplinary approach, integrating theories and methods from statistical genetics, computational biology, and mathematical demography to develop biomarkers of aging for humans and animal models using high-dimensional omics data. As PI or co-Investigator on multiple NIH-, Foundation-, and University-funded projects, she has extensive experience using systems-level and machine learning approaches to track epigenetic, transcriptomic, and proteomic changes with aging and incorporate.
this information to develop measures of risk stratification for major chronic diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Her work also involves development of systems-level outcome measures of aging, aimed at facilitating evaluation for geroprotective interventions.

Continue reading “Existential Hope Special with Morgan Levine” »

What does the future of aging and longevity hold? Can science hack the human lifespan? Even if we can, SHOULD we…?

People aren’t dying as early or as easily as they used to. Innovations in modern medicine, health, and hygiene helped us extend our lives by decades, but what comes next? Would you rather live to be a healthy and hearty 90 or live to be 150 but wither away for the last 60 years? We’ll talk about it in this episode of Far Out.

Continue reading “How to Stop (And Even Reverse) Aging” »

Hevolution Foundation, a non-profit organisation that provides grants and early-stage investments to incentivise research and entrepreneurship in healthspan science, and the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) have today announced an international research grant programme to enable early-career investigators to conduct research into healthspan-expanding therapeutics and treatments.

Longevity. Technology: Founded in the belief that every person has the right to live a longer, healthier life, Hevolution Foundation is on a mission to drive efforts to extend healthy human lifespan and understand the processes of aging. With a focus on aging as a treatable process, the Foundation aims to increase the number of aging-related treatments on the market, compress the timeline of drug development and increase accessibility to therapeutics that extend healthspan.

A non-profit organisation headquartered in Riyadh, with an annual budget of up to $1 billion, Hevolution Foundation plans to open hubs in North America and other global locations to support a cutting-edge, global ecosystem of talent to propel aging and geroscience research forward and achieve medical breakthroughs to help humanity live healthier, longer.

Immortality exists – but to get it, you need to be a jellyfish, not a god or a vampire. Moreover, only one species of cnidarian, Turritopsis dohrnii, is known to have found the secret of eternal life. Geneticists hope comparing T. dornii’s DNA with its close relative, T. rubra, will help us understand the aging process and how to evade it.

Turritopsis are warm water jellyfish half a centimeter (0.2 inches) long. At least three species of hydra have the capacity to age backwards like Benjamin Button, going from adult to juvenile stage, before eventually growing up again. However, two of these can only go from the hydra equivalent of adolescent to child; like the victim in some uncensored fairytale, sexual reproduction locks them into adulthood. T. dohrnii, on the other hand, appears able to go from its free-floating adult stage to bottom-living polyp, known as life cycle reversal (LCR), as many times as it wants.

A paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides a comparison of T. dorhnii and T. rubra in the hope the differences will prove enlightening, throwing in a few more distantly related types of cnidarians as well.

Scientists study the immortal jellyfish to learn about its DNA reproduction, life cycle and telomeres. New research reveals its special genes.

T. dohrnii is the only species that is biologically immortal, and now scientists have peered into its DNA to find out what lets it live forever.