Lifeboat Foundation

Telomeres are “caps” of non-coding DNA sequences present at both tips of our chromosomes, which are extremely important in the aging process. These caps protect our DNA as cells go through various life cycles of replication, however, each time a cell divides these telomeres are shortened and eventually contribute to disease and cellular aging.

Now, exciting new research published in the Journal PNAS has shown that an experimental gene therapy could be used to halt the shortening of these telomere caps in mice and by doing so increase the life span of these animals by up to 41 percent compared to controls.

Telomere length can be considered a marker of biological age and its shortening is a hallmark of a process called cellular senescence, which limits the replication of DNA in old damaged cells. As we age, telomere caps become shorter and shorter until the cell’s DNA becomes vulnerable to damage by cellular stresses that could lead to diseases such as cancer. Or the cell could ultimately reach senescence where it will no longer be able to replicate and so contribute to the aging process. For scientists looking at how to slow or even reverse aging, telomeres are of great interest.

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Here at Lifespan.io, we publish fact-checked news and deep interviews with aging researchers to help people track the development of treatments targeting aging. These treatments aim at preventing and curing age-related diseases and may improve lives of thousands of people around the globe!

Everyone deserves to know about the emerging opportunities in the field of healthy life extension research. Knowledge is empowering. In our articles and popular science videos, we discuss the progress, pros, cons, and social implications of innovative medicine for controlling aging, and the steps that are needed to accelerate its clinical implementation.

Continue reading “Learn about the Science that could one day overcome age related diseases” »

In a study printed in PNAS, researchers have shown that telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) can be given to cells in living mice through a viral vector, taking the idea of life-extending gene therapies from science fiction to reality.

Why a cytomegalovirus?

The human cytomegalovirus (CMV) is widely known as an endemic virus that, while usually asymptomatic, is known to cause with harmful effects in babies and older adults. However, some of its properties make this virus suitable for delivering gene therapies. As cytomegaloviruses can carry large genetic payloads and don’t overwrite the DNA of their host cells [1], replacing the genes of these viruses with beneficial DNA may be safer than approaches with more potential off-target effects; development in this area is ongoing, and a phase 1 human clinical trial has already been conducted [2].

A receptor that was first identified as necessary for insulin action, that also is located on the neural stem cells found deep in the brains of mice, is pivotal for brain stem cell longevity, according to a Rutgers study, a finding that has important implications for brain health and future therapies for brain disorders.

The study 0, appearing in the journal Stem Cell Reports, pinpoints a specific protein known as the insulin receptor (INSR), which is abundant on the neural stem cells that reside in the brain’s subventricular zone. During development, neural stem cells give rise to the entire nervous system, and they persist into adulthood. Over the lifespan these neural stem cells produce new neurons and non-neuronal cells that maintain the infrastructure and functioning of the brain.

Separately, the scientists made another finding when examining brain tumors: INSR plays a crucial role in sustaining and maintaining a population of specialized brain cancer cells known as glioblastoma (GBM) stem cells. When they inactivated the INSR in the GBM stem cells they inhibited the growth of those primitive tumor forming cells.

In this video we have a look at a case study of one person who has undergone hTERT gene therapy. The paper does not identify the subject I would guess it is Liz Parrish. The gene therapy was administered two times over a period of five years.

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Papers mentioned in the video:
Systemic Human Htert Aav Gene Transfer Therapy And The Effect On Telomere Length And Biological Age, A Case Report.
https://maplespub.com/article/systemic-human-htert-aav-gene-…ase-report.

Continue reading “35 Years Biological Age Reversal: A Case Study | Review” »

Hearing loss is normally permanent as sensory cells responsible for transmitting frequency information from the world around us to the brain get damaged from excessive noise and lifestyle factors as we age. Up until now, it’s been challenging to selectively regrow these sensory cells that play an important part in transmitting sound through the outer and inner ear to the brain, but that might be about to change.

In a study involving mice, scientists from Northwestern University have identified a single master gene that can program ear hair cells (known as cochlear hair cells) into becoming either outer or inner ear hair cells required for hearing. The breakthrough is reported in the journal Nature.

“Our finding gives us the first clear cell switch to make one type versus the other,” said lead study author Jaime García-Añoveros, PhD, in a statement. “It will provide a previously unavailable tool to make an inner or outer hair cell. We have overcome a major hurdle.”

Pharmaceutical intervention of aging requires targeting multiple pathways, thus there is rationale to test combinations of drugs targeting different but overlapping processes. In order to determine if combining drugs shown to extend lifespan and healthy aging in mice would have greater impact than any individual drug, a cocktail diet containing 14 ppm rapamycin, 1,000 ppm acarbose, and 1,000 ppm phenylbutyrate was fed to 20-month-old C57BL/6 and HET3 4-way cross mice of both sexes for three months. Mice treated with the cocktail showed a sex and strain-dependent phenotype consistent with healthy aging including decreased body fat, improved cognition, increased strength and endurance, and decreased age-related pathology compared to mice treated with individual drugs or control. The severity of age-related lesions in heart, lungs, liver, and kidney was consistently decreased in mice treated with the cocktail compared to mice treated with individual drugs or control, suggesting an interactive advantage of the three drugs. This study shows that a combination of three drugs, each previously shown to enhance lifespan and health span in mice, is able to delay aging phenotypes in middle-aged mice more effectively than any individual drug in the cocktail over a 3-month treatment period.

© 2022. The Author(s).

Conflict of interest statement.

For our inaugural episode of Let’s Talk Longevity, we want to figure out if we are anywhere near Longevity Escape Velocity. Defined as a hypothetical situation in which life expectancy is extended longer than the time that is passing, we decided the best conversation on it would be with its biggest advocate, Dr. Aubrey de Grey, and an equally well-known skeptic of the likelihood of it taking place, Dr. Charles Brenner. This debate did not need hosts!

Join us for the live Q&A on Twitter Spaces this Thursday, May 12th at 12 pm PDT
https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1ypKdEmgDANGW

Continue reading “On Longevity Escape Velocity with Aubrey de Grey & Charles Brenner” »

Cryostasis Revival by Robert Freitas is the first comprehensive technical exposition how to revive cryonics patients in the future. This 700+ page book with thousands of references, and technical color illustrations, is now available on Amazon in a limited textbook hardcover edition.

Cryostasis is an emergency medical procedure in which a human patient is placed in biological stasis at cryogenic temperatures. A cryopreserved patient can be maintained in this condition indefinitely without suffering additional degradation, but cannot yet be revived using currently available technology. This book presents the first comprehensive conceptual protocol for revival from human cryopreservation, using medical nanorobots. The revival methods presented in this book involve three stages: collecting information from preserved structure, computing how to fix damaged structure, and implementing the repair procedure using nanorobots manufactured in a nanofactory – a system for atomically precise manufacturing that is now visible on the technological horizon.