Archive for the ‘life extension’ category: Page 576
Jul 26, 2016
Project | 21 — We Can End Aging
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: biotech/medical, economics, internet, life extension
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiRf5NClQ8A
Website: http://sensproject21.org/
Building the bridge to human clinical trials for rejuvenation biotechnologies.
Jul 25, 2016
Genomics maverick Craig Venter’s plan to unlock DNA’s connection to disease
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension
Awesome! Just imagine all the benefits that we will see through this research. Not only will we figure out more on the root cause of gene mutations, and cures including CRISPR; but also we will be more effective in mimicking the human system in synthetic systems, synthetic cell or gene circuitry, humanoids, synthetic immune systems, combat aging more effectively, etc.
With more data, a pioneer of gene sequencing hopes to unlock the connections between DNA and illness.
Read more
Jul 25, 2016
Project|21 SENS Research Foundation | Building the Bridge to Human Clinical Trials for Rejuvenation Biotechnologies
Posted by Steve Hill in categories: biotech/medical, internet, life extension
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — July 11, 2016 — SENS Research Foundation today announced its Project|21 campaign to secure $50 million in private support from individual donors, foundations, and corporations. The goal of Project|21 is for SRF to partner with a new generation of visionary philanthropists, build the Rejuvenation Biotechnology industry, and bridge the most challenging gulf between research and treatment by enabling human clinical trials by 2021.
Aubrey de Grey, founder and chief science officer of SENS Research Foundation said, “Ending aging will require large-scale investment to flow into a globally-recognized industry for rejuvenation biotechnology. Since we began in 2009, SENS Research Foundation has been putting all the pieces in place — core research groups, key players, shared knowledge, underlying tools — for the creation of this industry. The key programs funded by Project|21 can create an environment where the first damage repair interventions addressing specific age-related diseases will be brought to human clinical trials within five years.”
The programs funded under Project|21 focus on three major barriers to the development of truly effective rejuvenation therapies. First, funding to convert promising basic research programs into solid investment candidates remains far too scarce. Second, there are too few opportunities for dynamic collaborations with mainstream regenerative medicine. Finally, there is little understanding of the regulatory pathways and clinical infrastructure these technologies will require. Project|21 addresses these three areas by creating a $15 million bridge fund to support promising early stage technologies; a center of excellence to deliver better opportunities for collaborative development of early stage programs; and a Rejuvenation Biotechnology Alliance Program to address challenges in regulation, manufacturing, and investment.
Jul 22, 2016
Ray Kurzweil Outlines the Coming Biomedical Revolution [Video]
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, nanotechnology, Ray Kurzweil
Will we live longer lives in the future? According to Ray Kurzweil, it’s only a matter of time until technology begins successfully tackling age-related disease—and life expectancy grows longer and longer. At some point, technology will annually add more than a year to our life expectancy—allowing us to indefinitely increase lifespans, and perhaps eventually live as long as we want.
“We will get to a point where our longevity, our remaining life expectancy is moving on away from us. The sands of time will run in rather than run out,” Kurzweil says.
Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil Outlines the Coming Biomedical Revolution [Video]” »
Jul 19, 2016
Study shows continuous dehydration kills cells during dry preservation
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: cryonics, engineering, life extension
A new finding in experiments studying the dry preservation of living cells — a potentially revolutionary alternative to cryopreservation — has defined a clear limit where continuing dehydration kills cells. The data, combined with molecular dynamics simulations, provides insight into an important processing factor that has limited recent attempts at dry preservation.
“What we have done is identified what appears to be a materials constraint in our method of dry preservation. I think this new understanding suggests some interesting avenues to pursue in developing a successful process,” said Gloria Elliott, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, one of the study’s authors.
The findings, reported in the July 8 issue of Scientific Reports, analyzes changes in the molecular arrangements of trehalose (a sugar) and water molecules during a typical dehydration process that they use to immobilize cells in a stable trehalose glass for long-term storage.
Continue reading “Study shows continuous dehydration kills cells during dry preservation” »
Jul 19, 2016
Matching Fund Donors Sought for SENS Universal Cancer Therapy Crowdfunding
Posted by Steve Hill in categories: biotech/medical, life extension
SENS has a fund match for its current campaign on lifespan.io, if you are concerned about cancer like me and you want to help directly fund a lab working on solutions please think about donating. smile
There is a month left to go in the SENS crowdfunding campaign that aims to accelerate development of an important component of a universal cancer therapy, a way to block the mechanisms of telomere lengthening that every type of cancer depends upon. The SENS Research Foundation and Lifespan.io volunteers are looking for donors to put up matching funds of a few thousand dollars or more, in order to take that news and that inducement to a number of conferences and other events over the next few weeks. More than 150 people have donated to the campaign to date, and we’d like to triple that number in the next 30 days.
To start things off, I’ll offer up $2,000 of my own funds: the next $2,000 in donations to this SENS cancer research initiative will be matched dollar for dollar. That is a start, and if you can join in to help out, please contact me to let me know. Can you help to make a difference here?
Continue reading “Matching Fund Donors Sought for SENS Universal Cancer Therapy Crowdfunding” »
Jul 18, 2016
Stanford Researchers ‘Trick’ Human Stem Cells To Regenerate Faster
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: biotech/medical, life extension
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine found a way to trick human embryonic stem cells to become pure populations of any of 12 cell types, including bone, heart muscle and cartilage within days.
Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified the sets of biological and chemical signals necessary to quickly and efficiently direct human embryonic stem cells. If successful, researchers could grow pure populations of any of 12 cell types, including bone, heart muscle and cartilage within days rather than the weeks or months previously required.
This is key toward clinically useful regenerative medicine – potentially allowing researchers to generate new beating heart cells to repair damage after a heart attack or to create cartilage or bone to reinvigorate creaky joints or heal from trauma.
Continue reading “Stanford Researchers ‘Trick’ Human Stem Cells To Regenerate Faster” »
Jul 16, 2016
Atheist Presidential Candidate: Religion is Literally Killing Us
Posted by Zoltan Istvan in categories: biotech/medical, computing, geopolitics, life extension, terrorism
https://youtube.com/watch?v=VlGADx1s1zQ
It’s not just religious terrorism that is killing people. A religious anti-science culture—which most of us live amongst—also cuts short everyone’s lives. People simply don’t care much about longevity if they believe in an afterlife.
All around the world, religious terror is striking and threatening us. Whether in France, Istanbul, London, or the USA, the threat is now constant. We can fight it all we want. We can send out our troops; we can chip refugees; we can try to monitor terrorist’s every move. We can even improve trauma medicine to deal with extreme violence they bring us. But none of this solves the underlying issue: Abrahamic religions like Christianity and Islam are fundamentally violent philosophies with violent Gods. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others have all reiterated essentially the same thing.
Continue reading “Atheist Presidential Candidate: Religion is Literally Killing Us” »
Jul 16, 2016
Beware the Rise of Gerontocracy: Some Hard Lessons for Transhumanism, Not Least from Brexit
Posted by Steve Fuller in categories: aging, biological, ethics, futurism, governance, government, homo sapiens, human trajectories, life extension, neuroscience, policy, strategy, thought controlled, transhumanism
Transhumanists will know that the science fiction author Zoltan Istvan has unilaterally leveraged the movement into a political party contesting the 2016 US presidential election. To be sure, many transhumanists have contested Istvan’s own legitimacy, but there is no denying that he has generated enormous publicity for many key transhumanist ideas. Interestingly, his lead idea is that the state should do everything possible to uphold people’s right to live forever. Of course, he means to live forever in a healthy state, fit of mind and body. Istvan cleverly couches this policy as simply an extension of what voters already expect from medical research and welfare provision. And while he may be correct, the policy is fraught with hazards – especially if, as many transhumanists believe, we are on the verge of revealing the secrets to biological immortality.
In June, Istvan and I debated this matter at Brain Bar Budapest. Let me say, for the record, that I think that we are sufficiently close to this prospect that it is not too early to discuss its political and economic implications.
Two months before my encounter with Istvan, I was on a panel at the Edinburgh Science Festival with the great theorist of radical life extension Aubrey de Grey, where he declared that people who live indefinitely will seem like renovated vintage cars. Whatever else, he is suggesting that they would be frozen in time. He may actually be right about this. But is such a state desirable, given that throughout history radical change has been facilitated generational change? Specifically, two simple facts make the young open to doing things differently: The young have no memory of past practices working to anyone else’s benefit, and they have not had the time to invest in those practices to reap their benefits. Whatever good is to be found in the past is hearsay, as far as the young are concerned, which they are being asked to trust as they enter a world that they know is bound to change.
Questions have been already raised about whether tomorrow’s Methuselahs will wish to procreate at all, given the time available to them to realize dreams that in the past would have been transferred to their offspring. After all, as human life expectancy has increased 50% over the past century, the birth rate has correspondingly dropped. One can only imagine what will happen once ageing can be arrested, if not outright reversed!
