Lifeboat Foundation

For Rance and others in the field, fezolinetant’s progress to this point is a sign that research into the causes and effects of menopausal symptoms is finally being taken seriously. In the next few years, the global number of postmenopausal women is expected to surpass one billion. But many women still struggle to access care related to menopause, and research into how best to manage such symptoms has lagged behind. That is slowly changing. Armed with improved animal models and a growing literature on the effects of existing treatments, more researchers are coming into the field to fill that gap.

They increasingly recognize that menopause and the transition to it, a phase labelled perimenopause, could set the stage for brain health in later life, and there are even hints that it could correlate with the risk of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Fezolinetant and similar drugs in the pipeline also represent a shift in thinking: from menopause as a condition of the female reproductive organs, to one that focuses on neurological causes and effects. “We think of menopause as being driven by changes in the ovary,” says Hadine Joffe, who studies mental health and ageing in women at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. “The notion of the brain at the helm of menopause, that is a different concept.”

Next week will see the first Sheba Longevity Conference, a meeting that will bring together all relevant stakeholders in the multidisciplinary field of longevity medicine, providing a forum for showcasing outstanding research and scientific breakthroughs. The conference will also include the opening ceremony of the public academic hospital longevity center at Sheba Hospital.

The conference aims to foster collaborations that will accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries into clinical practices and facilitate a shift in Israel’s national healthy longevity policy. The event will also include an exhibition space for sponsors, partners and industry representatives to promote dialogue and showcase their work.

Continue reading “New longevity conference will span research to evidence-based clinical practice” »

August will see the second annual Longevity Summit take place in Dublin. Packed with keynote presentations by leading experts in the aging field, the summit will showcase some of the latest – and most exciting – research and innovations in the longevity space.

Longevity. Technology: One of the Longevity Summit’s most-anticipated speakers is eminent gerontologist Dr Aubrey de Grey. Since the launch of the Longevity Escape Velocity Foundation, which Dr de Grey announced at Dublin last year, news on progress of its flagship research programme Robust Mouse Rejuvenation has been keenly awaited, as has further details on its research into transplants on demand.

Continue reading “Stay cool: the longevity tech that ‘shows insane promise’” »

Year 2014 face_with_colon_three Basically the whole bodies cells could be a pacemaker enabling even immortality with electricity at low voltage.

In pigs, scientists have succeeded in turning cardiac muscle cells into specialized pacemaker cells. Such technology could eventually replace electronic pacemakers, researchers say.

Continue reading “Reprogramming Cells for a Bio-Pacemaker” »

In a remote part of the Amazon, anthropologists and neuroscientists are learning about life and health without an “embarrassment of riches.”

A study has found that a mitochondrial disease in newborns shows cancer-like changes in proliferating cells, causing tissues to age prematurely. The finding is a significant step forward in understanding the syndrome and developing treatments for mitochondrial diseases.

GRACILE syndrome, a mitochondrial disease that is one of the Finnish heritage diseases, shows altered cell metabolism and proliferation resembling that of cancer cells. In the future, similar mitochondrial diseases could potentially be treated by limiting excessive cell proliferation. This is demonstrated in a study led by docent Jukka Kallijärvi and professor emerita Vineta Fellman that was carried out at the Folkhälsan Research Center and the University of Helsinki and published in Nature Communications in April 2023.

Mitochondria are organelles responsible for a large portion of cellular energy metabolism. Mutations in genes required for mitochondrial functions cause mitochondrial diseases in humans. GRACILE syndrome is caused by a malfunction in the respiratory chain, the very system the mitochondria utilize to generate cellular energy. The onset of the syndrome is in the fetal period, manifesting after birth as a liver and kidney disease with severe metabolic complications. Newborns with the syndrome usually only survive a few weeks.

Our cells naturally degrade over time, which is part of the reason we’re not as mobile and sprightly aged 80 as we are aged 8. Now scientists have figured out a way to boost cell lifespan and longevity using a synthetic genetic ‘clock’.

Researchers from the University of California San Diego based their findings on the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, making it unlikely that humans might live forever any time soon – but the team thinks that the work could be developed to eventually help the human body age in a healthier way.

By ‘rewiring’ the yeast cells, the researchers were able to boost their lifespan by 82 percent on average. It’s a promising development in the control of cellular aging and treating age-related conditions.

It works for retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Science Corp has conceived of a new bionic eye that targets and cures two diseases that cause blindness. “Today we’re excited to take the covers off of our first flagship product development program: the Science Eye, a visual prosthesis targeted at retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), two forms of serious blindness presently without good options for patients,” said the firm in a post from November 2022.

How does it work? By targeting the functioning of the diseases.

Continue reading “This bionic eye cures diseases that cause blindness” »

Scientists are still determining whether humans will reach a maximum possible age or if we can extend lifespan indefinitely. One thing we know is that the aging we see and feel in our bodies is connected to aging that individual cells experience. Yeast is a common model in molecular biology that is often used to study aging. In 2020, scientists found that yeast cells could go down one of two aging paths; in one, structures called nucleoli were degraded and ribosomal DNA experienced less silencing; in the other, mitochondria were affected and heme accumulation was reduced. The researchers suggested that these were two distinct types of terminal aging.

In follow-up work, the research team has manipulated the genetics of those pathways, and have extended the lifespan of cells by doing so. The work has been reported in Science. The investigators applied a solution to the cells that altered gene circuits to stop the cells from deteriorating.