Longevity Research

Why You Owe Your Life to a 2200 Year-Old Man

posted on January 5, 2010

Every week, I distill Reason’s longevity news summaries down. Reason is the editor of Longevity Meme. You’ll notice the headlines and key sections of each news summary are bolded, so you can glance at them and pick out the ones that catch your eye, without getting bogged down with information overload.

Most of these weekly snippets would have made the headlines just ten years ago, or even five. Almost any ONE of these would have rocked the scientific community then. Now, Reason has to search for them and they get a ho-hum reaction from most. This is a clue as to how and why we will cure aging in our lifetime.

Groups like Maximum Life, SENS and Methuselah Foundations, Immortality Institute, and others are working daily to make this happen. And it will sneak up on you before you know it, just like these taken-for-granted news articles.

The whole extreme life extension effort reminds me of a little known event that took place in the 3rd century B.C. that changed the course of Western Civilization. Did you ever hear of Scipio Africanus? He was a Roman general. In 202 B.C, he defied great odds by defeating Hannibul on the Plains of Zama in the second Punic War. He was underfunded, undersupported and was not even considered to be a serious challenger to the Carthaginians.

Why is that significant? His surprise victory changed the course of western civilization. You would most likely not exist if not for Scipio performing the unexpected.

The Manhattan Beach Project is doing the same for aging. What we expect, will take most of the world by surprise. And it will seem to happen quickly. Just as yesterday’s miracles are taken for granted today, tomorrow’s miracles will catch the world by surprise by letting us live longer and vanquishing the health care crisis almost overnight. We have already laid the foundation for those miracles, and if Scipio were alive today, he might be our biggest champion.
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THE BREAKDOWN OF CELLULAR RECYCLING WITH AGING

One facet of the degenerations of aging is, in effect, a garbage catastrophe. The garbage collection mechanisms within your cells are gradually overwhelmed by junk they cannot deal with:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/12/lysosomal-activity-declines-with-aging.php

"Lysosomes are roving garbage disposal and recycling units that exist in droves within your cells. One of their jobs is to break down damaged cellular machinery before it causes issues, and so that the component molecules can be reused. Another task is the disposal of unwanted or harmful biochemicals. [We] should therefore be concerned if they fail or slow down with aging. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens."

Lipofuscin is the name given to a gunk formed of many varied chemical byproducts of metabolism. It accumulates in your cells with age - and causes a great many problems in doing so. A cell follows the standard garbage collection plan and throws all of its lipofuscin into its lysosomes - but the expected recycling process never happens, and that lipofuscin gradually accumulates. Lysosomes that become packed full of this lipofuscin cannot perform their jobs effectively. As a result, other unwanted biochemicals and dysfunctional biochemical machinery in the cell are left unrecycled. This state of affairs eventually spirals out of control, leading to malfunctioning bodily systems and contributing to a range of age-related conditions, including atherosclerosis and macular degeneration.

So we all have failing, junk-ridden lysosomes - what can be done to reverse this situation? One project currently undertaken by the SENS Foundation lays the groundwork for therapies based on bacterial enzymes that can remove this unwanted chemical junk. The lifting of that burden should restore our cellular garbage collection systems to a youthful and energetic state. A recent update on this research is found in the latest issue of Rejuvenation Research. Progress is as predicted so far:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/01/an-update-on-medical-bioremediation-in-the-latest-rejuvenation-research.php

CONSIDERING THE OUTER LIMITS OF BIOPRINTING

Great progress is presently being made in the use of rapid prototyping or three-dimensional printer technology for tissue engineering. The first printed organs may be turned out in the early 2020s:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/12/considering-the-outer-limits-of-organ-bioprinting.php
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LATEST HEALTHY LIFE EXTENSION HEADLINES

APPROACHING A CURE FOR CANCER (January 01 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4534
A good survey of the next generation of cancer therapies can be found at Emergent Fool. I do not expect cancer to be a major threat to health in 2030 thanks to the development of robust cures for even late stage metastasis. "Biris and Zharov are making some exciting progress in using nanotubes to tag and then track cancer cells inside the body as they move around.  They propose to kill the cancer cells by heating up the nanotubes using lasers. The immune system is really good at identifying and killing cells behaving badly (although the majority of the time the immune system's targets are foreign invaders like viruses).  But what if we could boost the immune system so that it was better able to deal with cancer cells? Essentially create a vaccine for cancer. Modifying genes, either by enhancing tumor suppressors or reducing tumor promotors, has been a popular appoach in recent years.  Often the approach has been to focus on individually important genes or to try to find exhaustive sets of genes which, when modified appropriately, stop cancer progression.

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST AGING (December 31 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4533
The Campaign Against Aging is a new grassroots advocacy initiative for longevity science of the SENS variety, announced a few days ago. I'm always pleased to see folk motivated and rising to the challenge: "Aging kills 100,000 out of the 150,000 people that die each day worldwide and inflicts an enormous amount of suffering. No other problem facing humanity can equal this tragedy. Aging is caused by the accumulation of damage in the human body that leads to age-related disease and eventually death. Medical therapies designed to remove this damage could restore the body to a youthful state. While most organizations focus on slowing down the aging process, more daring organizations seek to develop therapies that could reverse aging itself. Unfortunately, progress against aging has been slow due to lack of funding." The more groups that work to spread this message and raise funds for research, the better. Diversity is one of the keys to success in any endeavor - a greater variety in methods means a larger chance of at least one attempt succeeding.

PRESENT ACTIVITIES AT THE METHUSELAH FOUNDATION (December 31 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4532
From the Methuselah Foundation Blog: "As the decade draws to a close, I'm looking ahead to the next one. And the next. I am optimistic that my chance of living a long, healthy life get better every day. I see the possibility of adding happy, healthy, productive years to my life and yours. No cancer, no Alzheimer's and a heart that keeps on beating. Wouldn't we all want an extra decade to spend with your family, to accomplish our goals and to enjoy life. Methuselah Foundation is working on it! We have three initiatives underway right now as we wrap up the decade and begin a new one. In 2009 we awarded a special Mprize for a study that showed unequivocally that mice lived longer when they took the drug rapamycin. We believe in the power of prizes. We created the Mprize to encourage, incentivize and reward world-class scientists to solve the problem of aging. The prize also attracts new funding, brains, approaches and publicity to the mission of extending healthy life. What we are seeking - and expect to find - is not just a longer life for you, but a long, healthy, vibrant and productive life. 80, 90, 100 and even more healthy years. Cancer and Alzheimer's free. It's a tall order but one we are fully committed to."

EXERCISE AND ARTERIAL STIFFNESS (December 30 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4531
The list of specific age-related changes slowed by exercise continues to grow: "Just three months of physical activity reaps heart health benefits for [adults between the ages of 65 to 83] with type 2 diabetes by improving the elasticity in their arteries - reducing risk of heart disease and stroke. An improvement was seen in the elasticity of the arteries of the group that performed the activity compared to those who didn't exercise. There was an impressive drop in arterial stiffness after just three months of exercise. In that time we saw a 15 to 20 per cent reduction. There seems to be a knee-jerk reluctance to getting these older adults to exercise yet we used a vigorous level of activity and didn't have any trouble keeping participants in our study. They enjoyed the activity. People always underestimate what older adults can do. Our first step was to prove that it was at all possible for older adults to have reduced narrowing in their arteries due to exercise. Now we want to find out just how rigorous the levels of activity need to be to demonstrate the same results."

CARTILAGE ENGINEERING IN INDIA (December 29 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4529
The US is not the center of the world, and much of the development undertaken by US research groups is also underway elsewhere. For example: "A neocartilage developed by the Biological Sciences and Bio-Engineering Department of Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K) may someday prove a boon for patients suffering from osteoarthritis of the knees. So far, the only recourse for such patients were knee transplantation and regeneration of cells through cell therapy and stem cell technology. For the last four years, Professor of Bio-engineering Ashok Kumar [has] been working on the neocartilage project. After successfully trying it on mice, the team is now looking forward to test it on bigger animals. For testing it on humans, the IIT-K is in discussion with a few government hospitals in Lucknow and Kanpur. The cells are grown on a polymer matrix, which provide a suitable microenvironment for them to develop into tissues. During physical and bio-chemical tests it has exhibited natural cartilage properties. After the successful experiments, we are now in a condition to replace the whole or a small part of a damaged cartilage."

CAN YOUNG CELLS BE PROTECTED FROM AN OLD BODY? (December 29 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4528
One of the obstacles to rejuvenation of specific systems in the body through stem cell transplantation is that cells take their cues from the environment that surrounds them. Young cells are effectively damaged or suppressed by an old cellular environment. But there are signs that this effect could be diminished, and this research is one step in that direction: "Nanoscaffolds can play a central role in organ regeneration as they act as templates and guides for cell proliferation, differentiation and tissue growth. It is also important to protect these fragile cells from the harsh environment in which they are transplanted. The research team created the scaffold to provide a substrate for cell adhesion and migration and to influence the survival of transplanted cells or the invasion of cells from surrounding tissue. Implanted stem cells are adversely susceptible to their new environment and quickly get old, but this study suggests a solution to conquer this problem. The self-assembling nanofiber scaffold (SAPNS) provides a niche for the encapsulated stem cells by slowing down their growth, differentiation and proliferation, as well as potentially minimizing the immune response, thus enhancing the survival rate of the implanted stem cells. This allows the implanted stem cells to [extend] their neurites to reach distant targets, thereby re-establishing the neural circuits. This combination of stem cells and SAPNS technologies gives a new hope for building up younger neural circuit in the central neural system."

SINGULARITY UNIVERSITY EXECUTIVE PROGRAM (December 28 2009) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4527

The Singularity University should be viewed as a form of targeted advocacy and outreach, aimed at people who are already or likely to be movers and shakers, in charge of significant resources. In that respect it is one part of the grand distributed effort to generate a research and development community capable of building the technologies we desire within our lifetimes. One of the topics covered is the biotechnology of engineered longevity, but take a look at their programs for a better understanding of the SU approach: "The SU Executive Program educates, informs and prepares executives to recognize the opportunities and disruptive influences of exponentially growing technologies and understand how these field affect your future, your company and your industry. The SU/EP is an Over-the-Horizon Radar for Executives showing you what is in the lab today and what will be in the marketplace in the next 5 to 10+ years. Meet top faculty, thought leaders, and CEOs in a range of exponentially growing technologies; Learn the core vocabulary and breakthrough concepts in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Nanotechnology, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Medicine and Human-Machine Interfaces, and Networks and Computing Systems; Understand the underlying drivers of exponential change; Visit top Silicon valley companies implementing these breakthroughs."

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