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Category: genetics – Page 436

Elena Milova is at the Interventions to extend healthspan and lifespan 2018 conference in Kazan this week. This is an important conference in the aging research field, and it includes a variety of leading experts giving talks about their research. One of these experts is Andrei Gudkov, and Elena had the opportunity to talk with him about his research.

Dr. Andrei V. Gudkov, Ph.D., D.Sci, is a Scientific Co-Founder of Cleveland Biolabs, Inc. and has been its Chief Scientific Officer since June 2003. Dr. Gudkov serves as Chief Scientific Officer and Founder at Everon Biosciences, Inc. He co-founded Mega Biotech & Electronics Co., Ltd. and serves as its Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Gudkov serves as Senior Vice President of Basic Science at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. He has over 25 years of experience in biomedical research. Prior to 1990, he worked with the National Cancer Research Center in Moscow (USSR), where he led a broad research program focused on virology and cancer drug resistance.

In 1990, he re-established his lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he became a tenured faculty member in the Department of Molecular Genetics. In 1999, he defined p53 as a major determinant of cancer treatment side effects and suggested this protein as a target for therapeutic suppression. In 2001, Dr. Gudkov moved his laboratory to the Lerner Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, where he served as Chairman of the Department of Molecular Biology and Professor of Biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University. He has served as a Director of Cleveland Biolabs, Inc. since June 2003.

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A team of researchers, including professor Steve Horvath, the pioneer of the epigenetic clock, report in this new paper about an improved version of that clock [1]. His original epigenetic clock measures the age of a person by looking at DNA methylation patterns; these patterns correlate closely with the actual age of a person, with a margin of error of around two years or so.

Since the original clock was first created, work has continued on refining the process and how aging is measured. In terms of aging biomarkers, it is generally considered the gold standard, given how reliable it is as a way to determine biological age.

While chronological age is linked to the likelihood of us developing age-related diseases and dying, it is important to distinguish the difference between chronological age and biological age. Individuals of the same chronological age may not age in quite the same way or even at the same rate, showing differences in their susceptibility to different age-related diseases.

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Wilmington, DE, April 19, 2018 — Scientists at Christiana Care Health System’s Gene Editing Institute have developed a potentially breakthrough CRISPR gene-editing tool. It could allow researchers to take fragments of DNA extracted from human cells, put them into a test tube, and quickly and precisely engineer multiple changes to the genetic code, according to a new study published today in the CRISPR Journal.

Investigators at the Gene Editing Institute, which is part of the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute at Christiana Care, said their new “cell-free” CRISPR technology is the first CRISPR tool capable of making multiple edits to DNA samples “in vitro,” which means in a test tube or petri dish. The advance could have immediate value as a diagnostic tool, replicating the exact genetic mutations found in the tumors of individual cancer patients. Mutations that cause cancer to spread can differ from patient to patient, and being able to quickly identify the correct mutation affecting an individual patient can allow clinicians to implement a more targeted treatment strategy.

“With this new advance, we should be able to work with laboratory cultures and accomplish gene edits in less than a day, significantly reducing the time required for diagnostics compared to other CRISPR tools, and with much greater precision,” said Eric Kmiec, Ph.D., director of the Gene Editing Institute and principal author of the study. “This is particularly important for diagnostics linked to cancer care where time is critical.”

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“Old age isn’t a battle,” she says, quoting Philip Roth, “old age is a massacre.” In the past few years, she has given up on screenings and scans. Not that she is lazy or suicidal. But at 76, she considers herself old enough to die. All the self-help books aimed at her age group tell her otherwise; they talk of “active ageing”, “productive ageing”, “anti-ageing”, even “reverse-ageing”, with a long life promised to anyone who makes an effort, regardless of factors such as genetics or poverty. But to her, ageing is “an accumulation of disabilities”, which no amount of physical activity or rigorous self-denial can prevent. If she has symptoms, she’ll have them investigated. But when a doctor tells her there could be an undetected problem of some kind, she won’t play along.

A great iconoclast has written a polemic about ageing that sends up New Age platitudes and is full of scepticism of the wellness industry.

Blake Morrison

Thu 12 Apr 2018 02.30 EDT Last modified on Fri 13 Apr 2018 19.10 EDT.

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Peripheral Elevation of a #Klotho Fragment Enhances Brain Function and Resilience in Young, Aging, and α-Synuclein Transgenic Mice.

Klotho is a longevity factor associated with cognitive enhancement when genetically and widely overexpressed over the lifetime of mice. Leon et al. show that peripheral delivery of a klotho fragment, αKL-F, acutely enhances cognition and neural resilience in young, aging, and disease model mice, establishing its therapeutic relevance and dissecting its underlying mechanisms.

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