Lifeboat Foundation

A quick introduction to Yamanaka factors!

The quest for longevity has always been with us. Ever since the ancient kings of old we have been trying everything we can think of in order to stave off death and disease, with most of our efforts unfortunately baring little fruit. However, as it turns out, the power to reverse the aging process has been nestled within us this whole time. Not in the metaphorical sense, but rather in the quite literal sense. For you see, we have been reversing the aging process every single time we have reproduced.

Have you ever wondered how it is that regardless of how old the parents of a child are, the child is never born ‘pre-aged?’. This seems like a ridiculous question, but if the genetic material that came from the parents (especially from the father) has already undergone the aging process, then how is it that ‘genetic aging’ is not passed onto the child? If such a process were to occur, then it would obviously spell doom for our entire species, as we would eventually accumulate age with each subsequent generation and we would very quickly perish. Yet, this obviously does not happen. So the question was asked, why is this?

Summary: As the brain ages, microglia adopt dysfunctional states that increase the risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Source: TCD

Scientists from the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute (TBSI) have shed new light on aging processes in the brain. By linking the increased presence of specialised immune cells to conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury for the first time, they have unearthed a possible new target for therapies aimed at treating age-related neurological diseases.

Reverse the aging process and live decades longer? Transfer your brain onto a database and achieve digital immortality? Humans one day may have such options.

Robots are all around us, from drones filming videos in the sky to serving food in restaurants and diffusing bombs in emergencies. Slowly but surely, robots are improving the quality of human life by augmenting our abilities, freeing up time, and enhancing our personal safety and well-being. While existing robots are becoming more proficient with simple tasks, handling more complex requests will require more development in both mobility and intelligence.

Columbia Engineering and Toyota Research Institute computer scientists are delving into psychology, physics, and geometry to create algorithms so that robots can adapt to their surroundings and learn how to do things independently. This work is vital to enabling robots to address new challenges stemming from an aging society and provide better support, especially for seniors and people with disabilities.

Continue reading “Engineers use psychology, physics, and geometry to make robots more intelligent” »

BioAge is developing treatments to extend healthy lifespan by targeting molecular causes of aging. Its CEO Kristen Fortney started by studying the super-old.

Biophysical Therapeutics, a drug discovery platform company that leverages computational biology, has emerged from stealth. The primary targets of the Delaware-based company are cancer, the diseases of aging (including Alzheimer’s disease) and – excitingly – aging itself.

Founded by Dr Michael Forrest, a Cambridge University biochemistry graduate with a PhD in computer science, Biophysical Therapeutics boasts renowned biotech entrepreneur Professor George Church (of Harvard Medical School) as an advisor to the company. Professor Bruno Conti of the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California is also an advisor.

Longevity. Technology: Back in 2006, Conti and his team reported an exciting result in the prestigious journal Science. They showed (in female mice) that slightly reducing the metabolic rate by slightly reducing metabolic heat generation (decreasing body temperature by 0.34°C) increased lifespan by 20%.

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In this Ask Me Anything interview, Prof. Matt Kaeberlein discusses the evidence (and lack thereof) behind popular anti-aging supplements and interventions. Starting from his current research on rapamycin for healthy longevity in dogs (The Dog Aging Project), he describes the promises and perils of anti-aging medicine and shares with us some tips on how to become better critical thinkers and protect us from hype and snake oil.

Continue reading “Anti-aging Supplements: Science, Snake Oil, and How Do We Know?” »

At least, that was the assumption in the second half of the 19th century. This scenario became known as the “heat death” of the universe, and it seemed to be the nail in the coffin for any optimistic cosmology that promised, or even allowed, eternal life and consciousness. For example, one of the most popular cosmological models of the time was put forth by the evolutionary theorist Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Charles Darwin who was actually more famous than him during their time. Spencer believed that the flow of energy through the universe was organizing it. He argued that biological evolution was just part of a larger process of cosmic evolution, and that life and human civilization were the current products of a process of continual cosmic complexification, which would ultimately lead to a state of maximal complexity, integration and balance among all things.

When the prominent Irish physicist John Tyndall told Spencer about the heat death hypothesis in a letter in 1858,” Spencer wrote him back to say it left him “staggered”: “Indeed, not seeing my way out of the conclusion, I remember being out of spirits for some days afterwards. I still feel unsettled about the matter.”

Things got even gloomier when the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann put forward a new statistical interpretation of the second law in the latter half of the 19th century. That was when the idea that the universe is growing more disordered came into the picture. Boltzmann took the classical version of the second law — that useful energy inevitably dissipates — and tried to give it a statistical explanation on the level of molecules colliding and spreading out. He used one of the simplest models possible: a gas confined to a box.

“People on metformin have 30% lower rates of almost every kind of cancer. It delays cognitive decline. Even people with diabetes who are obese and have more disease to start with but are on metformin have lower mortality rates than people without diabetes who aren’t on the drug.”

What he says is born out in numerous studies. Overall, this safe, super-cheap, decades-old drug not only treats diabetes, but it also seems to delay and compress the years of chronic illness associated with the final stage of life and extend what geroscientists call the “healthspan.”

Metformin is just one of many medications, including other old ones and some brand new inventions, that academic researchers and biotech startups are exploring to slow, stop, or perhaps even reverse aging.