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Determining brain age from an MRI scan has always been a time-consuming business. Now an AI machine gives the answer in seconds.

You have the power to change the future of medicine and how we treat age-related diseases. Here is an example of how grassroots fundraising is changing science.

Joining the circulatory system of an old with a young animal has been shown to rejuvenate old tissues. Here the authors describe a comparatively simple blood infusion system that allows for the controlled exchange of blood between two animals, and study the effects of a single exchange on various tissues.

The CellAge AMA is open for questions, come along and ask about biotechnology, senolytics and so on.

Welcome to the CellAge AMA with Mantas Matjusaitis, PhD student in synthetic biology and founder of CellAge. I am here to talk about our work to improve the targeting of dysfunctional “senescent” cells in the body, and thereby aid in their eventual removal. This is important because removal of these cells has been shown to be a critical component in the effort to improve healthy human lifespan.

In short, CellAge is going to develop synthetic DNA promoters which are specific to senescent cells, as the promoters that are currently used for this purpose, such as the p16 gene promoter, suffer from various issues and limitations (not comprehensively targeting all senescent cells, collateral damage in targeting some cells that are not senescent, etc.). You can find more details in our technology video here, and on our Lifespan.io information page.

Continue reading “CellAge AMA: Targeting Senescent Cells with Synthetic Biology for Human Longevity : Futurology” »

Check out the The Longevity Reporter interview with CellAge as they talk about rejuvenation biotechnology.

Innovative new startup Cell Age is using synthetic biology to develop new ways of targeting and removing senescent cells. We caught up with CEO Mantas Matjusaitis for an interview as their first fundraiser goes live on Lifespan.io (find it here)

Continue reading “CellAge: A New Startup Targeting Senescent Cells With Synthetic Biology — Longevity Reporter” »

Excercise is the best low cost activity you can do as part of your personal longevity strategy. Here we see data showing it can improve resistance to oxidative stress.

Researchers digging deeper into the mechanisms by which exercise produces benefits have found that it improves the resistance of blood vessels to oxidative stress. With age the presence of oxidizing molecules and oxidative modification of proteins, preventing correct function, increases for reasons that include damage to mitochondria, the power plants of the cell. Oxidative damage to molecular machinery is somewhere in the middle of the chain of cause and effect that starts with fundamental forms of damage to cells and tissues and spirals down into age-related diseases. Near all of this oxidation is repaired very quickly, the damaged molecules dismantled and recycled, but in most contexts more of it over the long term is worse than less of it.

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Continue reading “Exercise Improves Arterial Resilience to Age-Related Increases in Oxidative Stress” »

A new way to destroy and replace the immune system without harsh chemo or radiation could be the path to fixing immunosenescence.

Destroying and replacing the aging immune system could help with a host of age-related problems as well as autoimmune diseases. Radiation or Chemo were previously the only options which carries significant risks. With this new technique and a few others currently being developed we may soon have a way to replace aging dysfunctional immune systems and treating diseases like MS to boot.

#aging #crowdfundthecure

Continue reading “Withholding amino acid depletes blood stem cells” »

FightAging! interviews Mantas from CellAge about their campaign on Lifespan.io / Life Extension Advocacy Foundation and talks about senolytics and synthetic biology.

I mentioned CellAge some weeks ago; a new entry to the collection of companies and research groups interested in developing the means to safely identify and remove senescent cells from old tissues. A few days later one of those companies, UNITY Biotechnology, announced a sizable $116 million venture round, which certainly put the field on the map for anyone who wasn’t paying attention up until that point. In contrast, CellAge are determinedly taking the non-profit route, and intend to make the progress they create freely available to the field. Why are senescent cells important? Because they are a cause of aging, and removing them is a narrowly focused form of rejuvenation, shown to restore function and extend healthy life in animal studies. An increasing number of senescent cells linger in our bodies as we age, secreting signals that harm tissue structures, produce chronic inflammation, and alter the behavior of nearby cells for the worse. Senescent cells also participate more directly in some disease processes, such as the growth of fatty deposits, weakening and blocking blood vessels, that takes place in atherosclerosis. By the time that senescent cells come to make up 1% of the cell population in an organ, their presence causes noticeable dysfunction and contributes significantly to the progression of all of the common age-related diseases.

This coming Monday, the CellAge team will be hosting an /r/futurology AMA event — the post is up already if you want add your own questions for the scientists involved. Earlier this week, the CellAge principals launched a crowdfunding campaign with Lifespan.io: they are seeking $40,000 with stretch goals and rewards beyond that to get started on their vision for senescent cell therapies. If you’ve ever wanted the chance to have a DNA promoter sequence named after you … well, here it is. This has certainly been a busy year for community fundraising in rejuvenation research: I imagine that things will heat up even more in the years ahead. The CellAge view of the field of senescent cell clearance is that the markers currently used to identify senescent cells are too crude and lacking in specificity.

Continue reading “An Interview with Mantas Matjusaitis of CellAge, Crowdfunding New Senescent Cell Markers and Removal Methodologies” »

The effects or Inflammation and the effect it has on the immune system are discussed in this article at FightAging!

With age, the immune system falls into a state of ever increasing chronic inflammation, a process known as inflammaging: the immune system is overactive, but nonetheless declines in effectiveness at the same time. Researchers here consider how inflammaging can damage the bone marrow stem cell populations responsible for generating immune cells, possibly the basis for a vicious cycle in which the failures of the immune system feed upon themselves to accelerate age-related damage and dysfunction.

Hematopoiesis is an active, continuous process involving the production and consumption of mature blood cells that constitute the hemato-lymphoid system. All blood cells arise from a small population of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in the bone marrow (BM) that have two unique properties: self-renewing capacity, the ability to generate themselves, and multi-lineage differentiation capacity, the ability to produce all blood cell types. Since, in the steady state, most adult HSCs are in the G0 phase of the cell cycle, i.e., they are quiescent and are estimated to turnover slowly on a monthly time scale, daily hematopoietic production is mainly sustained by highly proliferative downstream hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs).

Continue reading “Age-Related Inflammation and its Effects on the Generation of Immune Cells” »

Senolytics meets Synthetic biology so come along and ask them anything!

Hey folks, We are excited to announce that the CellAge longform AMA opens Friday for questions and the CellAge team will answer them from Monday 11am PST/2pm EST/6pm GMT. We will update the link to the Futurology AMA once it is ready.

CellAge are using synthetic biology to create new biomarkers for senescent cell detection, developing a new therapy to remove senescent cells which drive the aging process using custom synthetic biology. Come along and ask them all about it.

Continue reading “The CellAge long form AMA Starts Friday with questions answered Monday 11am PST/2pm EST/6pm GMT” »