It’s once again time for our customary appointment with a monthly recap of the most interesting news from the world of aging and rejuvenation research. Interviews and talks from our July conference, as well as from UA2019, are being published, and new events and initiatives are popping up around the world; slowly but steadily, the field is unquestionably picking up.

LEAF News

Team and activities

Early Access to EARD2019 Videos: We are offering early access to all of our Ending Age-Related Diseases 2019 videos for our Lifespan Heroes. If you want to see the informative talks presented at our conference before they become available to the public, become a Lifespan Hero today.







LifeXtenShow

Aren’t There Worse Problems Than Aging?: There are a lot of problems in the world, and aging is definitely one of them. Nicola discusses just how bad aging is on the list of the world’s problems and questions whether such a list should exist at all.

Biology Fun Facts: This time, Giuliano is the one to ask Nicola questions about weird and interesting biology facts; see if Nicola does any better than Giuliano had in previous episodes.

Rejuvenation Roundup Podcast

Ryan O’Shea of Future Grind hosts this month’s podcast, showcasing the events and research discussed here.







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Lifespan.io Interviews

Dr. Daniel Ives of Shift Bioscience: Dr. Ives had a lot to say about epigenetic clocks and the ways in which small molecules and mitochondrial dysfunction can affect them. He reminds us that interventions need to affect the underlying causes, not just the metaphorical hands on the clock.

Sarah Constantin of Daphnia Labs: Daphnia are tiny organisms commonly used for research, and Sarah Constantin discusses how to use them to screen for potentially beneficial molecules, which will then be tested in mice.

Advocacy Digest







Population Prospects 2019 and Life Extension: With declining fertility in Europe, Asia, and even Latin America alongside increases in life expectancy around the world, a rapidly increasing percentage of the global population is suffering from age-related diseases. This bodes ill for economic prospects and the quality of life of older people around the world – unless something is done about aging itself.

Rejuvenation Research Is Now a Mainstream Topic: Steve Hill weighs in on MIT Technology Review embracing rejuvenation biotechnology research, a topic that was once considered unscientific, and discusses how we got here from there.

Events

Aging and the Single Cell: In late August, QB3, the University of California’s hub for innovation and entrepreneurship in life sciences, hosted a free event, Aging and the Single Cell, where researchers from the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub presented recent results on the topic of the aging processes at the cell level.







Aubrey de Grey at Ending Age-Related Diseases 2019: In his keynote speech, the well-known Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Research Foundation discussed the details of creating a comprehensive rejuvenation biotechnology framework, including cross-talk between the multiple types of damage.

Research Roundup

Reversing Age-Related Vision Loss Using Cellular Reprogramming: By reprogramming the epigenetics of cells in the eyes of mice, several well-known researchers have reversed blindness induced by age and injury.

Heart Inflammation Causes a Shift in Cell Fate Distribution: A recent mouse study has shown that the behavioral types of monocytes and macrophages are altered in an inflamed heart – and not for the better.







Tweaking Gut Bacteria in Mice Reduces Colorectal Cancer Risk: Some strains of E.coli are considerably more dangerous than others, and researchers at UT Southwestern have discovered a link between harmful strains and a risk of deadly cancer along with a potential method of reducing this risk.

Inducing Pluripotency Through Multiple Routes: Bringing cells back to a fully pluripotent state within the human body isn’t desirable, but it definitely helps to know how and why this can happen, and it turns out that full pluripotency is the destination of several biochemical paths.

Reducing Gut Dysbiosis Partially Alleviates Alzheimer’s Symptoms: Inflammatory signaling from the gut to the brain makes Alzheimer’s disease worse, and introducing anti-inflammatory gut bacteria has been shown to partially alleviate its symptoms in mice.

Common Protein Fights Alzheimer’s Disease: A protein known as L-PGDS is common in the human brain, and it serves as a protein chaperone, preventing Alzheimer’s aggregates from forming and even breaking them up after they have formed.

Removing Dysfunctional Microglia Prevents Amyloid-ß Plaques: Another approach being tested to fight Alzheimer’s disease involves the microglia, specialized immune cells in the brain. Removing these cells once they have become dysfunctional has been shown to prevent amyloid beta plaques from forming in mice.







News Nuggets

Amutha Boominathan at UA2019: The folks at Forever Healthy Foundation are gradually releasing videos of the talks from UA2019; last month, they published the talk by Dr. Boominathan from the MitoSENS team, who presented their latest result on allotopic expression.

Bad news from Organovo: Unfortunately, the liver tissue bioprinting program by Organovo was cancelled essentially due to an unfavorable risk-benefit ratio, but the good news is that the company is already looking into new avenues worth exploring.

Kizoo Ventures announces support for N-LIfT: Kizoo Ventures, the startup accelerator by Forever Healthy Foundation, has recently announced its support for LIfT Biosciences, a biotech company currently developing a neutrophil-based immunotherapeutic approach, N-LIfT, that should be capable to seek and destroy all solid tumors.







The Rejuvenation Now Project Launches: The Forever Healthy Foundation has launched Rejuvenation Now, a new project with a first step of analyzing NAD+ repletion therapies; the main goal of this project is to separate good science from poor evidence and snake oil.

MIT Tech Review features Belmonte’s work on epigenetics: Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, known for his work on gene expression at the Salk Institute, was featured in an article by MIT Tech Review on the potential of epigenetic reprogramming against aging.

Reason at UA2019: Like many other influential members of the life extension community, Reason—the man behind the Fight Aging! Blog—has attended Undoing Aging 2019 earlier this year; you might be interested in watching his video interview by Adam Ford.

Jim Mellon at UA2019: Jim Mellon is the British investor running the company Juvenescence, and he was one of the many participants at the Undoing Aging 2019 conference. In an interview with Adam Ford, he talked about the projects in which Juvenescence has been involved as well as the ethics of life extension.

Juvenescence Secures $100M for Rejuvenative Therapies: Jim Mellon’s company has secured a hundred million dollars to fund companies that are building liver organoids, partially reprogramming functional stem cells, and removing senescent cells.







Longevity XPRIZE: XPRIZE, a nonprofit known for organizing competitions to encourage technological development for the benefit of humanity, has recently published the result of the brainstorming of a longevity think tank (which included LEAF’s President Keith Comito) and expert revision (which included LEAF’s board member Elena Milova): the Future of Longevity Impact Roadmap, which identifies the challenges and breakthroughs involved in making healthy life extension a reality for all.

Longevity Vision Fund invests into Exo Imaging: Sergey Young’s brainchild, the Longevity Vision Fund, has announced investing $100 million into Exo Imaging, a medical-imaging startup committed to providing physicians a single, handheld probe capable of imaging the entire body in 3D.

Near-future Longevity Conferences: The Methuselah Foundation has published John Furber’s list of future longevity-focused conferences spanning the next few years; you might want to check them out and save the dates!

Leucadia Announces Alzheimer’s study: Leucadia Therapeutics, a partner of the Methuselah Foundation, announced the launch of Project Cribrose—a 2000-participant Alzheimer’s study that is currently enrolling subjects. Participants must be 18-90 years old, either affected by dementia or not; check out the project’s website for more information.

Altered intercellular communication on LLL: Our friends at LongLongLife have published the ninth and final episode on the hallmarks of aging, altered intercellular communication. If you want to learn more about it, we recommend to check out their video!







News from Unity Biotechnology: The biotech company testing the first small-molecule senolytic on humans reported its financial results and program updates in August; after an encouraging Phase 1 trial of its candidate drug UBX0101, phase 2 is expected to start later this year and have a report in the second half of 2020.

Disappointing WHO stance on healthy aging: As reported by Fight Aging!, the WHO program draft for the “Decade of Healthy Aging” (2020-2030) is rather disappointing in that it doesn’t focus much at all on fostering biomedical research on treatments attacking the root causes of aging; rather, it appears to focus on more traditional approaches aimed at mitigating the effects of aging, such as developing age-friendly environments and ways to provide long-term care. The International Longevity Alliance has put forward a proposal for amending the draft to be more in line with the current scientific consensus.

A New Database for Genes Linked to Cellular Senescence: The CellAge database, which tracks the biochemistry that contributes to senescent cells, is now part of Human Ageing Genomic Resources (HAGR), a comprehensive database on human biology.

Coming up in September







Basel Life 2019: The 2019 installment of the annual Basel Life conference will take place on September 9-12 at the Congress Center Basel in Switzerland, bringing together the most eminent researchers in the field of life sciences and showcasing Europe’s excellence in biology, genetics, computational biology, and many other interdisciplinary fields at the forefront of science.

Aging, Drug Discovery, & Artificial Intelligence: This forum will take place this year as well, featuring well-known figures in the field of life extension, such as the former president of the Buck Institute, Dr. Brian Kennedy; Insilico Medicine’s CEO, Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov; the head of the Dog Aging Project, Dr. Matt Kaeberlein from the University of Washington; and SENS Research Foundation’s CSO, Dr. Aubrey de Grey.

Repair Biotechnologies’ co-founder Reason will also present at Basel; more specifically, he’ll discuss the company’s approaches to thymic regeneration and the reversal of atherosclerotic lesions.

International Perspectives in Geroscience – Israel: This event will take place at the David Lopatie Conference Centre on the campus of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot on September 4-5. This conference is part of the NIA initiative to educate the public about gerontological advancements. We congratulate the most active organizer of the conference, Dr. Ilia Stambler, on bringing together many luminaries of our field.

Biohacking Conference Moscow: Elena Milova is giving a talk at this event on September 19th. Her talk will be focused on the motivation behind the efforts to achieve healthy life extension.







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