Photos and Impressions from the Genetics of Aging and Longevity Conference in Moscow

It has been a while since I’ve posted my blog updates. The reason was the Genetics of Aging and Longevity conference. I have been involved in preparations of this meeting since December and the last month before the event was especially tough. Anyway, the conference turned out to be pretty good. I was surprised to hear so many good responses and impressions from the attendees and the speakers, so I am proud to say that the meeting was a success. The talks were superb, a lot of new and even unpublished data, a lot of discussions during the breaks and meals. I saw quite many people walking around with burning eyes – from excitement of science, of course) Some of those eyes are in the photos below. I believe this was a ground braking event on life extension topic in Russia, a truly unique gathering of minds. The more meetings like this we have, the more attention they get in the media, the better chances we have to live longer.

Robert Shmookler Reis, who was able to extend lifespan of a nematode worm 10-fold, head of the conference Program committee, Mikhail Batin, head of the Science for Life Extension Foundation and Sergei Polotovsky, who helped with translation

Alexander Zhavoronkov, creator of the Aging Portfolio grants database, Alexei Peregudov, executive director of the Institute of Biology of Aging and Igor Artyukhov, his colleague

Peter Fedichev, CEO of Quantum Pharmaceuticals company and Zippi Brand Frank, movie director, author of the Emmy-winning “Google Baby” documentary

Sergei Filonov, President of the ”Aviamarket” company

Vadim Fraifeld, professor of the Ben Gurion University, creator of the NetAge database of aging genes, Mikhail Batin and Elena Kokurina, our colleague

Anna Chapman, President of the Fund UMA, non-profit supporting young scientists

Alexei Turchin, futurologist, leading expert in global risks, Mikhail Batin’s co-author of the “Futurology” book, which is coming out this fall

 Mikhail Blagosklonny, professor of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, author of the hypothesis, where aging occurs due to the quasi-program of organism development ruled by TOR pathway

Elena Kokurina, Alexei Marakulin, Mikhail Batin and Sergei Polotovsky

Vasily Novoseltsev, professor of the Trapeznikov Institute of Control Sciences

Professors of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine: Jan Vijg, leading expert in epigenetics of aging and Yousin Suh, a specialist in functional genomics and chair of the future Gordon research confence on Biology of aging 2013

Nir Barzilai, Director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Claudio Franceschi, professor of University of Bologna, studies aging of the immune system, biomarkers and genetics of centenarians

Students from Saint Petersburg with Suresh Rattan, professor of Aarhus University, Denmark

Vadim Fraifeld, Mikhail Balgosklonny and Suresh Rattan

Nir Barzilai and Judy Campisi, professor of the Buck Institute for Aging Research, specialist in cellular senescence, cancer and aging

Andrzej Bartke, geneticist who was able to double mouse lifespan

Vadim Gladyshev, professor of Harvard Medical School, sequenced the naked mole rat genome, Joao Pedro de Magalhaes, author of the Digital Ageing Atlas and David Clancy, professor at the Lancaster University

Blanka Rogina, who doubled drosophila lifespan, Holly Brown-Borg, professor of the University of North Dakota and Elena Zaklitskaya, one of the co-organizers of the conference

Lucas Trindade, young Brazilian researcher who works on aging in Japan

Vladimir Gladyshev, Vladimir Anisimov, head of the Russian Gerontological Society and Anatoly Yashin, professor at Duke University

 Richard Morimoto, professor at Northwestern University, specialist in protein misfolding Brian Kraemer, professor at the University of Washington, studies neurodegeneration and Brian Kennedy, director of the Buck Institute for Aging Research

Genetisists from Syktyvkar, Russia: MIkhail Shaposhnikov and Alexei Moskalev, co-chair of the Organizing committee and founder of the Genetics of Aging and Longevity conference series

Israeli genetisists Judith Leibovici and Monica Hurzar and researchers from Iran, Saied Mohammadzadeh and his colleague

Brian Kennedy and Rocherster University professors: Vera Gorbunova and Andrei Seluanov

Natalia Malygina, head of the Population Genomics lab at the Russian Research Center of Gerontology and Alexei Peregudov

Alexei Peregudov, Alexei Moskalev and Mikhail Shaposhnikov and colleagues

Quite a lot of researchers said that we are on the verge of a breakthrough in the area of life extension. Maybe we have already discovered something fantastic, but haven’t yet realized it’d effective for people. Even if we have a drug that slows aging down, we still need a panel of biomarkers to prove the effect. I do hope we will have both the breakthrough and the markers soon.

What Regenerative Medicine Consists Of

Sometime around Christmas Mikhail Batin, President of the Science for Life Extension Foundation, and I gave talks at the headquarters of one quite famous journal called Science and Life. This journal is sort of like a Russian version of Popular Mechanics or Scientific American. The idea of this “media club” is to enlighten the journalists about emerging technologies like personalized genomics, synthetic biology and possible life extension therapies. This meeting was about regenerative medicine. My talk was a brief overview of the field, what it consists of and when and which organs were engineered in the lab. Here’s the presentation I showed to the audience. You are most welcome to download and use it in the way you like.

The main result of the year – The first regenerative medicine surgery in Russia

For the Science for Life Extension Foundation the main result of the year was the first in Russia unique transplant surgery of a trachea grown from the patient’s own stem cells inside her body. The surgery based on Professor Paolo Macchiarini’s technique was carried out in December in the Petrovsky Research Center of Surgery of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow.

The Foundation spent a full year and a half in order to bring this technology to Russia. We fully financed this project and organized the work between all the collaborators – Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Petrovsky Research Center of Surgery, Careggi University Hospital in Florence, pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers of biomaterials. The total cost of the project was $330, 000.

Last summer when we learned about the unique surgeries done by Macchiarini, we went to Barcelona where he was the Head of the Thoracic Surgery Department in the Hospital Clinic. We agreed to have him visit Moscow to share his experience with Russian specialists. In February 2010, Paolo gave a master class in the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. It was at that time when an agreement was reached on introducing his technique in Russia.

In August 2010 Macchiarini came to Russia again to sign the research and clinical collaboration contract with the Petrovsky Research Center of Surgery. Earlier this fall the Foundation organized the training for the employees of the Petrovsky Center  in the Department of Regenerative Surgery and Bio-transplantation at the Careggi University Hospital in Florence, where Professor Macchiarini is the current department head.They studied the process of trachea preparation for transplantation and could watch the surgery live.  Previously, there had been seven other tissue engineered trachea transplants that were performed  in Western Europe and none in the US.

So, on December, 7 such a surgery was carried out in Moscow. The patient was a 26-year old woman. In 2006 she was hit by a car where she sustained very serious injuries, went through a clinical death and stayed comatose for several months. She was unable to breathe on her own and had a tube in her trachea for a long time. As a result the trachea was damaged.  Doctors in Kazakhstan, Israel and China couldn’t help the girl breathe normally. She required constant medical attention and was forced to permanently live in a clinic with frequent surgical interventions..

Then the patient’s mother took her to Moscow, so that she could undergo surgery using Macchiarini’s technique. The technology is as follows: a trachea taken from a dead donor is treated with special compounds until there’s no donor cells left, which elliminates the rejection problem and there’s no need to supress the patient’s immune system. Before the transplantation, the obtained scaffold is treated with the patient’s bone marrow cells and also cells from the mucosa, so that the inner mucosa of the treachea can be formed afterwards. Plus the growth factors are added. There’s also a biodegradable stent placed inside the new trachea. The patient’s body in this case plays a role of the bioreactor, inside of which the new healthy organ is formed during a couple of weeks.

Right now the patient is ready to be discharged – she can talk, breathes much better, is able to walk and undergo a physical load.

This surgery is a great beginning to the implementation of regenerative medicine technologies into human clinical practice. These technologies provide a wide perspective for treating severe illnesses associated with loss of vital organs and tissues and also has let Russian research and clinical institutions become a major player in the international consortium for regenerative medicine.