Longevity Cookbook Indiegogo Campaign Is the Most Effective Step You Can Take towards Your Longevity

Something amazing has happened! We have launched our Longevity Cookbook Indiegogo Campaign.

Aging steals away your most valuable resource: time. The Longevity Cookbook is a strategy guide to help you get more time to experience the joy from everything that you like in life. Take yourself on a journey starting with nutrients and exercise regimes that goes on to exploring the usage of genetically modified symbiotic organisms and using gene therapy to boost your own longevity.

Contributing to ‪#LongevityCookbook‬ is the best way you can spend your money, because we are fighting for your life. Please, contribute and share the Longevity Cookbook campaign. Let’s defeat aging together!

Do Model Animals Tell Us Anything about Human Aging?

I wrote a tiny report on the pluses and minuses of using model  animals in aging research.

Using model animals in gerontological studies has yielded an enormous wealth of useful information about the mechanisms of human aging and longevity. Animal models were crucial in identifying the conserved pathways that regulate human aging. Model organisms are fundamental for aging research, because there are serious limitations of using human subjects, such as the length of lifespan, genetic heterogeneity and vast differences in environmental influences. The shape of survival curves represents the health of the organism over time. Model organisms display significantly different lifespans, however the survival curves resemble those of humans quite remarkably. Despite this general similarity in the way we describe aging between humans and model animals, there are some distinct differences (Mitchell, Scheibye-Knudsen, Longo, & de Cabo, 2015). For instance, increasing Sir2 gene expression in yeast (Kaeberlein, McVey, & Guarente, 1999), nematodes (Tissenbaum & Guarente, 2001), and flies (Rogina & Helfand, 2004) boosts animal longevity. A small molecule called resveratrol was found to activate Sir2 and its mammalian ortholog SIRT1 (Howitz et al., 2003). Resveratrol extends lifespan of mice fed a high-fat diet (Baur et al., 2006), however it failed to have a beneficial longevity effect in mice on a standard diet (Pearson et al., 2008). This example highlights the fact that we cannot simply transfer the results of longevity interventions to humans and expect the same efficacy as in invertebrate models.

Everyday the researchers are broadening the understanding of human biology of aging with the help of various model systems. Each of them has its advantages and drawbacks. Let’s take a look at what those are for the most widely used animal models.

Popular Lectures on Gene Therapy

We have put together a list of popular science video lectures on gene therapy – one of the most promising molecular medicine directions. What makes this approach different is that nucleic acid molecules, DNA and RNA, are used as therapeutic agents.

To have the most general idea about the principles of gene therapy you can watch this video

The lecture by Dr. Hans-Peter Kiem from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center at University of Washington provides more detailed information about the main approaches utilized by gene therapy, nucleic acid delivery methods into the cells and also the diseases that use gene therapy for treatment

Let’s Bet on Money?

Let’s make a bet? I will propose something incredibly effective in the area of life extension and no one will be able to suggest a better strategy. Deal?

First of all, let’s think about what KPI (Key Performance Indicators) can be applied to longevity? What will tell us that we are on the right way to immortality, but not moving in the opposite direction towards the grave.

The answer here lies on the surface.

The first thing is money. The more money is invested in projects on life extesnion, the better chances we have to stay alive.

The second thing is people. There’s a nuance here. How can we count the increase in number of people? I think we need to count the most devoted supporters in the first place. There are millions of people who don’t mind living longer. Many of them run in parks or read biotechnology news, but does their activity lead to radical life extension? In my opinion, no. Moreover, having found a simple recipe like a diet, yoga or Kurzweil’s promises that everything is going to happen on its own by 2030, this kind of longevity supporters don’t do anything, because subconsciously they have already found the solution to the problem.

I propose to take only those people into account, who are involved in projects on radical human life extension. How can we identify such a person? Oh, it’s very easy. He or she talks about it explicitly and their actions are adequate, meaning they are established socially.

The third KPI is the number of events. Conferences, books, round tables, articles, social actions, 40 people going to have a beer because of the approaching singularity, youtube videos, scientific projects, movies – all of that is needed in extra large quantities.

The forth thing is the effectiveness of collaboration. This one is complicated. Perhaps the number of people involved in the same transhumanist project needs to be taken in account.

So, what strategy will be most oriented towards increasing all of the 4 indices? What can yield more money, more people, more events and more collaboration?

It is crowdfunding of scientific projects in the area of longevity. First dozens and then hundreds of crowdfunding campaigns have to be created that would raize funding for longevity gene therapy, regenerative medicine, studying molecular mechanisms of aging and their relationship to pathologies.

Yes, perhaps, we will raize not a lot of moeny in the beginning, but the projects that describe the work of the scientists, they will stay and they will continuosly owrk towards educating, promoting and attracting supporters. Moreover, they will help the universities and research institutes get government grants and venture capital.

Joint donations for longevity research will draw people closer together and will allow to constantly increase the loyal audience. There will be a chain reaction – successful crowdfunding peojects will motivate to create more projects in our field.

A set of projects on life extension will give a clear signal to the society that great things can be done to secure the main human right – the eright to live.

This is the reason why I participated in creating LabCures, because I concider this project the best strategy for the initial kick off of novel research projects including longevity.

Why Personalized Cancer Genome Sequencing is a Good Idea

I have just read a very interesting paper on personalized cancer genome sequencing. I think this is a crucial topic in fighting cancer at the moment. There is more and more research data that can be translated into clinic and more and more papers talk about the relevance of personalized oncology. This review is called “Harnessing Massively Parallel sequencing in Personalized head and neck Oncology“. It has a nice picture that explains why it is a good idea to sequence your cancer genome and compare it to the genome of normal tissue. The article gives examples when next generation sequencing provided very useful data to the patients. Anyway, here is the abstract:

Advances in the management of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) have not significantly changed the prognosis of this tumor over the past five decades. Molecular heterogeneity of HNSCC and its association with HPV, in addition to the increase in the number of cancers arising in traditionally low-risk patients, are among some of the obstacles to the successful management of this group of tumors. Massively parallel sequencing, otherwise known as next-generation sequencing (NGS), is rapidly changing conventional patient management by providing detailed information about each patient’s genome and transcriptome. Despite major advances in technology and a significant reduction in the cost of sequencing, NGS remains mainly limited to research facilities. In addition, there are only a few published studies that have utilized this technology in HNSCC. This paper aims to report briefly on current commercially available NGS platforms and discuss their clinical applications, ethical considerations, and utilization in personalized patient care, particularly as this relates to head and neck cancer.

Third International “Genetics of Aging and Longevity” Conference Featured Research on Multiple Ways to Combat Aging

More than 200 participants from North America, Europe and Asia met in post-Olympic Sochi for five days this April, as world-famous anti-aging researchers exchanged ideas at the third International Conference on Genetics of Aging and Longevity. They discussed progress and remaining obstacles, in their efforts to deepen our understanding of this complex phenomenon and develop strategies for interventions.

The central themes of the conference included (1) identification of molecular targets for lifespan-extending drugs, (2) understanding the protective genotypes of centenarians and exceptionally long-lived animal species, (3) the complex roles and interactions of genetic determinants, epigenetic regulation, metabolism, gut microbiota, lifestyle and environment in shaping the aging process, (4) developing technologies for artificial growth, cryopreservation and transplantation of organs, and (5) new technologies, including gene-editing nanoparticles and artificial chromosomes, as prospective anti-aging tools.

The doors opened on April 6, 2014, to the 3^rd International conference Genetics of Aging and Longevity, organized by the Science for Life Extension Foundation in collaboration with the Institute of biology of the Komi Science Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). Scientists from many fields of biology, medicine and informatics, and from 19 countries (Russia, U.S., Canada, Ukraine, UK, China, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Israel, The Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Israel, Italy, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Sweden, Uzbekistan, and Jordan) met in Sochi and were unified by one common goal – the ever-growing importance of understanding the mechanisms of aging, to develop ways to prevent and possibly reverse this debilitating and deadly process that underlies virtually all age-dependent diseases.

Craig Venter Decided to Beat Calico in the Race towards Human Life Extension

We all know how competitive Craig Venter is. Last time he won in the race against the Human Genome Project participants, and now he is up against Google’s Calico. Together with Peter Diamandis and Robert Hariri he co-founded Human Longevity, a company that aims to scan the DNA of as many as 100,000 people a year to create a massive database that will lead to new tests and therapies to help extend healthy human life spans.

Human Longevity has an agreement with the University of California at San Diego to perform genome sequencing of patients at the Moores Cancer Centre. In addition to providing DNA data to doctors at the university, the goal is to make individual genome data directly available to patients once the company meets US regulatory standards for providing clinical-level information. In addition to genome and microbiome data, the company will collect data on biochemicals and lipids circulating throughout patients’ bodies.

This sounds like a plan. The thing that Calico hasn’t got yet. Or at least hasn’t announced yet. I believe in Dr. Venter and I like his plan – gathering as much information about a person’s biological data and applying it to cure age-related diseases is a great goal. They are not saying anything about aging per se, but I’m pretty sure the data will speak for itself and at some point of time the researchers will realize they are dealing with different mechanisms of aging. So yay! for a very particular, very solid step towards defeating aging.

Genetics of Aging and Longevity Conference Program is Here

 

 

This is going to be the best aging meeting of all times. The program speaks for itself, but I’d like to draw your attention to the round tables in the end of each day. The first two are on the theories of aging. We will have a science battle – register for the conference and learn which theory will win!

Insanely interesting is the round table on commercial projects – where the most prominent scientists will present their startups in the area of fighting aging and age-related diseases.

My favorite is the personalized science round table where a great selection of experts will discuss the utmost importance of health monitoring, biomarkers of aging, health and diseases and also the solutions – existing and those that need to be developed to monitor our health and prevent the diseases from manifesting at a very early stage.

Transhuman Visions Conference Teaser

Genetics of Aging and Longevity Conference – Venue Chosen

One of the best conferences in the world, Genetics of Aging and Longevity conference, will take place on April 6-10 in Sochi, the city of 2014 Olympic Games. A couple of words about the event – the best geneticists of aging will gather to share their latest research on

• Longevity genes in human and animals
• Epigenetic mechanisms of aging
• Inflammation and hyperfunction, intertwined mechanisms of aging?
• Environment, genes and aging
• Biomarkers of biological age
• Pharmacological interventions in aging
• Strategies for regenerative medicine applied to humans
• Systems biologyof aging and longevity
• Comparative biology of lifespan
• Oxidative damage and aging

And now we know the place where the magic will happen – Radisson Blu Resort & Congress Center. Here are the pictures of the place.

Don’t forget to register for Genetics of Aging and Longevity here