Fight Aging!

It's a truism at the moment - and good news - that scientists in almost every branch of medicine see their research as "perhaps the most promising use of stem cells." Here, the Society for Neuroscience weighs in on what they see as the best and brightest stem cell research: "Embryonic stem cells have been shown to restore movement after paralysis. And with genetic engineering, stem cells can act as sophisticated protein delivery systems. Scientists have used them to deliver GDNF, a factor to aid in the survival of neurons targeted by Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases. Another team has used them to seek and destroy brain tumor cells. And a Norwegian group has proved that even in adults, neural stem cells have the power to become functioning neurons." Interesting times!

Link: http://apu.sfn.org/content/AboutSFN1/NewsReleases/am2004_human.html

(From The Ledger). It's probably expecting too much for plain common sense to quickly penetrate the debate over social security and similar Ponzi-style wealth transfer schemes in other countries - especially given our current culture of entitlement. Still, it is apparently beginning to occur to some folk that radical change is necessary - or will be forced by circumstances. Unfortunately, bureaucrats are currently producing reports that greatly underproject future increases in healthy life span due to advances in medical technology. "Experts have repeatedly asserted that life expectancy is approaching a ceiling. These experts have repeatedly been proved wrong."

Link: http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041231/ZNYT02/412310383

Some interesting research on flies sheds more light on the way in which double strand breaks in DNA are repaired:

"DNA double strand breaks are regarded as one of the primary causes of cancer," says Kusch. "While there are natural mechanisms within an organism to detect and repair these breaks, factors involved in DNA damage repair must first bypass histones. Histones are proteins that condense DNA and protect it from mechanical and other stresses, but also make DNA rather inaccessible."

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"These findings answer fundamental questions about DNA double-strand break repair," says Robb Krumlauf, Ph.D., Scientific Director of the Stowers Institute. "They may ultimately help to formulate new strategies of cancer therapy."

For more context on what we know and surmise about double strand breaks as related to aging and cancer, you may want to read a fascinating discussion between Robert Bradbury, Aubrey de Grey and Joao Magalhaes here at Fight Aging: Part One, Part Two.

Three items over at Betterhumans caught my eye today.

Another potential source of multipotent stem cells:

Testicles from newborn mice have yielded stem cells that could rival those from embryos in their treatment potential.

Japanese researchers led by Takashi Shinohara from Kyoto University report that they have established a line of potent cells from neonatal mouse testes using a special cell culturing method.

Treatment for wet age-related macular degeneration:

Two new trials have shown that a drug injected into the eye can effectively treat a potentially blinding form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

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The wet form of AMD represents about 10% of the disease's overall prevalence but is responsible for 90% of severe vision loss. In wet AMD, abnormal blood vessels grow under the central retina and cause a progressive loss of central vision. This interferes with everyday tasks such as driving.

Debating the ethics of human enhancement:

American bioethicists Arthur Caplan and Carl Elliott recently debated the issues in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine. Caplan is chair of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. Elliott is associate professor at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, as well as the author of Better than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream.

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Ultimately, [opposition to enhancement] posits a static vision of human nature to which the [opposition activists] mandate we reconcile ourselves. If anything is clear about human nature, it is that this is not an accurate view of who we have been or what we are now, or a view that should determine what we become.

Quite aside from concepts of freedom and the merits of letting anyone control or restrict medical research and access to healthy life extension technologies (any such thing is hugely immoral in the libertarian worldview), Caplan has it right in his comment above. It is in our nature to change ourselves, to reach for what we can envisage. We can envisage longer, healthier lives and the technologies required to get there - those who stand in the way are guilty of prolonging death and suffering on an enormous scale.

BusinessWeek takes a high-level look at funding and progress in stem cell research in Asia: "The progress the Asians have made is 'astonishing,' says Robert A. Goldstein, chief scientific officer at New York-based Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International, which has teamed up with Singapore in funding ES Cell's efforts to find a cure for the disease." The authors views this as a competition - as do most of the participants and principles, no doubt - but a rising tide in medical science raises all boats. Successes in any country (and even business or competitive failures) in stem cell research still advance knowledge, capabilities and the potential for healthy longevity worldwide.

Link: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_02/b3915052.htm

Boston.com is running a very readable article on the connections between biochemical and genetic mechanisms of stem cells and cancer. "Researchers know that [the cell signalling pathway called] Notch is active very early in the development of both zebrafish and humans, as the cells of the embryo decide what type of tissues to become. In most cells, it is then turned off. But recently scientists have found that cancer cells can activate the Notch pathway in adults' bodies, causing dangerous changes in their cells. This is apparently what happens in a rare form of leukemia called T-ALL. ... More and more, research is showing that messaging systems used early in development get turned back on and used by helpful stem cells in the adult body, and also by deadly cancer cells."

Link: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2004/12/26/genetically_engineered_zebrafish_offer_promise/

Prosthetics technology is undergoing advances every bit as revolutionary as regenerative medicine - in many ways it is another path to the same end goals. Diversity is always a good sign in technological progress; many divergent efforts are more likely to produce widely applicable results over the long term. EurekAlert reports on one small part of this ongoing process: "We plan to spend this $6.7 million to further develop technology that we hope will someday help blind individuals see, allow paraplegics to stand and eventually walk, and let people with vocal cord problems speak ... To go from a bundle of wires sticking out of somebody's head to a totally implantable system that is invisible will be a major advance in this technology."

Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-12/uou-mf122904.php

Bruce Klein of the Immortality Institute has posted the latest in a series of previews for Exploring Life Extension, the film currently in production. This time it's an interview with Michael Rose, an evolutionary biologist known for his work on increasing the life span of fruit flies, amongst other things.

My major scientific focus over the last fifteen years has been experimental tests of evolutionary theories for the evolution of aging, fitness, life-histories, etc., on Drosophila melanogaster , although I collaborate with other investigators using different species. We have experimentally tested the general theory that aging evolves because of a decline in the force of selection with adult age.

The 2nd International Conference on Healthy Aging and Longevity will be held in Brisbane, Australia, March 2005. "This event is about providing leading edge, evidence-based knowledge on the achievement of increased human longevity and healthy/disability free life expectancy. It will explore the full spectrum of proven interventions including pharmaceutical, nutritional, clinical, educative, complementary, preventive and restorative means and the scientific underpinnings supporting them." The 2004 conference was well attended and widely regarded as a success. The presentations this year include a number of interesting healthy life extension topics mixed in with the more prosaic items.

Link: http://www.longevity-international.com/

A lot of very interesting and promising work is taking place at the forefront of medical research these days; stem cells, cancer therapies, gene therapies, and advances in bioinformatics have brought the prospect of cures for many previously untreatable conditions. How should sufferers go about researching the latest therapies and weigh the merits and risks of enrolling in a clinical trial? How does one even go about getting enrolled in a clinical trial or wading through the wealth of health information (much of it wrong or out of date) online? I receive a few e-mails on this topic every month, and so eventually wrote a short summary of my advice and suggestions - by no means exhaustive, but hopefully it provides a better starting point than a blank slate.

Link: https://www.fightaging.org/archives/000307.php