Lifespan.io is Crowdfunding a Nicotinamide Mononucleotide Mouse Lifespan Study

Lifespan.io has launched their latest crowdfunded study, and seeks more donors to join the more than 100 philanthropists of our community who have pledged already in the first few days. It is an assessment of the capacity of nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) to slow aging in mice, treating both normal mice and a lineage exhibiting accelerated aging. The final stretch goal in this fundraiser will provide enough funding to kick off a full life span study. This work is carried out in partnership with David Sinclair's lab, home of the past fifteen years of work on calorie restriction mimetics associated with sirtuins, a line of research that has evolved to these days to focus instead on nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, NAD+.

NMN is one of a number of options that can be used to treat the loss of NAD+ in older individuals. While this approach doesn't address any of the causes of aging, meaning the rising levels of molecular damage that take throughout the body, it does serve to boost mitochondrial function. Mitochondrial function is well known to falter with age, and researchers consider this important in a range of age-related conditions. The evidence to date suggests that enhancing NAD+ levels may to some degree diminish measures of aging. To pick one recent example from the data, a small human trial of nicotinamide riboside, another of the options to raise NAD+ levels, demonstrated a reduction in blood pressure in hypertensive older patients.

One of the best studied anti-aging treatments is a diet reduced in calories, yet high enough in nutrients to avoid malnutrition. Known as calorie restriction (CR), this dietary regimen provides irrefutable evidence of the importance of metabolism in the aging process. While CR has been studied extensively and even tested in human trials, long term adherence to a CR dietary regimen is extremely difficult for most individuals to maintain.

One method to achieve the benefits of CR for everyone would be to administer compounds which act as "CR mimetics". A major metabolic signaling molecule that we and others have shown to exhibit significant declines with increasing age is NAD+. Importantly, CR reverses the age-related decline of bioavailable NAD+. This key metabolite plays a crucial role in regulating the activity of many important signaling molecules involved in age-related diseases.

However, feeding or administering NAD+ directly to organisms is not a practical option. The NAD+ molecule cannot readily cross cell membranes to enter cells, and therefore would be unavailable to positively affect metabolism. Instead, precursor molecules to NAD+ must be used to increase bioavailable levels of NAD+. Recently, we have shown that by administering the NAD+ precursor NMN (Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) in drinking water to older mice, NAD+ levels were restored to those normally associated with younger healthy animals. By administering NMN to mice for just one week, our lab demonstrated a robust correction in age-associated metabolic dysfunction and restored muscle mitochondrial function in old mice to levels seen in younger control mice.

Although the restorative properties of NMN treatment drive many of the same cellular signaling pathways which underlie CR, trials of greater than one week or two months are needed to properly evaluate whether NMN can reverse the aging process. Starting with mice that are 20 months old (roughly equivalent to a 50 year old human), longer-term NMN treatments will be applied in order to restore levels of cellular NAD+ to those found in youthful mice. Along with a large cohort of normal mice, we will also use a cohort of our novel genetically engineered mouse, termed the ICE mouse (Induced Changes In Epigenome). These ICE mice manifest an accelerated aging phenotype.

Your donations will not only allow us to purchase the materials necessary to perform this experiment, but also pave the way for human clinical trials aimed at showing, for the first time, that we can actually slow down human aging. We find ourselves at a turning point in history, and together we have the chance to accelerate technologies that will allow us to live healthfully at any age. This is a future that is coming, and whether it arrives in our lifespan or only for future generations is up to us.

Link: https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/can-nmn-increase-longevity/

Comments

Remember Sinclair said his research will push lifespan up to 150 years. Imagine what we can achieve with this, SENS and others combined.

Posted by: Gekki at September 26th, 2018 10:54 AM

Actually, he said:

"Extending life expectancies to more than 150 years and radically reversing the ageing process - all possible in our lifetimes - will revolutionise the economy and markets, says Harvard geneticist David Sinclair."

He is talking about the field in general here not NMN specifically. The newspapers have in various cases taken this completely out of context. What a surprise! Not!

Posted by: Steve Hill at September 26th, 2018 1:34 PM

However, shitty right wing trash newspapers like the Daily Fail report it as

"Stunning anti-ageing breakthrough could see humans live to 150 and regenerate organs by 2020 'for the price of a coffee a day'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6121913/New-technique-humans-live-150-regrow-organs-price-coffee-day.html

The newspaper took the lifespan increases in mice and converted it directly to humans, which is ridiculous. Do you want to know why our field gets a bad rap aside from the snake oilers? Look no further than the media and how it portrays the science.

Posted by: Steve Hill at September 26th, 2018 1:38 PM

@Steve Hill: Thats correct and I think particularly right wing media gets it wrong when it comes to biotech. Therefore I never read them. Even worse in the Trump era.

Posted by: Pat at September 26th, 2018 1:50 PM

Many of the larger supporters of longevity research support the right especially since they're fed up with the corruption of the left. If you wish to continue criticizing the right you will be isolating yourself.
Remember Theranos was an arrogant, corrupt left-wing supported company.

Posted by: dontbitethehandthatfeeds at September 26th, 2018 3:29 PM

@dontbitethehandthatfeeds
The left and right wings are flapping. I am pretty sure that , if given a credible evidence that senolitics can work Trump would write the check immediately to support further research. After all, he is not getting any younger...

@Steve Hill
>Stunning anti-ageing breakthrough could see humans live to 150
the 150s will be the new fifties :)
Let's do some wild projections here. Let's assume that the first human studies prove the senolitics work in 2-3 years. There will be people that will self-medicate . And some of them are in their 80s. So they might get 10 extra years of health-span. While the investment money gets poured in the anti-aging research. So in 10 more years there will be other cutting-edge treatments, which might not add maximum LS but still give HS of a few more years. Even 10. So it is +20 now. We will have a group of super-centenarians aged at 110. And waiting for the next installment of anti-aging treatments. By then the anti-aging treatments will become mainstream and will be applied to all supercentenarians, which will probably benefit more than the initial group of 80-old self-experimenters. The HS of the supercentenarians will be extended to 120 in 30 years. And only then we will be able to tell if the max LS can be improved. 40 years from now the max LS will be probably extended to 130 years(hopefully matched with a good HS) . If by then we reach the LEV then there will be at least 20 more years for the first person to reach 150. So it is still 60 to 70 years until the first person reaches the age of 150.

There is an unlikely possibility of using the first generation senolitics on a supercentenarian . In this case we can see the compression of this period. However, the first generation treatments might be quite imperfect and give much less time to somebody who's already frail.

Therefore, the first recorded person to reach 150 will not happen in at least 30 years. (Somebody who's 100 now, and lucky enough to be alive in 120 and even luckier to respond well to the available treatments)

Posted by: cuberat at September 26th, 2018 4:55 PM

The bottom line is don't expect quality science journalism from newspapers like this which rely on sensationalism to sell copies. That pretty much applies to most UK papers left and right. They report on the science badly and this is why people like Gekki say Sinclair has said things he did not.

Posted by: Steve Hill at September 26th, 2018 7:37 PM

At wikipedia the oldest living person are born 1903. As Cuberat says it will take some time before we get anyone to 150.

Posted by: Gekki at September 27th, 2018 4:30 AM

@Gekki
And no one of them will risk using the first generation treatments. Probably not even the second generation. On the other hand making the 90s the new sixties, and as result, seventies the new fifties and fifties the new forties, world be already huge.

Posted by: Cuberat at September 27th, 2018 5:11 AM

"Among those who bought into the disruptive dream, according to a 2016 Wall Street Journal report, were media titan Rupert Murdoch...

Kissinger once hinted at a simple explanation of why all these cagey political veterans eagerly agreed to advise Holmes.

'Elizabeth's iron determination and great intellectual ability turned me from a mild skeptic to an enthusiast," Kissinger told USA TODAY in 2014 for a profile of Holmes. "We aren't exactly a group of people who give away our time lightly.'"
https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/nation-now/behind-theranos-rise-and-dramatic-fall-the-powerful-backers-in-money-tech-and-politics/465-d3657b30-9a8a-4e04-9c0c-2da3fbc36f69

Kissinger, Murdoch, Bechtel, Kovacevich, Frist & Mattis - all somehow duped by Holmes & Balwani into backing Theranos.

Posted by: CD at September 27th, 2018 12:03 PM

I've started with 125 mg nicotinamide riboside (NR)- Niagen...I'll post back if I live longer...did notice a little better sleep.

Have heard a few claims that this supplement stops working after a while...probably due to homeostatic effects?

I subscribe the the "theory of synergism"...I take/eat a lot of different supplements/foods that are supposed to have benefits.

Did reduce my intake of DHEA from 50 mg to 25 mg (then down to 15 mg) due to the following:

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/dhea-appropriate-dosages-may-have-significant-anti-aging-and-anti-cancer-activ

"The author evaluated the effects of DHEA (Dehydroepiandrosterone) on the amount of telomeres of normal cells and cancer cells and found the following: Contrary to the literature, which often recommended 25-50 mg of DHEA daily for the average adult human being, the author found that, depending on the individual, the maximum increase of normal cell telomere was obtained by a single optimal dose of 1.25-12.5 mg.

On the other hand, if a patient took an excessive dose of DHEA, the amount of normal cell telomere decreased, while there was an increase in cancer cell telomere. It was found that those who took an overdose of 25-50 mg daily for more than 3 months had a high incidence of cancer of the prostate gland, breast, colon, lung, and stomach."

Posted by: fred at October 3rd, 2018 7:04 AM
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