Increase Your Longevity

The Hardware Store Lesson for Longevity Research

posted on February 16, 2010

Last week, I needed an adapter to connect my water filter to my bathroom faucet. So I went to a local hardware store, one of thousands like it in the US. While I was waiting for the clerk to match up the right sizes, I looked around the store and was amazed at how many different items were in stock… probably tens of thousands.

Then I started mentally listing stores that handled and tracked complex inventories: bookstores, libraries, department stores, supermarkets, electronic stores, the military, pharmacies, office supply stores, and so on.

Somehow, before computers, we were able to painstakingly inventory and track the billions, maybe hundreds of billions of different items that are produced, stocked and sold around the world. Then came the computer age, and we were able to do this on a grand and accurate scale. Suddenly the big chains such as WalMart sprung into existence and started to dominate commerce. Inventory is handled automatically and effortlessly, and what was complex is now simple and cheap.

In parallel, biotechnology saw steady advances. Through trial and error, advances were linearly built upon previous breakthroughs. But it was slow, labor intensive and expensive. That’s why, in spite of Nixon’s war on cancer, we still haven’t seen a cure after forty years and hundreds of billions of dollars. After all, biochemistry is extremely complex, much more so than tracking all the inventory on the planet. But it’s a new world, and here’s why:

Biotechnology and information technology are merging. We are now able to simulate many of biochemistry’s complexities on computers. We are able to almost instantly do experiments on silicon chips that used to take months or years… or that could not be done at all. Thanks to the Human Genome Project, we now know that each of our cells contains about 23,000 computer programs called genes, and we’re learning how to reprogram them. We know that the power of these technologies is doubling every year, and that the tools we will be using in a decade will be a thousand times more powerful than the incredible ones we have now, and a billion times more powerful in 25 years.

So just as hardware stores got adept at tracking inventories, we will soon be able to understand enough of the intricacies of our tens of trillions of cells to be able to control and reverse aging.

Long Life,
David Kekich
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LATEST HEALTHY LIFE EXTENSION HEADLINES

RENEURON CLINICAL TRIAL IN THE UK (February 12 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4595
From the Telegraph: The Gene Therapy Advisory Committee (GTAC) - the ethics body for stem cell clinical trials - has given the research the green light following months of delay. Following the approval, ReNeuron will start the world's first trial of injecting stem cells into patients' brains in the hope they will repair areas damaged by stroke and improve both mental and physical function. ReNeuron was first granted permission to conduct the trial by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency last January, but needed a recommendation from the GTAC before it could start the Phase 1 clinical trial. A year later, the company has been given the go-ahead and the first of twelve stroke patients is expected to receive treatment in Scotland later this year. Michael Hunt, ReNeuron chief executive, said the approval represented 'the culmination of many months of work'." This is an apt illustration of why it requires so much time and money to bring new medical technology to the clinic - it's the regulators who cause the loss of a year here and a few years there, not the challenges of research and development.

THE STATE OF THE ART IN TISSUE ENGINEERING (February 12 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4594
Via Nanowerk: researchers have "developed a fast and cost-efficient method for producing sufficient amounts of bone and cartilage tissue using the body's own cells. Damage to larger joints such as knees, feet, hips and shoulders is often the beginning of a painful process during which mobility continues to decrease. Because cartilage cannot regenerate after the body has stopped growing, defects caused by injuries and 'wear and tear' cannot be absorbed by producing new cartilage. Genetic engineering and molecular biology have now made it possible to remove healthy cartilage cells and grow these outside the body in special solutions. This cartilage tissue is then applied to the defective cartilage where it attaches and grows.
Repairing cartilage and bone damage using the body's own cells is still a difficult process. Cultivating the body's own tissue is still time-consuming and expensive, and much time is needed until the implant has reached its desired functionality. [Researchers now] present a strategy for the 'de novo engineering' of cartilage and bone tissue which requires only three weeks."

STEM CELL VACCINATION VERSUS CANCER (February 09 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4589
An unexpected potential use for embryonic stem (ES) cells: "One of the most auspicious, yet challenging, avenues for combating malignancies is to enlist the immune system to come to the defense of the patient. However, myriad components of the immune system interact in extraordinarily complex ways with active or dormant neoplastic cells, an interaction matrix that is incompletely understood at best. [Researchers] reason that exposure of the immune system to novel tumor-associated antigens might boost an otherwise inadequate immune response into an effective antitumor action.  What distinguishes the study is the source of these tumor-associated antigens: human ES and iPS cells. Specifically, the study investigated whether vaccination of mice with human ES or iPS cell lines would trigger an enhanced immunological response against shared antigens expressed by the primitive normal cells and the colon carcinoma cell line CT26. Vaccination of mice with the human ES cell line H9 induced both strong cellular and humoral immune responses against CT26 colon carcinoma. There is a certain irony in the fact that human ES cells, which themselves possess many features of neoplastic cells - including sustained telomerase activity, formation of tumors after injection into mice, and infinite growth - would be exploited against cancer. By analogy, it is like fighting fire with fire."

CURING OSTEOPOROSIS BY MANIPULATING SEROTONIN (February 08 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4587
A novel approach to the treatment of age-related bone loss is demonstrated: "An investigational drug that inhibits serotonin synthesis in the gut, administered orally once daily, effectively cured osteoporosis in mice and rats. Serotonin in the gut has been shown in recent research to stall bone formation. The finding could lead to new therapies that build new bone; most current drugs for osteoporosis can only prevent the breakdown of old bone. Prior to this discovery, serotonin was primarily known as a neurotransmitter acting in the brain. Yet, 95 percent of the body's serotonin is found in the gut, where its major function is to inhibit bone formation (the remaining five percent is in the brain, where it regulates mood, among other critical functions). By turning off the intestine's release of serotonin, the team was able, in this new study, to cure osteoporosis in mice that had undergone menopause. [Researchers] administered the compound orally, once daily, at a small dose, for up to six weeks to rodents experiencing post-menopausal osteoporosis. Results demonstrated that osteoporosis was prevented from developing, or when already present, could be fully cured. Of critical importance, levels of serotonin were normal in the brain, which indicated that the compound did not enter the general circulation and was unable to cross the blood-brain barrier, thereby avoiding many potential side effects."

TERC, TELOMERES, AND RATE OF AGING (February 08 2010) http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/vnl.cfm?id=4586

The title of this EurekAlert! release is misleading - this isn't the first identified genetic variant associated with human longevity. But it is nonetheless interesting: scientists "have identified for the first time definitive variants associated with biological aging in humans. The team analyzed more than 500,000 genetic variations across the entire human genome to identify the variants which are located near a gene called TERC. Two forms of ageing - chronological ageing i.e. how old you are in years and biological ageing whereby the cells of some individuals are older (or younger) than suggested by their actual age. There is accumulating evidence that the risk of age-associated diseases including heart disease and some types of cancers are more closely related to biological rather than chronological age. What we studied are structures called telomeres which are parts of one's chromosomes. Individuals are born with telomeres of certain length and in many cells telomeres shorten as the cells divide and age. Telomere length is therefore considered a marker of biological aging. In this study what we found was that those individuals carrying a particular genetic variant had shorter telomeres i.e. looked biologically older. The effect was quite considerable in those with the variant, equivalent to between 3-4 years of 'biological aging' as measured by telomere length loss."

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