AGE crosslink breakers

Drug compound restores youth to aging arterial cells in elderly hypertensives, Hopkins study shows

Good news for one of de Greys seven steps. AGE cross-links cause many bad things that the body is unable to undo, mostly to do with connective tissues, but this affects almost every system of the body, from the skin to arteries, the heart, and digestive systems. This in itself could cause a nice jump in average longevity and quality of life.

Antibiotics

Antibiotics: Overused for Sore Throats?

I know I've posted on this before, but I couldn't find where. This is the kind of silliness that ends up getting the people that need antibiotics killed because the bugs are resistant to them. We need to scale way back on the way we prescribe medicines, and the way we use antibiotics in hospitals.

technorati tags: overprescription, antibiotics

Proteomics

Fundamental Insight
Basically, they're figuring out that proteomics is hard. Due to the many different proteins that can be created with the genome, and the many different ways in which those proteins can be used, we have our work cut out for us in mapping what these systems do. This can be further complicated by the fact proteins fold in a specific way to function, and a change in the environment where they are created can alter the way they fold, changing the structure of the final molecule, but without changing the genetic sequence used to create it, but still achieving a different final product. Thankfully computational power shows no signs of slowing it's growth, we're going to need it all.

Freedom to choose

Should doctors tell patients about expensive, unfunded drugs?

Is your doctor taking away your freedom to choose? Not sure if this applies as much here in the U.S. but I'd be interested to know the results of a similar survey here compare to this one done in the UK, where they have socialized medicine.

technorati tags: drugs, choice, medicine

Organs, Heal Thyselves!

Lab Notes: Research from the Berkeley College of Engineering

Researchers are learning that stem cells are not the cure-all we're hoping them to be, but depend on their surrounding environment. Simply adding a new supply of stem cells to a damaged muscle, for instance, won't work because the foreign environment will interfere with the cells' behavior. Thus we will have to do comparative analysis of our biochemistry at maturity, and as we get older to see what kind of changes happen, and then be able to reverse them. I would think the same would be true for what they are trying to do to cure type 2 diabetes. The problem is not just that the islet cells have worn out, but that there is something wrong in the body that caused them to have to continually hyper-produce insulin and wear themselves out. While injecting islet cells into the pancreas of someone with type 1 diabetes will probably cure them, doing this to someone with type 2 will provide a temporary cure at best. Even with this "setback" we are seeing some amazing results with stem cell therapy.

technorati tags: stem cells, stem, cell, therapy

Targeted cancer treatment

Targeted drug delivery achieved with nanoparticle-aptamer bioconjugates

Breakthrough using DNA/RNA fragments bound to nanoparticle drug vessels to deliver drugs directly to cancer cells. Trial using prostrate cancer as the target using a nanoparticle-aptamer bioconjugate, the nanoparticles were conjugated to RNA aptamers that bind to the prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA) – a well known marker for prostate cancer which is over-expressed on certain prostate epithelial cells. The bioconjugates successfully and selectively adhered to PSMA-positive prostate cancer cells, while PSMA-negative cells were not targeted. The localisation of the bioconjugates after incubation with the prostate cancer cells and confirmed that the particles were rapidly internalised into the targeted cells.

technorati tags: nanoparticle, cancer, targeted drug delivery

Stem cell research

Channelnewsasia.com

Singapore is looking to become another hub for stem cell research, and hopefully treatment.

technorati tags: singapore, stem cell

Prions

Pall tells FDA panel about blood filtering technology

Pall corporation has developed a blood filtering technology that will filter out prions (the causes of TSE, or the brain wasting diseases, vCJD, scrapie, BSE, etc) from the blood. This bodes well for keeping our supply of blood safe.

technorati tags: prion, blood, filter

Stem cell applications

Stem Cell Center To Begin Accepting Patient Registration

Once this kind of technology has proven itself to be able to cure inherited genetic diseases, stem cell therapy is going to really take off, and stem cells are one of the big parts of SENS

Growth Hormone Illegal

Growth Hormone Illegal For Off-label Anti-aging Use, Study Warns
And this is why the FDA needs to go away, or at least have it's powers greatly reduced. Something to the effect of "innocent until proven guilty" for the drug market. People should be allowed to use a substance unless it is shown to have extremely harmful effects, those can be regulated for specific uses (almost everything will have some use). Things like HGH have not been shown to be fatal in people, and if someone wants to roll their dice with this, they should be allowed to do so. This kind of regulation is killing the drug industry, as the FDA

1. can't keep up with the number of drugs currently coming onto the market
2. has no motiviation to approve new drugs, as they don't see any benefit by doing so
3. have every motiviation to endlessly delay drugs, because if they somehow approve something that might have some danger to some tiny fraction of people that use it, they run the risk of public backlash.

The free market will always work better than government regulations, always.

Growth Hormone

The Longevity Meme -- live healthily - fight aging - extend your life

This kind of regulation is comparable to the war on drugs. People should be able to do with their lives what they want, as long as it doesn't cause someone else harm. The war on drugs has been one of the costliest things the government has undertaken, and this kind of regulation is just as bad. If people want to screw up their lives with drugs, that should be their perogative, and if someone wants to be a guinea pig for HGH, they should be able to do that as well.

Technorati Tags: HGH, growth, horomone

CLK-1 regulates aging by modulating ROS production

Suppression of what would appear to be another "master" age-related gene, clk-1, was shown to extend the lifespan of mice by 32%. This is a significant amount, equivalent to the addition of about 25 years if this translates directly to humans. I'd say that's worth investigating in humans. The article didn't say if the mice were on the gene supressor their entire lives, or what portion of their life, so it may be of less use to those of us already alive, but would problably still be of some benefit.

Technorati Tags: anti-aging, gene regulation, ROS, Chronogen

Probiotics

'Good' bacteria could save patients from infection infection by deadlier ones

I've been onto this for a while, I hate the fact that doctors seem to prescribe anti-biotics at the drop of a hat, whether they are really needed or not. All this does is create strains of bacteria that are resistant to the drug over time. That and people that don't complete the prescription, so they don't kill off all the bacteria, selecting for those that are resistant.

Technorati Tags: probiotics, bacteria, drug-resistant

Quantative Biology

"It is surprising that no one has made this calibration before. Biology
has tended to be descriptive," said Pollard. "This technology is part
of moving biology to be more quantitative and mechanistic. You can't
understand the chemistry and physics of cells without knowing the
concentrations of the proteins."

Researchers make cell biology quantitative

I'll say, this is a long time coming in the information age. Once you make the leap from qualitative to quantitative science, you make the leap to being able to open up the whole area of science to the world of information processing, which will push the field much much faster.

"People working on yeast should
be able to use this method straight out," said Pollard. "Tagging
proteins by manipulating their genes is a bit more complicated in other
organisms, but it can be done with some work -- even in human or plant
cells."

So it should be relatively simple to transfer this technique to humans, or mice, where we can study the concentrations of proteins in a normal cell, and the concentrations in cancer cells, or cells afflicted with alzheimers, or TSE, or any other abnormal condition and figure out exactly what is causing the problem with a bit of time and money. At this point all we're saying is "hey, both cells have this protein" or "this cell has this protein, and this one doesn't".

Technorati Tags: biology, quantitative, cell biology

Gene Therapy

Gene Therapy Reverses Genetic Mutation Responsible For Heart Failure In Muscular Dystrophy
This kind of therapy is going to start coming fast and furious, now that we have a proven method of getting genes into the cells themselves, all that has to be done is to determine the correct sequence to insert/correct to elicit a cure.

Technorati Tags: gene therapy, mutation, muscular dystrophy, heart failure