Adult skeletal muscle tolerates a lack of the coenzyme nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), according to a study led by scientists at the University of Copenhagen. Their results suggest that adverse effects previously associated with congenital NAD depletion in this tissue may be due to impaired muscle development rather than to a deficiency of this molecule.
“Just simply getting old, from age 50 to 75, increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease by 100-fold, which really dwarfed 10-fold increase in risk, conferred by all known risk factors combined, including APOE genotype, being a female, hypertension, smoking, physical inactivity and diabetes. And this trend stays true for almost all chronic diseases,” Yousin Suh told her audience earlier this week during a talk for the NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series.
The first disease modifying therapies for Alzheimer’s may have limited utility in some senses, but they will be a force for change, providing momentum and altering the way governments as payers, and health systems as carers, think about the disease.
The map of cystic fibrosis (CF) research is being redrawn in the U.K. as improvements in treatment, and in particular the introduction of CF modulator drugs, mean people with the rare inherited disease are living much longer.
Junevity Inc. has raised $10 million in seed funding to support its work creating silencing RNA (siRNA) therapeutics to address metabolic and age-related diseases, including type 2 diabetes, obesity and frailty. The seed funding will be used to enhance the company’s RESET platform and develop its first therapeutic candidates in these indications.
The University of Minnesota has patented flavones having senolytic activity that are described as useful for the treatment of aging and Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome.
Researchers from Fudan University and Southwest University published data from a study that detailed the development of a novel vertebrate model suitable for high-throughput screening of potential antiaging compounds.
The way the brain ages is not the same in women and men. A study in mice has observed differences in the expression of the maternal and paternal X chromosomes that could explain variation in brain aging between the sexes and a faster deterioration in some women. Another study has discovered different survival strategies in the microglial cells of females and males. Both studies highlight sex differences that could have implications for several age-related neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.
Newco Linkgevity Ltd. has won backing from the KQ Labs accelerator program at the Francis Crick Institute in London, enabling it to take forward the lead program, an anti-necrotic drug for treating acute kidney injury, and to further develop its AI-driven system for identifying aging-related therapeutic targets. Alongside access to the Crick’s expertise in translational research and in shaping academic science to make it investible, companies joining KQ Labs receive an equity investment.
2024 saw the completion of several cellular-resolution brain maps, including the entire fly brain and a comprehensive connections map of a cubic centimeter of human brain. 2025 began with the addition of another important map. In the Jan. 1, 2025, issue of Nature, researchers from the Allen Institute presented a map of areas and cell types where aging most affected the mouse brain.
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