To most people, trying to prevent aging seems like a dream – maybe a pipe dream, in fact. But a dream for sure. To aging researchers, it seems like common sense. And if animal studies are any indication, maybe not that hard, either. Part two of BioWorld’s multipart series on extending the human lifespan looks at the potential of anti-aging medicine.
Aging is surprisingly dichotomous. Genetic studies suggest that in fruit flies and mice, the gene sets that affect male and female longevity are mostly distinct. And a lopsided amount of what’s known about aging comes from the study of – wait for it – males. Read part three of BioWorld’s multipart series on extending the human lifespan.
The U.S. NIH’s National Institute on Aging’s Intervention Testing Program has been searching for ways to extend lifespan for more than two decades by now. And in its animal studies, it has been successful multiple times. There are half a dozen drugs, and a few lifestyle interventions, that reliably extend lifespan in one or both sexes by up to 30%. Read more in part four and five of BioWorld’s multipart series on extending the human lifespan.
Remarkably, the U.S. NIH’s National Institute on Aging’s Intervention Testing Program (ITP) has achieved its success rate while keeping to the highest standards of scientific rigor. Any researcher can suggest drugs that the ITP might test. The program can only test a fraction of the suggestions in gets, though, so proposals go through a rigorous vetting process.
A lot of what goes on during aging remains too poorly understood for straightforward translation. There are hallmarks of aging, and researchers are getting a handle on its biological mechanisms. But in a basic sense, “we still don’t have much of an idea what causes aging,” said Björn van Eyss of the Leibniz Institute for Aging Research. Part six of BioWorld’s multipart series on extending the human lifespan explores the moonshot attracting the most attention: in vivo partial reprogramming.
In the biopharma industry, the sirtuins have been a cautionary tale of some of the challenges in translating aging research. Research in the early aughts suggested that activating them could extend lifespan, and the spectacular rise of sirtuin activators crested in 2008, when GSK plc bought preclinical startup Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc. to the tune of $720 million, only to shutter it a few years later. But the hopes attached to sirtuin activators have not panned out. Read more in part seven of BioWorld’s multipart series on extending the human lifespan.
Using long-term in vivo imaging combined with computational modeling, a multinational team of researchers has gained new insights into what makes potential stem cells able to fulfill their role functionally.
No matter how they come about, functional impairments in the DNA repair protein BRCA1 will hamper cells' ability to repair their genome, and increase the chances that a cell will become cancerous. However, researchers from the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine reported in the July 6, 2022, issue of ScienceTranslationalMedicine that reduced BRCA1 activity that was due to methylation of its promoter differed from BRCA1 mutation in terms of its response to platinum chemotherapy.
SARS-CoV-2 infection caused damage to brain blood vessels via a cascade of immune system reactions that was most likely initiated by antibody-dependent cytotoxicity, researchers from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke reported in the July 5, 2022, online issue of Brain.
