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.

Be it heart disease or liver disease, researchers and clinicians are well used to thinking about disease at the level of organs.

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 Science Translational Medicine 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.

Researchers have identified an RNA-binding protein that played a role in colon cancer relapse, offering new insights into how cells persist in the presence of chemotherapy.

Researchers at the Institute for Cancer Research have demonstrated that in pancreatic tumors, the balance between a more aggressive mesenchymal and a less aggressive epithelial state is constantly in flux, depending on an interplay of different regulatory proteins.

Investigators at the Weizmann Institute of Science have identified changes in oligodendrocytes that were shared across multiple dementia types. The team reported its results in the June 27, 2022, online issue of Nature Neuroscience.