life extension – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Stories filed under: "life extension"

DailyDirt: Fountains Of Youth…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Lab mice aren’t really a great model model for studying human health, but we use them anyway. And every so often, researchers stumble on drugs that seem to make lab mice live longer. Unfortunately, no one has found a reliable treatment for significantly extending a human lifespan just yet — but if you want to raise old mice, there are plenty of things that’ll work. Check out a few of these potential fountains of youth for mice.

• The first human clinical trials using nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) to slow the aging process should begin soon — on a small sample of 10 healthy people. NMN works remarkably well in mice, but no one knows yet how well it will work in people. If it’s safe enough, though, it’s a good bet that people will be adding this stuff to vitamins ASAP.
• A hormone, osteocalcin, injected in old mice appears to allow the rodents to run just as far as much younger mice. Old mice that weren’t given this hormone ran about half as far, so researchers are planning to try this in people next.
• If rapamycin works to delay the onset of certain diseases in mice, maybe it’ll work… on our pet dogs? And if Fido lives a bit longer and healthier, maybe we’ll try it ourselves, too. (Eating our own dogfood..?)
• How about chemical precursors to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) to try to keep yourself young? You can buy this stuff right now as a supplement, if you’d like to participate in your own highly unscientific study….

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: aging, biology, biotech, health, immortality, life extension, lifespan, longevity, medicine, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, nicotinamide mononucleotide, osteocalcin, rapamycin

DailyDirt: Keep Your Head On…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some surgeries that were really risky just a couple decades ago are nearly routine now — though the risk of death and/or complications is always going to exist. However, the idea of a head transplant is more than a little “out there” when it comes to extreme medical procedures. There are some people working on transplanting heads (or switching bodies, depending on your point of view), but early adopters aren’t expected to get any life extension benefits just yet.

• Head transplants have been tried in a bunch of different animals over the last few decades, but one surgeon has performed about 1,000 head transplants on mice since 2013. These mice have lived as long as one day after the procedure, so this doctor is going to try primates next. IANAD, but maybe he should stick to mice…. [url]
• Monkey head transplant surgery has been done before, but the animals didn’t live for too long, either. Brain grafts and nerve tissue regeneration might be a more promising research approach, but figuring out how to keep brains alive (without the original body) seems like an idea that won’t go away. [url]
• James Boysen had a partial skull and scalp transplant — an extreme way to get a new head of hair. Actually, doctors did this surgery because he needed a pancreas and kidney transplant and also had cancer damage to his skull. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Techdirt Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: brains, frankenstein, head transplant, james boysen, life extension, medicine, organ transplants

DailyDirt: Frankenstein Was The Doctor, Not The Monster…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Medicine is often a somewhat gruesome practice. To treat some injuries/diseases, sometimes you need to perform some extreme surgeries. It’s not always pretty. However, some surgeons are working on unusual procedures that sound a bit more like Frankenstein than modern medicine. Transplants from animals, whole head transplants — if these procedures actually work, doctors could extend the lifespans of people in a way that brings up more and more questions about the quality of a person’s life. These operations are far from perfected now, but so were a lot of surgeries not too long ago.

• Some unconventional surgeons say a human head transplant will be possible in the near future. This sounds like a sci-fi movie — because there is a movie coming out about transferring minds (not heads). The first real patient could be Valery Spiridonov — a man with Werdnig-Hoffman disease — who still needs a donor body and a medical facility to support the operation. [url]
• Xenotransplantations have been attempted for over a century, and there are still lots of problems with implanting an animal organ into a human body. Beyond the animal rights protests, the odds of success for an organ transplant are hindered by immune system rejection responses and possible disease transmission problems. Genetically engineering an animal for better results might be a promising approach, but the technology to grow organs might catch up. [url]
• Genetically modified piglet hearts have survived in the body of a baboon (in its abdomen) for more than a year now. The piglet hearts were designed to minimize organ rejection, and the next step is to try to replace a baboon heart with one of these pig hearts. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: frankenstein, head transplant, life extension, medicine, organ transplant, valery spiridonov, werdnig-hoffman disease, xenotransplantation

DailyDirt: Living Longer And Longer

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The fountain of youth has been an elusive solution to the problem of aging. Sure, there are plenty of drawbacks to staying young forever, but living longer seems to be an ongoing trend, so if everyone is living longer anyway, we might as well try to stay young for as long as possible, right? Here are just a few interesting stories about getting really old.

• Stanford economists report that the decreases in death rates are improving more for people over 70 years old, rather than for kids or teenagers. So planning to retire early might not work out so well…. [url]
• Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov is trying to get other billionaires to pony up some research funds for a project that’s aiming for cybernetic immortality for humans by 2045. This sounds like the plot of a bad summer action movie, so maybe they can finance part of the project by selling the movie rights to the story. [url]
• Calorie restricted diets were proposed as a possible way to living longer, but apparently it might not be such an effective regime. A 25-year study on rhesus monkeys shows that caloric restriction doesn’t necessarily lead to longer lifespans. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: aging, death, health, immortality, life, life extension, lifespan, living longer

DailyDirt: Who Wants To Live Forever

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Several discoveries in biology could lead to treatments that reverse the effects of aging and prolong lifespans. There isn’t quite a magic bullet, but it’s not unreasonable to think that people could live longer and longer lives. The Methuselah Foundation has several monetary prizes for researchers in the field of life extension interventions. Here are just a few other interesting research studies on aging.

• Little worms (Caenorhabditis elegans) on the International Space Station are actually living longer in a micro-gravity environment than their earth-bound relatives. Researchers have identified several genes that contribute to this unexpected lengthening of longevity, but living on a space station isn’t the fountain of youth. [url]
• The cost of sequencing the human genome has fallen dramatically from $3 billion for the first one… to a few thousand dollars. Having access to the information in our DNA could lead to lifespans of 150 years, but getting hit by a bus would still be a problem. [url]
• Certain kinds of exercise may extend your life more than others. Aerobic exercise is correlated with living a bit longer than non-aerobic exercise — so expect a few more infomercials to start plugging exercise equipment with claims of helping you live longer. [url]
• Senescent cells can no longer divide, and they might bring down neighboring cells and create various symptoms of aging. Eliminating these senescent cells could lead to more age-resistant organs — and people living longer (perhaps as undead zombies). [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: aging, biology, biotech, exercise, human genome, immortality, life extension, lifespan, longevity, senescent cells
Companies: methuselah foundation