Tag: juvenescence

Interview with Stephanie Planque from Covalent Bioscience by Ariel VA Feinerman

Interview with Stephanie Planque from Covalent Bioscience by Ariel VA Feinerman

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Ariel VA Feinerman
Stephanie Planque

Dr. Stephanie Planque

This interview was originally published here.

Preface

What is ageing? We can define ageing as a process of accumulation of the damage which is just a side-effect of normal metabolism. While researchers still poorly understand how metabolic processes cause damage accumulation, and how accumulated damage causes pathology, the damage itself — the structural difference between old tissue and young tissue — is categorized and understood pretty well. By repairing damage and restoring the previous undamaged — young — state of an organism, we can really rejuvenate it! It sounds very promising, and so it is. And for some types of damage (for example, for senescent cells) it is already proved to work!

Today in our virtual studio, somewhere between cold, rainy Saint-Petersburg and warm, sunny Houston, we meet Stephanie Planque! For those of you who are not familiar with her, here is a brief introduction.

Stephanie Planque was awarded the PhD in 2009 by the University of Texas-Houston Medical School for her advances in applying electrophilic analogs of proteins to decipher the beneficial and harmful functional effects of catabodies. She then expanded her focus to vaccination and therapeutic catabody identification using proprietary electrophilic target analogs. Her work was published in 49 peer-reviewed scientific articles; she has numerous national/international conference presentations. She moved fulltime as a co-founder to Covalent Bioscience in 2018 to focus on rapidly translating their electrophilic vaccine/catabody technologies to clinical reality.

Note: If you have not read Ending Aging yet, I suggest you to do it as soon as possible, and to be more comfortable with the ideas we are discussing below I highly recommend you to read the short introduction to SENS research on their web page. Also if you are interested in recent news and up-to-date reviews about [anti]ageing and rejuvenation research, the best place to look for is the Fight Aging! blog. Finally, if you are an investor or just curious, I highly encourage you to take a look at Jim Mellon’s book Juvenescence.

Interview

Ariel Feinerman: Hello, Dr Stephanie Planque!

Stephanie Planque: Hi, Mr Feinerman! Happy to participate in this interview.

Ariel Feinerman: What is the brief history of Covalent Bioscience?

Stephanie Planque: Covalent Bioscience was incorporated in 2010 by Dr Sudhir Paul and Dr Richard Massey based on catalytic antibody technology and several exciting potential products for unmet medical needs. The technology and potential products were developed in Dr Sudhir Paul’s group at the University of Texas (UT). Dr Richard Massey and Dr Sudhir Paul have worked together on the field of catalytic antibody (or catabody) when Dr Massey was in Igen in the late 80’s. I have worked with Dr Paul since 1999 and am one of the co-founders of Covalent Bioscience. We, the founders of Covalent Bioscience, share the same conviction that our platform technology holds the potential to generate superior immunotherapeutic drug and vaccines.

Today, Covalent Bioscience has grown to a preclinical stage company holding significant assets. Our broad technology platform can be applied to generate novel lead products for unmet needs across multiple areas of medicine. We have three promising lead products for diseases that proved very difficult to treat and prevent by conventional means. Two of them are catabodies for treating age-associated diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and transthyretin amyloidosis. The products are expected to remove toxic aggregates that cause diseases in a more efficient and safe manner than conventional antibodies. In 2018, Dr Paul and I moved full time to Covalent Bioscience. Our lab is located at the skirt of the Houston Medical Center, biggest Medical Center in the World. In 2020, Covalent Bioscience received from The University of Texas the commercial rights to all inventions and research materials/tools Paul’s team generated there. With our current funding, we are generating new catabodies and working in collaboration with a Pharma company to advance one of our lead products closer to human trials.

Ariel Feinerman: What is the main focus of your research?

Stephanie Planque: Our main focus is, first, to optimize our an on-demand toolbox that enables generation of therapeutic catabodies and diagnostic irreversible antibodies with selectivity for virtually any protein target. Second, we want to accomplish preclinical milestones related to our anti-aging lead catabodies, Alzyme and Tauzyme for clearing brain amyloid proteins in Alzheimer’s disease, and Cardizyme for clearing heart and spinal cord amyloid caused by the transthyretin protein.

Ariel Feinerman: What is the basis of your technology?

Stephanie Planque: Our technology is based on using special chemically modified analogs of the target to isolate or generate catabodies, which modify permanently the target via enzymatic reaction or irreversible antibodies (IrAbs), which bind permanently to the target. These chemically modified target analogs can be used as probes to isolate catabodies or IrAbs from antibody libraries or as electrophilic vaccines (E-Vaccines) to induce a polyclonal catabodies and IrAb response.

The chemical modification consists in attaching electrophilic moieties on the surface of the target to fulfill two important goals. First, we want target-specific catabodies or IrAbs. The polypeptidic component of the target binds non-covalently to target-specific antibody displayed on surface of phage or B cells (B cell receptor, or BCRs). Second, the electrophilic moiety is a bait and is designed to mimic the natural weak electrophilic carbonyl present in the target and to form a non-hydrolyzable (or covalent) bond with the nucleophilic active site (negatively charged) of a catabody or IrAbs expressed on the B-cell surface as BCRs or expressed on phage display. This covalent bond traps the immune complex and prevents the hydrolysis step. However, when switching to the native target, the selected or induced catabodies will be capable to attack the natural weakly electrophilic carbonyl naturally present in the native target and hydrolyze the target.

Ariel Feinerman: Can you tell more how catabodies work? What are their unique properties? Which ageing pathology can you treat with them?

Stephanie Planque: The conventional antibodies are used as therapeutic and diagnostic agents. Their mechanism of action relies on binding specifically to the target. One molecule of antibody binds one target molecule. In contrast, one catabody can modify and destroy multiple target molecules and therefore is a therapeutic agent that is more efficient at removing toxic targets.

Conventional antibodies have the intrinsic limitation of dissociating from the target, the binding is reversible. In contrast, IrAbs bind any target covalently and therefore are diagnostic agents that are more efficient at detecting the target.

Covalent has developed two first-in-class lead catabody products for age-associated major unmet needs: Alzyme, for clearing amyloid β plaques from the brain for treating Alzheimer’s disease, and Cardizyme, for clearing transthyretin amyloid plaques from the spinal cord and heart for treating systemic amyloid disease. Two conventional antibodies to Aβ have been approved by FDA for Alzheimer’s disease to remove Aβ and improve cognition. They both are accompanied with inflammation in the brain caused by the antibody~Aβ immune complex activated microglia that can cause major adverse effects (edema, microbleeds, and death). In mice, Alzyme removed Aβ amyloid without causing inflammation. Aβ-binding antibodies are fundamentally flawed drugs for Alzheimer’s because they rely on brain-damaging inflammatory mechanism to remove amyloid. In contrast, catabodies remove disease-causing amyloids without inflammation.

Ariel Feinerman: We know that Aβ is not the full story. There is Tau, chronic inflammation, lipofuscin.

Stephanie Planque: To be used in combination with Alzyme, we are developing a prototype catabody to misfolded Tau, another misfolded protein that plays a role in Alzheimer’s disease but also other taupathy.

Our technology can induce catabodies or IrAb to any targets. Hence, in addition to developing a catabody for any extracellular or intracellular amyloids, catabodies could be generated to dissolve lipofuscin accumulating during aging or to destroy any protein regulating cell loss, tissue atrophy, inflammation, or cancerous cells, and this could further help in fighting aging.

Ariel Feinerman: What is an E-Vaccine? How do they work? How do they differ from original vaccines?

Stephanie Planque: We use the term “electrophilic vaccine” or “E-Vaccine” because the vaccine is composed of the target modified to present an electrophilic moiety on its surface. The goal of an E-vaccine is to teach our body to make catabodies or IrAbs and that will protect the vaccinated individual when exposed to the toxic substance or microbes.

E-vaccines are shown to stimulate the body’s own immune system to produce protective catabodies and IrAbs to protein targets involved in infectious disease and accelerated aging. As the catabodies and IrAbs show protective activity superior to the ordinary vaccine-induced rAbs, E-vaccines are predicted to show superior efficacy in disease prevention. Further, the E-vaccine targeting range is also superior to ordinary vaccines — they can target the functionally important regions of the protein target hidden to ordinary vaccines. The E-vaccine technology holds special promise for effective prevention of infections caused by mutable microbes (such as HIV infection, the SARS-coronavirus-2 infection). The technology can also be adapted to develop longevity vaccines. This is supported by induction of catabodies and IrAbs in mice with a prototype electrophilic amyloid β peptides for protecting against Alzheimer’s disease. Covalent Bioscience also considers electrophilic misfolded transthyretin analogs to protect against transthyretin amyloidosis.

The principle and benefits of E-vaccines come from our lead product, HIV E-Vaccine. Our HIV E-vaccine is composed of HIV coat protein gp120 with electrophilic moiety on the Lys side chain. It was shown to induce catabodies and IrAbs that neutralize genetically diverse HIV strains in mice, rabbits, and non-human primates. It also induces an efficient IgM-IgG switch, of a B cell with specificity for a conserved but poorly immunogenic epitopes of gp120. Covalent Bioscience intends to bring the vaccine to the human-trials stage.

Ariel Feinerman: What products are you hoping to bring to market? What is your commercialization route?

Stephanie Planque: We plan to bring to market our Alzyme for clearing brain amyloid protein in Alzheimer’s disease alone or in combination with Tauzyme. We also plan to move forward Cardizyme for clearing heart and spinal cord amyloid caused by the transthyretin protein.

Covalent’s lead anti-amyloid catabodies are the best solution because they permanently and directly destroy thousands of targeted amyloid copies (Aβ, tau or TTR) without inflammation or blood vessel damage. In contrast, competing drug candidates: (a) work reversibly on a 1:1 basis, (b) require inflammatory cell participation for amyloid removal, © can cause inflammation and vascular damage that nullify the amyloid removal benefit, or (d) can interfere with normal bodily processes requiring the properly folded, non-amyloid version of the protein target.

We seek investment, partnership and licensing arrangements to develop our products and validate the commercial value of our technologies.

Ariel Feinerman: When can we see your therapies in human clinical trials?

Stephanie Planque: We are completing some preclinical efficacy studies for Alzyme in animals. Considering the need for GMP-grade production of Alzyme and submission of an IND to FDA, human trials for Alzyme would be within 2–3 years. A similar timeline is expected for Cardizyme. Tauzyme requires additional preclinical testing and would reach human trials within 4 years. We are actively seeking funding and a partner that would allow us to more rapidly have these three products to reach human trials.

Ariel Feinerman: How are you funded?

Stephanie Planque: The technology was developed at the University of Nebraska and University of Texas using funds received from NIH and other non-profit organizations (The Richard J. Massey Foundation for Arts and Sciences, Abzyme Research Foundation, SENS Research Foundation), investment from Founders and Angel investors. Angel investors constitute our current funding source. Covalent invites a USD 4.5 million investment in exchange for equity to advance commercialization of these inter-related parts of its business plan over 18 months for developing our on-demand toolbox and our anti-aging lead catabodies.

Ariel Feinerman: How much money do you need to bring your therapies to the clinic?

Stephanie Planque: The funding will underwrite the milestones of manufacturing, animal toxicity profiles, and Phase 1 human trials of the catabodies. Covalent will need about $4.6M to complete final Alzyme preclinical milestones and Phase 1 trials in Alzheimer patients; about $4.7M to complete molecular and animal optimization of Tauzyme and advance the Tauzyme catabody in combination with Alzyme in Alzheimer patients; about $6M to test Cardizyme in patients with heart disease or lumbar spinal stenosis.

Ariel Feinerman: Thank you very much for your interview!

Stephanie Planque: Thank you for your interest in Covalent Bioscience.

Ariel VA Feinerman is a researcher, author, and photographer, who believes that people should not die from diseases and ageing, and whose main goal is to improve human health and achieve immortality. If you like Ariel’s work, any help would be appreciated via PayPal: arielfeinerman@gmail.com.

Finally, Rejuvenation is a Thing! – Fresh Interview with Aubrey de Grey by Ariel VA Feinerman

Finally, Rejuvenation is a Thing! – Fresh Interview with Aubrey de Grey by Ariel VA Feinerman

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Ariel VA Feinerman
Aubrey de Grey

This interview was originally published here. 

Preface

What is ageing? We can define ageing as a process of accumulation of the damage which is just a side-effect of normal metabolism. While researchers still poorly understand how metabolic processes cause damage accumulation, and how accumulated damage causes pathology, the damage itself — the structural difference between old tissue and young tissue — is categorized and understood pretty well. By repairing damage and restoring the previous undamaged — young — state of an organism, we can really rejuvenate it! It sounds very promising, and so it is. And for some types of damage (for example, for senescent cells) it is already proved to work!

Today in our virtual studio, somewhere between cold, rainy Saint-Petersburg and warm, sunny Mountain View, we meet Aubrey de Grey, again! For those of you who are not familiar with him, here is a brief introduction.

Dr Aubrey de Grey is the biomedical gerontologist who researched the idea for and founded SENS Research Foundation. He received his BA in Computer Science and Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Cambridge in 1985 and 2000, respectively. Dr. de Grey is Editor-in-Chief of Rejuvenation Research, is a Fellow of both the Gerontological Society of America and the American Aging Association, and sits on the editorial and scientific advisory boards of numerous journals and organizations. In 2011, de Grey inherited roughly $16.5 million on the death of his mother. Of this he assigned $13 million to fund SENS research.

Note: If you have not read “Ending Aging” yet I suggest you to do it as soon as possible, and to be more comfortable with the ideas we are discussing below I highly recommend you to read short introduction to SENS research on their web page. Also if you are interested in recent news and up-to-date reviews about [anti]ageing and rejuvenation research the best place to look for is Fight Aging! blog. Finally, if you are an investor or just curious, I highly encourage you to take a look at Jim Mellon’s book “Juvenescence”.

Interview

Ariel Feinerman: Hello, Dr Aubrey de Grey!

Aubrey de Grey: Hello Ariel — thanks for the interview.

Ariel Feinerman: How do you feel 2018 year? Can you compare 2018 to 2017 or early years? What is changing?

Aubrey de Grey: 2018 was a fantastic year for rejuvenation biotechnology. The main thing that made it special was the explosive growth of the private-sector side of the field — the number of start-up companies, the number of investors, and the scale of investment. Two companies, AgeX Therapeutics and Unity Biotechnology, went public with nine-digit valuations, and a bunch of others are not far behind. Of course this has only been possible because of all the great progress that has been made in the actual science, but one can never predict when that slow, steady progress will reach “critical mass”.

Ariel Feinerman: In 2017 SENS RF have received about $7 million. What has been accomplished in 2018?

Aubrey de Grey: We received almost all of that money right around the end of 2017, in the form of four cryptocurrency donations of $1 million or more, totalling about $6.5 million. We of course realised that this was a one-off windfall, so we didn’t spend it all at once! The main things we have done are to start a major new project at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, focused on stem cell therapy for Alzheimer’s, and to broaden our education initiative to include more senior people. See our website and newsletters for details.

Ariel Feinerman: What breakthroughs of 2018 can you name as the most important by your choice?

Aubrey de Grey: On the science side, well, regarding our funded work I guess I would choose our progress in getting mitochondrial genes to work when relocated to the nucleus. We published a groundbreaking progress report at the end of 2016, but to be honest I was not at all sure that we would be able to build quickly on it. I’m delighted to say that my caution was misplaced, and that we’ve continued to make great advances. The details will be submitted for publication very soon.

Ariel Feinerman: You say that many of rejuvenating therapies will work in clinical trials within five years. Giving that many of them are already working in clinical trials or even in the clinic (like immunotherapies, cell and gene therapies) do you mean the first — maybe incomplete — rejuvenation panel, when you speak of early 2020?

Aubrey de Grey: Yes, basically. SENS is a divide-and-conquer approach, so we can view it in three overlapping phases. The first phase is to get the basic concept accepted and moving. The second phase is to get the most challenging components moving. And the third phase is to combine the components. Phase 1 is pretty much done, as you say. Phase 2 is beginning, but it’s at an early stage. Phase 3 will probably not even properly begin for a few more years. That’s why I still think we only have about a 50% chance of getting to longevity escape velocity by 2035 or so.

Ariel Feinerman: Even now many investors are fearful of real regenerative medicine approaches. For example pharmacological companies which use small molecules, like Unity Biotechnology, received more than $300 million, in much more favour than real bioengineering companies like Oisin Biotechnologies, received less than $4 million, even though the biological approach is much more powerful, cheap, effective and safe! Why is this so in your opinion, and when can we see the shift?

Aubrey de Grey: I don’t see a problem there. The big change in mindset that was needed has already occurred: rejuvenation is a thing. It’s natural that small-molecule approaches to rejuvenation will lead the way, because that’s what pharma already knows how to do. Often, that approach will in due course be overtaken by more sophisticated approaches. Sometimes the small molecules will actually work well! It’s all good.

Ariel Feinerman: Do you agree that the small-molecule approach is generally the wrong way in the future rejuvenation therapies? Because they have many flaws — especially their main mechanism via interference with human metabolism. Unlike them SENS bioengineering therapies are designed to be metabolically inert — because they just eliminate the key damage, they do not need to interfere with metabolism, so it is much easier than usual to avoid side effects and interactions with other therapies. They just eliminate the key damage, which means they are easier to develop and test — and much safer.

Aubrey de Grey: Ah, no, that’s too simplistic. It’s not true that small molecules always just “mess with metabolism” whereas genetic and enzymatic approaches eliminate damage. Small molecules that selectively kill senescent cells are absolutely an example of SENS-esque damage repair; the only thing against them is that it may be more difficult to eliminate side-effects, but that’s not because of their mode of action, it’s because of an additional action.

Ariel Feinerman: In recent years many countries gave the green light for regenerative medicine. Fast-track approval in Japan, for example, allows for emerging treatments to be used so long as they have been proven safe. The similar approach works in Russia. What about the EU or USA?

Aubrey de Grey: There’s definitely a long way to go, but the regulatory situation in the West is moving in the right direction. The TAME trial has led the way in articulating an approvable endpoint for clinical trials that is ageing in all but name, and the WHO has found a very well-judged way to incorporate ageing into its classification.

Ariel Feinerman: Do you think of working with USA Army? As far as we know they conduct research on regeneration and are very interested in keeping soldiers healthier for longer. And they have much money!

Aubrey de Grey: The Department of Defense in the USA has certainly funded a lot of high-impact regenerative medicine research for many years. I’m sure they will continue to do so.

Ariel Feinerman: Is any progress in the OncoSENS programme? Have you found any ALT genes? Is any ongoing research in WILT?

Aubrey de Grey: No — in the end that program was not successful enough to continue with, so we stopped it. There is now more interest in ALT in other labs than there was, though, so I’m hopeful that progress will be made. But also, one reason why I felt that it was OK to stop was that cancer immunotherapy is doing so well now. I think there is a significant chance that we won’t need WILT after all, because we will really truly defeat cancer using the immune system.

Ariel Feinerman: Spiegel Lab has recently published an abstract where they say they have found 3 enzymes capable of breaking glucosepane. Very exiting info! When can we hear more on their research? Revel LLC is a very secretive company.

Aubrey de Grey: They aren’t really being secretive, they are just setting up.

Ariel Feinerman: When can we see the first clinical trial of glucosepane breaker therapy?

Aubrey de Grey: I think two years is a reasonable estimate, but that’s a guess.

Ariel Feinerman: What do you think of the Open Source approach in rejuvenation biotechnology? The computer revolution in the early 2000s has taken place only because Open Source caused an explosion in software engineering!

We have many examples when Big Pharma buys a small company which has patents on technology and then cancels all research. In the Open Source approach you cannot “close” any technology, while everyone can contribute, making protocol better and everyone can use that without any licence fee! Anyway, there are countries where you cannot protect your patents. Maybe it will be better to make technology open from the beginning?

Famous biohacker Josiah Zayner said: “In the gene therapy world most treatments are easy to replicate or pirate because you can reverse engineer the DNA from scientific papers or patents. Same exact treatment, same purity and quality I could give to someone rejected from the clinical trial. The cost? Hundreds or a few thousand dollars at most. Same deal with immunotherapy.”

Aubrey de Grey: I think you’ve pretty much answered your own question with that quote. The technologies that will drive rejuvenation are not so easy to suppress.

Ariel Feinerman: Is the SENS RF going to begin new research programmes in 2019?

Aubrey de Grey: Sure! But we are still deciding which ones. We expect that our conference in Berlin (Undoing Aging, March 28–30) will bring some new opportunities to our attention.

Ariel Feinerman: What are your plans for 2019?

Aubrey de Grey: I’d like to say less travelling, but that doesn’t seem very likely at this point. Really my goal is just to keep on keeping on — to do all I can to maintain the growth of the field and the emerging industry.

Ariel Feinerman: Thank you very much for your answers, hope to see you again!

Aubrey de Grey: My pleasure!

Ariel VA Feinerman is a researcher, author, and photographer, who believes that people should not die from diseases and ageing, and whose main goal is to improve human health and achieve immortality. If you like Ariel’s work, any help would be appreciated via PayPal: arielfeinerman@gmail.com.

Looking Back at 2017: A Year in Rejuvenation Biotechnology – Article by Nicola Bagalà

Looking Back at 2017: A Year in Rejuvenation Biotechnology – Article by Nicola Bagalà

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Nicola Bagalà

 

Editor’s Note: In this article, Mr. Nicola Bagalà highlights various events of rejuvenation biotechnology in the year 2017.  This article was originally published by the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation (LEAF).

                   ~ Kenneth Alum, Director of  Publication, U.S. Transhumanist Party, January 11, 2018

Winter kick-off

This year has been pretty intense, with a lot going on both at LEAF and in the rest of the community. January saw the launch of the LEAF website, shortly followed by both the Lifeboat Foundation and Trust me – I’m a biologist partnering with us. Given that it’s been only a year, we’re amazed at how enthusiastic and supportive the community has been—and how fast it has grown, with nearly 30,000 Facebook followers late in December! We’re also very grateful to our friends at Fight Aging! for their encouragement, support, and appreciation for our work, including honoring us by featuring it on their website!

In February, the CellAge campaign launched in late 2016 concluded successfully, also thanks to the matching fund put together by Longecity. That’s also when LEAF President Keith Comito met Mikhail Batin to discuss the Russian initiative Open Longevity and when Series A funding was announced for LYSOCLEAR, a LysoSENS-based approach to treating macular degeneration.

An eventful spring

The Lifespan Heroes campaign was launched in the spring, and thus far, it has greatly helped us carry out our activities, especially in terms of web development—so thank you to all our generous donors!

In the spring, we also started our advocacy projects with global policymakers. During April 10-15, LEAF Board Director Elena Milova attended a training program conducted by the International Institute on Ageing (INIA) in Saint Petersburg, where she met and interviewed INIA director Dr. Marvin Formosa and former Head of the UN Programs on Ageing Dr. Alexandre Sidorenko.

Later in April, the SENS Research Foundation announced a collaboration on a cellular senescence project with the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

The month of May was busy with conferences and networking; at the International Longevity and Cryopreservation Summit in Madrid, Elena Milova had the opportunity to interview life extension advocate Didier Coeurnelle, London Futurists Chair David Wood, Dr. Jose Luis Cordeiro, Senior Scientist at CONICET Dr. Rodolfo Goya (we hope to support his studies related to Yamanaka factors in 2018 via crowdfunding at Lifespan.io), and SRF’s Chief Science Officer Dr. Aubrey de Grey. Elena herself gave a talk about effective life extension advocacy methodologies; LEAF board member Paul Spiegel also gave a talk about the need for society to adapt to longer lives. In Paris, the International Cell Senescence Association (ICSA) held a conference discussing senescence triggers, physiological functions of senescence, and pathologies and therapies. We announced the event here.

Our Journal Club series was also launched at the end of May, for a total of eight Journal Club episodes this year, which you can watch here. The Journal Club is a monthly science show on which Dr. Oliver Medvedik hosts guests, and this show is supported by our patrons, the Lifespan Heroes. We broadcast this show live to our Facebook Page every month, where we invite the audience to ask questions and join in with the discussion.

Summer news

In the summer, LEAF and MMTP co-hosted a panel featuring Dr. Alexandra Stolzing, Dr. Aubrey de Grey, and Dr. Oliver Medvedik. This live broadcast included discussions about funding, research progress, and advocacy, providing some interesting insights into the field. They were joined by Alen Akhabaev, one of the project donors who supported the MMTP project on Lifespan.io, as well as Steve Hill and Elena Milova from the MMTP and LEAF.

The AgeMeter campaign was launched on Lifespan.io by Elliott Small in July, and in August, we celebrated the first birthday of our crowdfunding platform—you could say Lifespan.io’s birthday present was the MouseAge campaign launched shortly thereafter. The campaign was successful, and the MouseAge app is now ready and expected to be launched shortly. The use of AI is trending more and more in the field of aging research, so this app is certainly only one of many that will be employed in the future.

A great autumn

The autumn has been, without doubt, the busiest time of the year. The Undoing Aging conference was announced by the Forever Healthy Foundation in September, as was a series of small-scale human senolytic pilot studies by Betterhumans. Almost at the same time as the AgeMeter campaign reached 100% of its goal, Dr. Aubrey de Grey joined our SAB (Scientific Advisory Board), shortly followed by Dr. Robert Shmookler Reis. At this time, SRF and the Spiegel Lab launched a collaboration on developing monoclonal antibodies against glucosepane.

September also saw the Basel Life 2017 conference held in Basel, Switzerland, where Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov chaired the Artificial intelligence and block chain in healthcare and the Aging & drug discovery forums. Insilico Medicine’s Young.AI aging-rate tracking app was officially announced at this conference.

Juvenescence by Jim Mellon and Al Chalabi—a thorough, investor-focused introduction to the science of aging and the world of rejuvenation biotech—was published on September 25. LEAF has published two reviews of the book, which you can read here and here.

Open Longevity ICO, a Russian project focused on conducting clinical trials of geroprotective therapies and introducing diagnoses of aging into clinical practice, was launched in September. It is currently entering the second phase of pre-ICO, and we wish Anastasia Egorova’s team good luck.

In October (which is traditionally considered the Longevity Month) we launched the #IAmTheLifespan campaign, inviting all our supporters to make videos describing what brought them to join our cause, and you can watch some of them here. To help out MouseAge, and for Inktober 2017, our volunteer Laura Weston launched a fundraiser offering her beautiful artwork as a reward for donors.

The Pathways to Healthy Longevity 2017 conference was organized on October 15th by Dr. Ilia Stambler, a famous longevity activist, in Bar Ilan University (Israel), with Prof. Nir Barzilai and Prof. Haim Cohen as key speakers.

In late October and early November, the popular YouTube channel Kurzgesagt published End Aging? and Cure Aging?, which were both created with help from the Lifespan.io team. We saw overwhelming support from old and new members of the community, showing that healthy life extension is much more popular with the public than one might think.

As MouseAge reached and surpassed its goal, news started to spread that WHO was planning to leave healthy aging out of the general programme of work 2019-2023; thanks to the advocacy efforts of the community, though, WHO has received plenty of feedback on the issue and may hopefully reconsider.

During November 8-10th, the TransVision conference was held in Brussels. It was organised by Didier Coeurnelle, the head of HEALES, the Healthy Life Extension Society. Among its other objectives, the Technoprogressive declaration presented at the conference mentions the defeat of aging; it’s good to see that this objective is now considered to be of primary importance by a growing number of organisations.

During December, LEAF took part in Project4Awesome; many amazing videos were made to support us, and we’re really grateful to the community for that. It was a truly beautiful display of generosity, and not the only one; thanks to many fantastic donors, including the mysterious Pineapple Fund creator, the SENS Research Foundation has smashed its funding goals for the year. You can read more about the December highlights here.

Coming up in 2018

In 2018, we will be working towards creating more major media collaborations with awesome content creators to spread further awareness about the problem of aging and the upcoming advent of rejuvenation biotechnologies.

Our web development team will be, and in fact already is, working on improving the overall user experience of our followers and scaling our systems up to meet the needs of a larger user base; we experienced a significant growth in this sense after our collaboration videos with Kurzgesagt were published, and we’re most definitely looking forward to this happening again!

Our Journal Club will, of course, continue discussing and providing commentary on the latest aging research news in the company of special guests from the biogerontology world. More livestream events are in the cards too, so keep an eye on our Facebook page, and subscribe if you haven’t already!

As the community grows larger, so does the need to establish and develop regional presences; our next objective will be starting the Russian chapter of LEAF to engage with a wider audience. Aging is a global problem, so the more communities and audiences we can get involved in the fight against age-related diseases, the better.

LEAF will naturally take part in as many events in the healthy longevity world as possible to keep our readers in the loop. A big must is definitely the March 15-17 Undoing Aging conference in Berlin, Germany, as is the April 22-26 Interventions to Extend Healthspan and Lifespan conference in Kazan, Russia. There will certainly be much exciting news to share, so stay tuned!

The Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing—a scientific conference organized by the European aging research advocacy group HEALES—will be held in Brussels on November 8-10. It is likely that at least a few of the LEAF team will be at the event, and it is sure to be an interesting one.

Finally, of course, more exciting crowdfunding projects are in the works!

About Nicola Bagalà

Nicola Bagalà has been an enthusiastic supporter and advocate of rejuvenation science since 2011. Although his preferred approach to treating age related diseases is Aubrey de Grey’s suggested SENS platform, he is very interested in any other potential approach as well. In 2015, he launched the blog Rejuvenaction to advocate for rejuvenation and to answer common concerns that generally come with the prospect of vastly extended healthy lifespans. Originally a mathematician graduated from Helsinki University, his scientific interests range from cosmology to AI, from drawing and writing to music, and he always complains he doesn’t have enough time to dedicate to all of them which is one of the reasons he’s into life extension. He’s also a computer programmer and web developer. All the years spent learning about the science of rejuvenation have sparked his interest in biology, in which he’s planning to get a university degree.

About LIFE EXTENSION ADVOCACY FOUNDATION (LEAF)

In 2014, the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation was established as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to promoting increased healthy human lifespan through fiscally sponsoring longevity research projects and raising awareness regarding the societal benefits of life extension. In 2015 they launched Lifespan.io, the first nonprofit crowdfunding platform focused on the biomedical research of aging.

They believe that this will enable the general public to influence the pace of research directly. To date they have successfully supported four research projects aimed at investigating different processes of aging and developing therapies to treat age-related diseases.

The LEAF team organizes educational events, takes part in different public and scientific conferences, and actively engages with the public on social media in order to help disseminate this crucial information. They initiate public dialogue aimed at regulatory improvement in the fields related to rejuvenation biotechnology.

Jim Mellon Announces Launch of New Book – Juvenescence: Investing in the Age of Longevity – Press Release by Biogerontology Research Foundation

Jim Mellon Announces Launch of New Book – Juvenescence: Investing in the Age of Longevity – Press Release by Biogerontology Research Foundation

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Biogerontology Research Foundation

London, UK: Biogerontology Research Foundation Trustee Jim Mellon announces the publication of his newest book, Juvenescence: Investing in the Age of Longevity.

The book is a comprehensive summary of the emerging longevity industry, including profiles of longevity companies, investment opportunities, and aims to chart the major ideas of the geroscience’s thought-leaders and the vast implications this will have on economies and societies.

Often referred to as the British Warren Buffett, Billionaire Jim Mellon is well known for identifying major emerging trends before they become mainstream. Mellon made his wealth by investing in emerging markets throughout the 1990s. After many years of research and investing in the life science sector, Jim announced his vision for the emergence of the nascent longevity industry at Master Investor, one of the UK’s leading investor show in March of 2017, which was attended by over five thousand investors and entrepreneurs.

“The Biogerontology Research Foundation is proud to support what we feel will come to be seen as a landmark publication in the modern history of biogerontology. Jim has put an enormous amount of thought and effort into this new book, and has interviewed many of the field’s leading scientists in his research. The field of geroscience and the emerging longevity industry are both sure to prosper from very well-respected business personalities like Jim Mellon championing the longevity industry and projecting that it will become the world’s largest industry. Further, governments and policy makers should note the pressing need for a paradigm shift in medicine and healthcare away from ‘sick care’ toward comprehensive and disease-preventative healthspan extension. We are proud to have Jim as a Trustee of the Biogerontology Research Foundation and look forward to helping him lend mainstream credibility to the field and actionability to the dawning longevity industry” said Franco Cortese, Deputy Director & Trustee of the Biogerontology Research Foundation.

In 2012, Jim published his best-seller Cracking the Code, which summarized his vision for the future of the life science sector. In 2017, he announced his intention to focus much of his time and assets on the emerging longevity industry and make substantial investments into this area.

Jim and long-time co-author Al Chalabi toured many academic institutions, biopharmaceutical companies, and Silicon Valley tech companies to learn about the latest research and to understand the rapidly advancing field of longevity. Juvenescence highlights the technologies they deem the most likely to generate substantial longevity dividends and create sustainable and profitable industries. They travelled through the US and Europe, interviewing geroscience’s leading scientists and thought-leaders and provide an objective survey of their findings well as a detailed vision for the industry’s future and the most appropriate investment opportunities within the dawning longevity industry.

 

This is the cover of Juvenescence: Investing in the Age of Longevity by Jim Mellon and Al Chalabi

Credit: Jim Mellon & Al Chalabi

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Earlier this year Jim Mellon announced the formation of Juvenescence Limited, a company investing in the longevity biotechnology. Since then the company announced investments in several high-profile longevity companies including Insilico Medicine, Inc, a Baltimore-based leader in artificial intelligence for drug discovery, biomarker development, and aging research.

About the Biogerontology Research Foundation:

The Biogerontology Research Foundation is a UK non-profit research foundation and public policy center seeking to fill a gap within the research community, whereby the current scientific understanding of the ageing process is not yet being sufficiently exploited to produce effective medical interventions. The BGRF funds and conducts research which, building on the body of knowledge about how ageing happens, aims to develop biotechnological interventions to remediate the molecular and cellular deficits which accumulate with age and which underlie the ill-health of old age. Addressing ageing damage at this most fundamental level will provide an important opportunity to produce the effective, lasting treatments for the diseases and disabilities of ageing, required to improve quality of life in the elderly. The BGRF seeks to use the entire scope of modern biotechnology to attack the changes that take place in the course of ageing, and to address not just the symptoms of age-related diseases but also the mechanisms of those diseases.