Tag: Unity Biotechnology

Why I Am Future-Positive on My Birthday – Article by Steve Hill

Why I Am Future-Positive on My Birthday – Article by Steve Hill

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Steve Hill

Editor’s Note: The U.S. Transhumanist Party features this article by our guest Steve Hill, originally published by the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation (LEAF) on June 7th, 2019. In this article, Mr. Hill discusses how he feels great about being over 40 years old, instead of the depressing feeling that many tend to have on their birthdays, because he is very aware of how close medical science is to curing age-related diseases. He goes on in discuss, in his opinion, two of the most promising research methods being sought by various companies to defeat age-related diseases.

~ Bobby Ridge, Assistant Editor, July 7, 2019

Not so long ago, it was my 44th birthday, and I’ve finally decided to write something that I’ve been reflecting on for a while. To some people, a birthday is a cause for celebration; for others, it is viewed as a bad thing.

Yes, if you take the negative view, you could see it as simply a reminder of being another year older and another year closer to the grave. However, this is not how I see it; in fact, I think quite the opposite. I see it as another year closer to our goal: the defeat of age-related diseases due to the progress of rejuvenation biotechnology that offers longer and healthier lives.

From my point of view, viewing birthdays, or, indeed, the passing of time, as a positive or negative thing is largely a question of knowledge and understanding of the aging research field, which ties in with what I want to address today.

Knowledge is power

During my work as a journalist, people often ask me how things are progressing in the field. This is, of course, a perfectly reasonable and understandable question to ask. While I am always more than happy to talk about the field and answer this question, I also urge people to delve deeper into the field so that they can learn and evaluate for themselves rather than simply taking my word for it.

Our website, including the Rejuvenation Roadmap, is a good resource to start learning and to hear the latest news, as are places such as FightAging and the SENS Research Foundation website. Conferences such as Ending Age-Related Diseases and Undoing Aging are also valuable places to learn more about what is happening in the field.

Sometimes, I encounter people outside, but also fairly frequently within, the community who can be somewhat pessimistic about the field and its progress. It is perfectly natural to be cautious about the unknown, but there comes a point at which caution becomes unwarranted pessimism. The “Science Will Not Defeat Aging in My Lifetime, so Why Bother?” argument is a classic example of this, and much of this is caused by a lack of knowledge and understanding of the field.

The Latin phrase scientia potentia est, meaning “knowledge is power”, is particularly apt here. Knowledge and understanding allow us to better evaluate a situation or a proposal and reach a conclusion. It is hard to reach an accurate conclusion about anything without all the facts in place, yet I often see people doing it. Of course, there are always people who will not put in the time and effort required to learn about a topic properly, so they make predictions without all the facts, but there really isn’t much we can do about these people.

However, as advocates and supporters, we can do our best to learn about such things ourselves, and this will also come in useful when speaking to others about the field, as there is nothing like having a good understanding of the topic to help you convey it to others. That does not mean you need to become a biologist and understand things to such deep levels but even a solid understanding of the basics can be a huge help when it comes to engaging with others on the subject and also for understanding where we are currently progress wise.

Future-positive

This relates to a second question people often tend to ask me, which is if I think that they or we have a chance of living long enough to see these technologies arrive.

Obviously, no one can predict the future, so this question, by its very nature, is a tricky one to answer. I generally avoid being too specific on the timeframe in which we will reach the goal of longer lives through science, but I am optimistic that people in my age group, even perhaps older, have a reasonable chance of making the cut.

The reason that I am generally optimistic about the future is mostly that, as a journalist who speaks to hundreds of researchers, each focused on a part of the puzzle, I get an almost unique picture of the field. I can see the broader landscape and how and where things in the field or related fields connect or may connect in the future. A breakthrough in a related medical field may not have immediately apparent utility in aging research at first glance, but a deeper look could reveal hidden potential.

This fairly unique insight, combined with the knowledge that I have collected over the years working in the field, makes me fairly optimistic about the future and my place in it. As I have said a number of times in the past, the defeat of age-related diseases will not suddenly happen overnight; there is unlikely to be a single moment at which humanity goes from having no choice about aging to having control. It is far more likely that there will be steady progress, with incremental breakthroughs along the road, that will ultimately reach the goal.

Reasons to be cheerful

I would like to touch upon two of the most promising therapies that I am most interested in and believe may have a big impact in the near future (10-20 years) and that may help pave the way for major changes to how society thinks about and treats aging. Both of these therapies directly address one of the nine proposed causes of aging and thus if they work they have the potential to be transformative in healthcare. Of course, there are more therapies in development and at various stages of progress which also address the other causes of aging but these two are what I am most enthusiastic about presently. I urge you to explore the provided links to resources and learn more about each one.

Senolytics

No list of promising technologies would be complete without talking about the senescent cell-clearing drugs and therapies known as senolytics. Senescent cells are aged or damaged cells that should destroy themselves via a process known as apoptosis but, for various reasons, do not do so; instead, they hang around, sending out inflammatory signals that harm nearby healthy cells, block effective tissue repair, and contribute to numerous age-related diseases.

One proposed solution to these problem cells is to remove them by causing them to enter apoptosis, as originally intended, by using senolytic drugs and therapies. Removing these cells in mouse studies has produced some remarkable results, with mice often living healthier and longer lives as well as reversing some aspects of aging.

The race is now on to bring these drugs to people, and a number of companies are developing them right now. So far, UNITY Biotechnology has seen the most progress, and the company is already conducting human trials of its lead candidate drug (UBX0101) for the treatment of osteoarthritis. It has another candidate drug (UBX1967) closely behind; this drug is poised to enter human trials for the treatment of age-related macular degeneration, diabetic macular edema, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma. Based on recent comments from UNITY, we are anticipating the initial results of human trials in the next few months; hopefully, the news will be positive.

With the number of companies working on these therapies, it is fair to be optimistic about their potential to address multiple age-related diseases given that senescent cells are a proposed root cause of aging. You can also check out the Rejuvenation Roadmap to see which companies are working on senolytics and how they are progressing.

Partial cellular reprogramming

Cells can be reverted back to an earlier developmental state, known as induced pluripotency, using reprogramming factors, and this process effectively makes aged cells functionally young again in many ways. Ever since its first discovery, there has been a great deal of interest in this area of aging research.

The problem with inducing pluripotency is that the cell loses its identity and forgets what cell type it currently is, as it becomes a new kind of cell capable of being guided into changing into any other cell type, much like our cells during development. This is great for early human development, but as adults, having our cells forget what they are is bad news. Therefore, researchers have wondered if it is possible to reset a cell’s age without resetting its cell memory, and the answer appears to be yes!

Thankfully, during the reprogramming of a cell back to pluripotency, the cell’s age is one of the first things to be reset before the cell memory is wiped, and it appears possible to partially reprogram the cell so that only aging is reset. We have talked about the potential of partial cellular reprogramming and how it is similar to hitting the reset button on aging in a previous article, but, needless to say, if we can find a way to safely partially reprogram our cells, it could have a dramatic impact on how we age and may allow us to remain more youthful and healthy.

In terms of progress, partial reprogramming has already been demonstrated in mice, and now a number of groups, including Turn.Bio, the Salk Institute, Life Biosciences, Youthereum Genetics, and AgeX, are developing therapies based on partial reprogramming, which is essentially the resetting of cells’ epigenetic states (what genes are expressed) from an aged profile to a more youthful one, again directly targeting one of the proposed root causes of aging.

This approach is likely to be quite a few years away, but I think it is plausible that it could be in human trials in the next decade, and it is probably the approach that interests me the most in the field.

In closing

The truth is we cannot predict the future because it is not set in stone, so we cannot be totally certain if or when rejuvenation technologies will arrive. The best we can do is learn as much as we can about the field and try to reach a reasonable conclusion based on the situation as it is now.

The field is advancing steadily, and we should be optimistic but not complacent about progress. We should be mindful of being too negative and, equally, of being too positive without ample justification. Blind optimism is as bad as blind pessimism, and we should always strive for informed optimism.

That said, given the progress being made, I am optimistic about my chances based on the evidence to date. This is why I do not mind birthdays and why I find them positive experiences rather than negative ones. Arm yourself with knowledge, and perhaps you too will agree with me and understand why I am future positive.

Steve Hill serves on the LEAF Board of Directors and is the Editor in Chief, coordinating the daily news articles and social media content of the organization. He is an active journalist in the aging research and biotechnology field and has to date written over 500 articles on the topic as well as attending various medical industry conferences. In 2019 he was listed in the top 100 journalists covering biomedicine and longevity research in the industry report – Top-100 Journalists covering advanced biomedicine and longevity, created by the Aging Analytics Agency. His work has been featured in H+ Magazine, Psychology Today, Singularity Weblog, Standpoint Magazine, Keep Me Prime, and New Economy Magazine. Steve has a background in project management and administration which has helped him to build a united team for effective fundraising and content creation, while his additional knowledge of biology and statistical data analysis allows him to carefully assess and coordinate the scientific groups involved in the project. In 2015 he led the Major Mouse Testing Program (MMTP) for the International Longevity Alliance and in 2016 helped the team of the SENS Research Foundation to reach their goal for the OncoSENS campaign for cancer research.

Not Classing Aging as a Disease is Not a Major Problem – Article by Steve Hill

Not Classing Aging as a Disease is Not a Major Problem – Article by Steve Hill

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Steve Hill

Editor’s Note: The U.S. Transhumanist Party features this article by our guest Steve Hill, originally published by at the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation (LEAF) on July 19, 2018. In this article, Mr. Hill does an excellent job explaining why the lack of the definition of aging as a disease under the FDA is not so bad as is sometimes feared. Personally, I do not agree with this. Relying on off-label use is not a good idea because that is much slower of a process than doctors quickly seeing that a drug has FDA approval. Once the FDA considers aging as a disease, pharmaceutical companies will quickly enter this arena and make increasingly better drugs. Mr. Hill makes some excellent points, though, and I highly recommend this article. 

~ Bobby Ridge, Assistant Editor, June 29, 2019

A common concern in the community is that the FDA, the EMA, and other bodies, such as WHO, do not classify aging as a disease and that this poses a problem for developing therapies that target aging. However, this is not really as serious an issue as some people would suggest; today, we will have a look at why that is.

Why this will not stop progress

Aging is a variety of distinct processes, damages, and errors; therefore, simply treating aging in clinical terms is not a viable endpoint. For a clinical trial to be conducted, it requires a verifiable indication, and aging is too general for the FDA and EMA to classify it as a disease.

It also is not a major challenge for damage repair-based approaches, such as those proposed by SENS and the Hallmarks of Aging, as these approaches are not focused on an all-in-one therapy with the indication of “aging”. They are based on a strategy of dividing damages into manageable groups and developing a suite of rejuvenation therapies that addresses each of them.

No single therapy will reverse or halt all of the aging processes when used alone, nor will it prevent all age-related diseases that accompany them. So, to have aging as an indication in any clinical trial would be pointless for any damage repair therapy.

Researchers are free to target aging processes

That said, researchers are very well aware that the processes of aging, which lead to the familiar diseases of aging, are a problem, and this is where the focus lies. There has been considerable effort to classify these processes and precursors of pathology as diseases themselves.

A prime example is the inclusion of sarcopenia (frailty and muscle loss) in the World Health Organization International Classification of Diseases (ICD) a few years ago thanks to lobbying by members of our community. Adding more general codes to the ICD that include these aging processes and precursors is an ideal solution, as it could potentially make it easier to organize trials and develop drugs that target the aging processes.

Back in June 2018, the World Health Organization released the new International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). The previous version, ICD-10, was published in 1983, and the new ICD-11 will likely be the standard for years to come. The new ICD-11 now includes the extension code “Ageing-Related” (XT9T) for age-related diseases, and this should go a long way towards making focusing on aging easier for future drugs and therapies. Again, this is thanks to work by members of our community, who have spent countless hours researching and pushing for change.

Most aging hallmarks are very clearly linked to specific age-related diseases, such as beta-amyloid protein and malformed tau in Alzheimer’s, lysosomal aggregates in foam cells in atherosclerosis, and alpha-synuclein in Parkinson’s disease. Companies are perfectly welcome to target these aging processes directly, and indeed more and more researchers and big institutions are doing just that in order to treat age-related diseases.

Therefore, not classifying aging itself as a disease poses few barriers to developing therapies that address aging; it’s simply a case of working within the existing framework. UNITY Biotechnology is a prime example; this company is targeting senescent cells and applying its method to multiple age-related diseases; as everyone gets senescent cells, these therapies will be broadly applicable once they become available, and off-label use is likely to expand rapidly.

Also, rejuvenation therapies could, at first, be licensed as treatments for genetic disorders, even though the root cause of the pathology underlying those diseases is not aging. An example of this is the inherited mitochondrial disorders, known as mitochondriopathies, many of which are caused by mutations in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). While these mutations are inherited and are not the result of age-related, deleterious damage to the mtDNA, the same repair-based approach can be applied: the allotopic expression of the protein in the nucleus, as proposed by MitoSENS, could potentially be used to repair the mtDNA allowing normal cellular function to resume.

The majority of damage repair therapies, if not all, could be developed as therapies for diseases with accepted indications and verifiable endpoints, which should satisfy bodies such as the FDA and EMA. Therefore, whether regulatory agencies perceive aging as a disease or not is of no consequence to the development of rejuvenation biotechnologies that address the aging processes.

This does not mean regulatory changes are not needed

Even though classifying aging as a disease is unnecessary, significant reform in the regulatory system is still needed in order to encourage investors and companies to put the time and money into researching and developing rejuvenation therapies.

One area in need of reform is the establishment of aging biomarkers, which indicate the repair or removal of age-related damage, as acceptable endpoints for rejuvenation therapies. Studies that use these biomarkers would also need to include long-term follow-up studies to ascertain the effects of a therapy over a longer period of time.

This would deviate from regulators’ normal requirements that therapies have to prove an effect on hard outcomes to be approved. In an ideal situation, patients should get rejuvenation therapies long before they are in immediate danger and once diseases have manifested, but this makes trials more time consuming and more costly to run.

However, back in February 2018, the FDA published a new guidance document detailing how early-stage Alzheimer’s patients might be identified, which, if accepted, would represent a significant change in policy and a step in the right direction. The document suggests that the results of imaging tests or suitable biomarkers could be enough to consider Stage 1 Alzheimer’s patients as suitable subjects for clinical trials.

This is a positive move as it means that therapies can be tested on people in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s rather than on those who have already suffered considerable if not irreparable damage to the brain, damage that no therapy could hope to address alone. This could mean that these early-stage patients could enroll in a clinical trial and take a therapy that could potentially prevent the disease from ever progressing further or reaching the point where cognitive decline begins.

In the case of repair-based therapies, it would then be a case of demonstrating that the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease were improved via the removal or repair of the underlying age-related damage, and suitable biomarkers would show this.

Moving with the times

Another area where regulatory bodies have struggled is keeping up with the rapid march of technology and medicine. Technologies such as gene therapies have struggled to gain traction due to an antiquated regulatory framework struggling to cope with them. Thankfully, this is also being acknowledged, and the regenerative medicine advanced therapies (RMAT) framework published earlier this year seeks to address this issue and make large-scale changes to how its regenerative medicine policy framework operates as a whole.

According to new FDA regulations, a drug is eligible for designation as an RMAT if:

  • The drug is a regenerative medicine therapy, which is defined as a cell therapy, therapeutic tissue engineering product, human cell and tissue product, or any combination product using such therapies or products, except for those regulated solely under Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act and part 1271 of Title 21, Code of Federal Regulations;
  • The drug is intended to treat, modify, reverse, or cure a serious or life-threatening disease or condition; and
  • Preliminary clinical evidence indicates that the drug has the potential to address unmet medical needs for such disease or condition.

While the FDA created these new guidelines, we joined forces with the Niskanen Center to submit comments to the agency so that it would hear the voice of our community.

Conclusion

Aging not being classified as a disease by the FDA, EMA, etc. is not a major issue; the real need is for policy changes that make developing drugs and therapies that target the aging processes easier and more financially viable. It is good that changes are being made to current frameworks and that progress will almost certainly continue in these areas.

Meanwhile, we can continue to support the development of repair-based approaches to aging knowing that such therapies, if they work, will be approved even in the current regulatory landscape.

Steve Hill serves on the LEAF Board of Directors and is the Editor-in-Chief, coordinating the daily news articles and social media content of the organization. He is an active journalist in the aging research and biotechnology field and has to date written over 500 articles on the topic as well as attending various medical industry conferences. In 2019 he was listed in the top 100 journalists covering biomedicine and longevity research in the industry report – Top-100 Journalists covering advanced biomedicine and longevity created by the Aging Analytics Agency. His work has been featured in H+ Magazine, Psychology Today, Singularity Weblog, Standpoint Magazine, and, Keep me Prime, and New Economy Magazine. Steve has a background in project management and administration which has helped him to build a united team for effective fundraising and content creation, while his additional knowledge of biology and statistical data analysis allows him to carefully assess and coordinate the scientific groups involved in the project. In 2015 he led the Major Mouse Testing Program (MMTP) for the International Longevity Alliance and in 2016 helped the team of the SENS Research Foundation to reach their goal for the OncoSENS campaign for cancer research.

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.

What It Will Be Like to Be an 85-Year-Old in the 2070s – Article by Scott Emptage

What It Will Be Like to Be an 85-Year-Old in the 2070s – Article by Scott Emptage

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Scott Emptage

I will be 85 sometime in the early 2070s. It seems like a mirage, an impossible thing, but the future eventually arrives regardless of whatever you or I might think about it. We all have a vision of what it is to be 85 today, informed by our interactions with elder family members, if nothing else. People at that age are greatly impacted by aging. They falter, their minds are often slowed. They are physically weak, in need of aid. Perhaps that is why we find it hard to put ourselves into that position; it isn’t a pleasant topic to think about. Four decades out into the future may as well be a science-fiction novel, a faraway land, a tale told to children, for all the influence it has on our present considerations. There is no weight to it.

When I am 85, there will have been next to no senescent cells in my body for going on thirty years. I bear only a small fraction of the inflammatory burden of older people of past generations. I paid for the products of companies descended from Oisin Biotechnologies and Unity Biotechnology, every few years wiping away the accumulation of senescent cells, each new approach more effective than the last. Eventually, I took one of the permanent gene therapy options, made possible by biochemical discrimination between short-term beneficial senescence and long-term harmful senescence, and then there was little need for ongoing treatments. Artificial DNA machinery floats in every cell, a backup for the normal mechanisms of apoptosis, triggered by lingering senescence.

When I am 85, the senolytic DNA machinery will be far from the only addition to my cells. I underwent a half dozen gene therapies over the years. I picked the most useful of the many more that were available, starting once the price fell into the affordable-but-painful range, after the initial frenzy of high-cost treatments subsided into business as usual. My cholesterol transport system is enhanced to attack atherosclerotic lesions, my muscle maintenance and neurogenesis operate at levels far above what was once a normal range for my age, and my mitochondria are both enhanced in operation and well-protected against damage by additional copies of mitochondrial genes backed up elsewhere in the cell. Some of these additions were rendered moot by later advances in medicine, but they get the job done.

When I am 85, my thymus will be as active as that of a 10-year-old child. Gene and cell therapies were applied over the past few decades, and as a result my immune system is well-gardened, in good shape. A combination of replacement hematopoietic stem cells, applied once a decade, the enhanced thymus, and periodic targeted destruction of problem immune cells keeps at bay most of the age-related decline in immune function, most of the growth in inflammation. The downside is that age-related autoimmunity has now become a whole lot more complex when it does occur, but even that can be dealt with by destroying and recreating the immune system. By the 2030s this was a day-long procedure with little accompanying risk, and the price fell thereafter.

When I am 85, atherosclerosis will be curable, preventable, and reversible, and that will have been the case for a few decades. There are five or six different viable approaches in the marketplace, all of which basically work. I used several of their predecessors back in the day, as well. Most people in the wealthier parts of the world have arteries nearly free from the buildup of fat and calcification. Cardiovascular disease with age now has a very different character, focused more failure of tissue maintenance and muscle strength and the remaining small portions of hypertension that are still problematic for some individuals. But that too can be effectively postponed through a variety of regenerative therapies.

When I am 85, there will be an insignificant level of cross-linking in most of my tissues, as was the case since my early 60s. My skin has the old-young look of someone who went a fair way down the path before being rescued. Not that I care much about that – I’m much more interested in the state of my blood vessels, the degree to which they are stiff and dysfunctional. That is why removal of cross-links is valuable. That is the reason to keep on taking the yearly treatments of cross-link breakers, or undergo one of the permanent gene therapies to have your cells produce protective enzymes as needed.

When I am 85, I will have a three-decade patchwork history of treatments to partially clear this form of amyloid or that component of lipofuscin. I will not suffer Alzheimer’s disease. I will not suffer any of the common forms of amyloidosis. They are controlled. There is such a breadth of molecular waste, however: while the important ones are addressed, plenty more remain. This is one of the continuing serious impacts to the health of older individuals, and a highly active area of research and development.

When I am 85, I will be the experienced veteran of several potentially serious incidences of cancer, all of which were identified early and eradicated by a targeted therapy that produced minimal side-effects. The therapies evolve rapidly over the years: a bewildering range of hyper-efficient immunotherapies, as well as treatments that sabotage telomere lengthening or other commonalities shared by all cancer cells. They were outpatient procedures, simple and quick, with a few follow-up visits, so routine that they obscured the point that I would be dead several times over without them. The individual rejuvenation technologies I availed myself of over the years were narrowly focused, not perfect, and not available as early as I would have liked. Cancer is an inevitable side-effect of decades of a mix of greater tissue maintenance and unrepaired damage.

Do we know today what the state of health of a well-kept 85-year-old will be in the 2050s? No. It is next to impossible to say how the differences noted above will perform in the real world. They are all on the near horizon, however. The major causes of age-related death today will be largely controlled and cured in the 2050s, at least for those in wealthier regions. If you are in your 40s today, and fortunate enough to live in one of those wealthier region, then it is a given that you will not die from Alzheimer’s disease. You will not suffer from other common age-related amyloidosis conditions. Atherosclerosis will be reliably controlled before it might kill you. Inflammatory conditions of aging will be a shadow of what they once were, because of senolytic therapies presently under development. Your immune system will be restored and bolstered. The stem cells in at least your bone marrow and muscles will be periodically augmented. The cross-links that cause stiffening of tissues will be removed. Scores of other issues in aging process, both large and small, will have useful solutions available in the broader medical marketplace. We will all live longer and in better health as a result, but no-one will be able to say for just how long until this all is tried.

Scott Emptage is an anti-aging activist in the United Kingdom. 

The Rise of Oisin Biotechnologies – Interview with Gary Hudson, CEO of Oisin Biotechnologies, by Ariel VA Feinerman

The Rise of Oisin Biotechnologies – Interview with Gary Hudson, CEO of Oisin Biotechnologies, by Ariel VA Feinerman

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Ariel VA Feinerman
Gary Hudson

Gary Hudson

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 cause 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! 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 rainy Seattle, we meet Gary Hudson!

He has been involved in private space flight development for over 40 years. Hudson is best known as the founder of Rotary Rocket Company, which in spending ~$30 Million attempted to build a unique single stage to orbit launch vehicle known as the Roton. He helped found Transformational Space T/Space in 2004 and AirLaunch LLC which was awarded the DARPA/USAF FALCON project in 2003.

Previous projects included designs of the Phoenix SSTO, the Percheron, and other rockets, founder of Pacific American Launch Systems, and various consulting projects. Currently, he is the President and CEO of the Space Studies Institute.

Now Hudson brings his excellent engineering skills into rejuvenation biotechnology! He is a founding partner of Oisin Biotechnologies, who are developing a liposomally delivered DNA therapy for the removal of senescent cells from the body. Hudson provided an initial seed donation to help fund the creation of the Methuselah Foundation and SENS Research Foundation.

Interview

Feinerman: Hello, Mr Gary Hudson!

Hudson: Thanks for inviting us to this interview!

Feinerman: You have recently visited an amazing Undoing Aging 2018 conference, which took place in Berlin, 15–17 March, where your colleague, Matthew Scholz, was a speaker. What is your impression?

Hudson: It was a great conference with several important presentations. It put me in mind of the early SENS conferences in Cambridge, UK, which I helped to sponsor. I understand it will now become an annual event. Our CSO Dr. John Lewis also gave an important summary of our work to date.

Feinerman: Will Oisin’s presentations from conference be available for general public?

Hudson: I believe that the SENS Foundation will be posting them but I don’t have details about the timing.

Feinerman: Your last interview was in July 2017, more than half a year ago. What has been accomplished?

Hudson: We have conducted many pre-clinical mouse experiments on both cancer and senescent cell removal. All have been successful and produce very remarkable results. We’ve also conducted a pilot toxicity and safety trial on non-human primates. The results of that trial were also successful and encourage us to proceed to human safety trials as soon as regulatory authorities approve them. We have also spun-out a cancer-focused company, Oisin Oncology, and raised a seed round for that venture.

Feinerman: Great to hear! However, when can we see some papers? People usually trust papers more than mere interviews or press releases. Of course, papers need many efforts not related to research but they will allow you attract more attention from general public, researchers, and investors.

Hudson: Papers are being prepared now for submission to major journals, but that process takes time, especially the peer review. For the moment, most of our data is only available to investors and partners in pharma and the biotech industry.

Feinerman: You planned human clinical trials, have you carried them out?

Hudson: It takes quite some time to organize a human trial and to get it approved. Before one can be conducted, we have to set up so-called “GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) manufacture of our therapeutic, and then we have to conduct “GLP (Good Laboratory Practice) Tox” studies in two different species. Once that is all completed later this year, then we can begin a human safety trial, or a “Phase 1” trial. All this takes time, but we hope that first safety trials in oncology indications might begin this year, or in early 2019.

Feinerman: Does that mean we have a race between Unity Biotechnology and Oisin and you have all chances to win the race?

Hudson: I don’t see it as a race or a competition. I believe that future anti-aging treatment will require multiple complimentary approaches.

Feinerman: When we can expect your therapy available in the clinic?

Hudson: It’s very difficult to predict. I believe that our cancer treatment will make it to the clinic first, and that could happen in less than five years. Since the FDA doesn’t regard ageing as an indication, it may take longer for our SENSOlyticℱ treatment to reach the public, since the regulatory environment will need to change.

Feinerman: As Michael Rae has said, we need not to wait when ageing will be recognised as a disease. You can mark your senolytics as a therapy for specific ageing pathology like fibrosis or chronic inflammation in the same way as Unity does.

Hudson: This is certainly true and is part of our strategy, but many of those endpoints are more difficult to ascertain than oncology endpoints. Additionally, going after oncology approvals can be faster and easier to get to clinic. But we will push forward on several fronts as funding permits.

Feinerman: In your previous interview you have said that you make some tweaks to both the promoter side and the effector side of the constructs that will provide even more interesting and useful extensions to the basic capability, but you can’t discuss those for IP reasons. Can you now say about them?

Hudson: I still can’t say too much about them, but we have conducted animal trials on some of these “tweaks” and they work quite well. The downside to the matter is that every “tweak” requires new trials, and our goal is to get something to the clinic as soon as possible, so many of the improvements will have to wait. Progress is limited based on available funds and personnel resources, of course, but we will move as quickly as we can.

Feinerman: Do you use any CAD software to design your constructs? Are you going to make them public so independent engineers will be able to help you identify new useful pairs of promoters and effectors? Your technology is so powerful that Open Source approach would be very helpful!

Hudson: No, the design of the current constructs are very straightforward and simple. As our patents are issued, their design will become public. If people wish to design their own constructs for particular applications they may contact us for collaboration, though we do have several collaborations active at the moment so we may already be working on similar ideas.

Feinerman: What do you think on targeting your machinery on cells with abnormal telomerase activity to kill cancer? Can you use several conditions — like in programming — several promoters to be more specific?

Hudson: If we targeted telomerase we’d also kill stem cells, just like the side effects of much of conventional chemotherapy. That’s probably not a good idea. But multiple promoters, or synthetic promoters, might be used to achieve the aims of killing only cancer cells. Our initial therapeutic will likely just employ p53 promoter targeting, since we have good data that works.

Feinerman: Yeah, the same issue as when we remove or break telomerase gene: there would be nice to do this only in compromised tissue, but as researchers say it is very difficult to make the removal selective. However, it is not a problem with ALT genes, which cause 15–20% of cancers. Are you going to collaborate with the OncoSENS lab? Also killing cells actively expressing telomerase will be very useful in WILT implementation.

Hudson: We’ve had conversations with the SENS Foundation about OncoSENS and cooperated in a preliminary fashion, but I don’t believe it is currently a research priority for them. We already have enough projects to keep us busy for some time, too!

Feinerman: Now you use only suicide gene as an effector, do you plan to use other genes? For example to enhance the cells, give them ability to produce new enzymes, or temporarily shut down telomerase to help anti-cancer therapy to be more effective.

Hudson: We believe we can express any gene under the control of any promoter we wish to use, so the possibilities are almost endless.

Feinerman: Now we know that epigenetic changes (shift) play a huge role in ageing. Even though there is no consensus among researchers whether they are a cause or a consequence of ageing, experiments show that temporal expression of OSKM transcription factors may have some health benefits by restoring “young” epigenetic profiles. You can remember the Belmonte work, for example. However, the problem in their work is that they used transgenic mice and express OSKM in every their cell. If you temporarily express OSKM in an “old” cell, that is OK, you can “rejuvenate” such a cell. While if you express OSKM in a stem cell which is already biologically “young”, you can force the cell into iPSC, which is a way to cancer. Using your machinery we can target only cells which have “old” expression profiles, and involving normal mice! Such a work will be much “cleaner” and safer than Belmonte’s work.

Hudson: With respect to your comments about reprogramming, Oisin is currently working with a university group on exactly this approach, but I can’t say more at this time. We also believe that first you have to clear existing senescent cells, then you can reprogram successfully.

Feinerman: How many resources, finances, and personnel do you need to move as quickly as possible? Do you have open positions? Maybe, some of our readers have enough finances or experience.

Hudson: We could effectively spend tens of millions or dollar or more, very easily, but it isn’t realistic to assume we could raise that amount — and if we did, we’d lose control of Oisin’s ageing focus, since investors would most likely want us to aim at quick returns. We are always interested in talking with “mission minded” investors, however. As for hiring, we have to do that slowly and judiciously, since labour is one of the biggest costs to a start-up company, and over-hiring can sink a project quickly. We already have more potential hires than we can bring on-board.

Feinerman: Now cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies allow completely new and efficient ways for investments. We can see this as various no-name companies easily rise tens of millions dollars via ICOs for clearly doubtful projects. Would you like to make an ICO? Oisin shows real progress and can easily rise big sums! People say that they will be glad to buy your tokens if you issue them. You have said that you prefer to work with “mission minded” investors. There are thousands people out there who can invest from $1,000 to $100,000 in cryptocurrencies and who believe that radical extension of healthy life is possible!

If you are worried about legal issues, you can use various cryptocurrency investment funds who act like proxies between holders of cryptocurrencies and companies.

Hudson: We have investigated several of these financing options, but we are not expert in this area, so we have been reluctant to move too quickly. But we continue to have conversations with relevant parties. There is a lot of regulatory uncertainty surrounding ICOs, however, so we must move cautiously.

Feinerman: Now we know enough about ageing to defeat our main enemy. Do you agree that first comprehensive rejuvenation panel is not a scientific problem and even not an engineering problem, but a problem of engineering management?

Hudson: I wouldn’t say that there is no science left to do, but as an engineer myself I naturally agree that proper engineering management and program management skills must be brought to bear on the problem of ageing.

Feinerman: One person has said, we get what we ask for. Can we now aim high and publicly claim that our main goal is not additional five years of life but LEV — Longevity Escape Velocity and finally unlimited healthy life?

Hudson: This is a difficult “public relations” problem. Most investors, the scientific community, and the public are not yet ready to embrace the notion of longevity escape velocity. Thus at Oisin we do pitch health span as a primary goal. But personally I don’t believe that you can obtain health span improvements without making significant progress towards LEV. So in the end, I think we get LEV by targeting health span, and we reduce the controversy by doing so.

Feinerman: Some people ask me how to buy your stocks or invest in Oisin. What can you say?

Hudson: We do have a number of private investors (angel investors) who are “mission minded” or “mission focused” and we welcome discussions with qualified investors and firms who share our vision for dealing with ageing and cancer. Accredited investor candidates may contact us at info@oisinbio.com

Feinerman: David Gobel claims that “By advancing tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, we want to create a world where 90-year olds can be as healthy as 50-year olds by 2030.” And I secretly hope that 40 will become new 30 or even 20 by 2030! Can we achieve that — in principle?

Hudson: I certainly hope so! In 2030 I’ll be 80, so I’m looking forward to feeling like I’m 40


Feinerman: Thank you very much for your amazing answers! That was a real pleasure to talk with such a great man like you. I hope we all will succeed in our goal and will have hundreds, thousands, and — who knows? — maybe even millions years of healthy life!

Hudson: It is kind of you to say so, but I only consider myself fortunate to be working with the really great men and women in the anti-aging community who are doing the real work. I’m only trying to facilitate their efforts and get treatments to the clinic as fast as possible. I don’t know what will be possible in the long term, but anything will be better than letting nature run its course, producing sickness and declining functional health.

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.

Message from Ariel VA Feinerman: If you like my work, any help will be appreciated!

PayPal: arielfeinerman@gmail.com

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SENS: Progress in the Fight Against Age-Related Diseases – Article by Nicola BagalĂ  and Steve Hill

SENS: Progress in the Fight Against Age-Related Diseases – Article by Nicola BagalĂ  and Steve Hill

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Nicola BagalĂ 

Steve Hill

Editor’s Note: In this article, Mr. Nicola Bagalà and Steve Hill discuss the progress that the SENS Research Foundation has made in tackling the aging processes. Below is a brief summary of some of the highlights of their research efforts.  This article was originally published by the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation (LEAF).

                   ~ Kenneth Alum, Director of  Publication, U.S. Transhumanist Party, December 8, 2017

 

 

Today, there are many drugs and therapies that we take for granted. However, we should not forget that what is common and easily accessible today didn’t just magically appear out of thin air; rather, at some point, it used to be an unclear subject of study on which “more research was needed”, and even earlier, it was just a conjecture in some researcher’s head.

Hopefully, one day not too far into the future, rejuvenation biotechnologies will be as normal and widespread as aspirin is today, but right now, we’re in the R&D phase, so we should be patient and remind ourselves that the fact that we can’t rejuvenate people today doesn’t mean that nothing is being done or has been achieved to that end. On the contrary, we are witnessing exciting progress in basic research—the fundamental building blocks without which rejuvenation, or any new technology at all, would stay a conjecture.

In particular, SENS Research Foundation (SRF), a pioneering organization of the field, is sometimes unjustly accused by skeptics for failing to produce results. But produce results it has, and many at that. Skeptics either decide to ignore them or do not have access to reliable sources. For the benefit of the latter, we’ll discuss below what has been achieved by SRF over the past few years, in relation to the infamous “seven deadly things”, the seven categories of damage that aging causes as described in the SENS repair approach.

Mitochondrial mutations

In a nutshell, a mitochondrion is a cell component that is in charge of converting food nutrients into ATP (adenosine triphosphate), a chemical that powers cellular function. Your DNA is contained within the nucleus of each of your cells, but this isn’t the only DNA in your body; mitochondria have their own DNA (known as mtDNA), likely because, at the dawn of life, they were independent organisms that eventually entered a symbiotic relationship with eukaryotic cells, such as those found in our bodies.

Unfortunately, as mitochondria produce ATP, they also produce so-called free radicals as a byproduct—atoms with unpaired electrons that seek to “pair up” with other electrons, and to do so, they’ll gladly snatch them from other molecules nearby, damaging them. As free radicals are created by mitochondria, they’re very close to mtDNA, which is thus very susceptible to being damaged and undergoing mutations.

Mitochondria with damaged DNA may become unable to produce ATP or even produce large amounts of waste that cells cannot get rid of. To add insult to injury, mutant mitochondria have a tendency to outlive normal ones and take over the cells in which they reside, turning them into waste production facilities that increase oxidative stress—one of the driving factors of aging.

MitoSENS: How to solve this problem, and how far we’ve got

Cell nuclei are far less exposed to free-radical bombardment than mitochondria, which makes nuclear DNA less susceptible to mutations. For this reason, the cell nucleus would be a much better place for mitochondrial genes, and in fact, evolution has driven around 1000 of them there. Through a technique called allotopic expression, we could migrate the remaining genes to the nucleus and solve the problem of mitochondrial mutations.

Human-made allotopic expression was a mere theory until late 2016, when, thanks to the successful MitoSENS crowdfunding campaign on Lifespan.io, a proof of concept was finally completed. Dr. Matthew O’Connor and his team managed to achieve stable allotopic expression of two mitochondrial genes in cell culture, as reported in the open-access paper[1] they published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research. As Aubrey de Grey himself explains in this video, of the 13 genes SRF is focusing on, it’s now managed to migrate almost four. This had never been done before and is a huge step towards addressing this aspect of aging in humans. In the past few months, the MitoSENS team has presented its results around the world and worked on some problems encountered in the project.

A list of SRF-funded papers on the topic of mitochondrial mutations can be found here. A more detailed description of its intramural MitoSENS research can be found here.

Lysosomal dysfunction

Lysosomes are digestive organelles within cells that dispose of intracellular garbage—harmful byproducts that would otherwise harm cells. Enzymes within lysosomes can dispose of most of the waste that normally accumulates within cells, but some types of waste, collectively known as lipofuscin, turn out to be impossible to break down. As a result, this waste accumulates within the lysosomes, eventually making it harder for them to degrade even other types of waste; in a worst-case scenario, overloaded lysosomes can burst open and spread their toxic contents around.

This eventuality is especially problematic for cells that replicate little or not at all, such as heart and nerve cells—they’ve got all the time in the world to become swamped in waste, which eventually leads to age-related pathologies, such as heart disease and age-related macular degeneration.

LysoSENS: How to solve this problem, and how far we’ve got

As normal lysosomal enzymes cannot break down lipofuscin, a possible therapy could equip lysosomes with better enzymes that can do the job. The approach suggested by SRF originates with ERT—enzyme replacement therapy—for lysosomal storage diseases. This involves identifying enzymes capable of breaking down different types of intracellular junk, identifying genes that encode for these enzymes, and finally delivering the enzymes in different ways, depending on the tissues and cell types involved.

SRF funded a preliminary research project on lipofuscin clearance therapeutics at Rice University[2] and another project relating to atherosclerosis and the clearance of 7-ketocholesterol[3] (a lipofuscin subtype), which eventually spun into Human Rejuvenation Biotechnologies, an early-stage private startup funded by Jason Hope.

A LysoSENS-based approach is currently being pursued by Dr. Kelsey Moody, who used to work at SRF. Dr. Moody has been working on an ERT treatment for age-related macular degeneration. The treatment consists in providing cells of the macula (a region of the eye’s retina) with an enzyme capable of breaking down a type of intracellular waste known as A2E. The treatment, called LYSOCLEAR, is being worked on by Moody’s company Ichor Therapeutics, which earlier this year has announced a series A offering to start Phase I clinical trials of its product.

If LYSOCLEAR proves successful, it could pave the way for future LysoSENS-based therapies to treat lysosomal dysfunction in different tissues.

A list of SRF-funded papers on the topic can be found here.

Cellular senescence

As cells divide, their telomeres—the end-parts of chromosomes protecting them from damage—shorten. Once a critical length has been reached, cells stop dividing altogether and enter a state known as senescence. Senescent cells are known to secrete a cocktail of chemicals called SASP (Senescence Associated Secretory Phenotype), which promotes inflammation and is associated with several age-related conditions.

However, senescent cells are a bit of a double-edged sword; as explained by Professor Judy Campisi during RB2016, as long as they’re not too numerous, senescent cells carry out an anti-cancer function and may promote wound healing; however, too many of them have the opposite effect, and on top of that, they induce neighboring cells to undergo senescence themselves, starting a dangerous spiral.

Normally, senescent cells destroy themselves via programmed cell death, known as apoptosis, and are then disposed of by the immune system, but some of them manage to escape destruction, and as the immune system declines with age, this gets worse.

The result is that late in life, senescent cells have accumulated to unhealthy amounts and significantly contribute to the development of age-related diseases. Osteoarthritis, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, metabolic disorders such as diabetes, and obesity are all linked to the chronic age-related inflammation to which senescent cells contribute.

ApoptoSENS: How to solve this problem, and how far we’ve got

The proposed SENS solution is straightforward: if senescent cells become too numerous, then they need to be purged. Since they are useful in small amounts, the optimal solution would be periodically removing excess senescent cells without eradicating them entirely—and more importantly, leaving other cells unharmed.

This could potentially be achieved by either senolytic drugs or gene therapies that selectively target senescent cells and trigger programmed cell death. Indeed, a great deal of recent focus by researchers have been on finding ways to remove senescent cells using senolytic therapies.

Another approach that could complement senolytics is to address why the immune system stops clearing senescent cells effectively in the first place. This approach focuses on macrophages and other immune cells involved in clearing senescent cells, aiming to reduce inflammation so that these cells begin to function properly again. The irony is that as inflammation rises with age, the immune system that is supposed to clear senescent cells and keep inflammation levels down actually starts to create more inflammation and becomes part of the problem by not doing its job properly.

SRF has funded a number of studies on the subject of cellular senescence, and it’s recently begun working on a project in collaboration with the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, which is focusing on the immune system and its role in clearing senescent cells. Another extramural project, again with the Buck Institute, is focussed on SASP inhibition.

Senescent cell clearance has been all the rage for the past two years or so; Lifespan.io has hosted the MMTP project, which focused on testing senolytics in mice, and this was later followed by CellAge’s project to design synthetic biology-based senolytics.

There are other companies that have joined the race to add senescent cell clearance to the standard toolkit of doctors, such as Unity Biotechnology and Oisin Biotechnologies.

Unity’s approach uses a drug-based approach to senolytics and is scheduled to enter human clinical trials in 2018. A number of other research teams are also developing drug-based approaches to removing senescent cells, and the competition looks set to be fierce in this area in the coming years.

Oisin’s approach, which we discussed here, makes use of suicide genes and hopefully will be tested in clinical trials not too far into the future, thanks to venture funding presently being collected. If this system can be made to work, it will allow very selective targeting of senescent cells by destroying only those giving off a target gene or genes. Thus, if a unique gene expression profile for senescent cells is determined, it would mean only those cells were destroyed, with less risk of off-target effects.

Oisin owes its existence to the SENS Research Foundation and the Methuselah Foundation, which provided the necessary seed funding. Kizoo Technology Ventures has also invested in Oisin.

Extracellular crosslinks

The so-called extracellular matrix is a collection of proteins that act as scaffolding for the cells in our body. This scaffolding is rarely if ever replaced, and a really bad consequence of this is that its parts eventually end up being improperly linked to each other through a process called glycation—the reaction of (mainly) blood sugar with the proteins that make up the extracellular matrix itself.

The resulting cross-links impair the function and movement of the linked proteins, ultimately stiffening the extracellular matrix, which makes organs and blood vessels more rigid. Eventually, this leads to hypertension, high blood pressure, loss of skin elasticity, and organ damage, among other problems.

While there are different types of cross-links—known as AGEs, short for advanced glycation end-products—glucosepane is arguably the worst, being the most common and long-lasting of all, and the body is very ill-equipped to break it down.

GlycoSENS: How to solve this problem, and how far we’ve got

In order to eliminate unwanted cross-links, the SENS approach proposes to develop AGE-breaking molecules that may indeed sever the linkages and return tissues to their original flexibility. Of course, in order to do so, crosslink molecules need to be available for research to attempt to combat them with drugs, and especially in the case of glucosepane, this has been a problem for years.

Glucosepane is a very complex molecule, and very little of it can be extracted from human bodies, and not even in its pure form. This has been greatly hampering the progress of research against glucosepane, but thankfully, this problem is now solved thanks to a collaboration between the Spiegel Lab at Yale University and the SENS Research Foundation, which financially supported the study. It is now possible to fully synthesize glucosepane, allowing for researchers to create it on demand and at a cost-effective price.

The Spiegel Lab’s scientists are now developing anti-glucosepane monoclonal antibodies to cleave unwanted cross-links. The collaboration between the Spiegel Lab and SRF dates all the way back to 2011, but it was in 2015 that the Lab announced its success and published a related paper [4] in the journal Science.

Further information on glucosepane cross-link breakers can be found in this interview with Dr. David Spiegel from Yale University on Fight Aging!; a list of studies on the subject funded or otherwise supported by the SRF is available here.

SRF also worked with the Babraham Institute on a cross-link quantification project.

Let’s help SRF move forward

Readers who wish to donate to SRF to help the organization in its crusade against the ill health of old age can do so by contributing to its winter fundraiser or even becoming SRF patrons. Have a look at SRF’s donation page to find out more.

NB: Dr. Aubrey de Grey (Chief Science Officer and Co-founder of SENS Research Foundation) himself held an AMA (“ask me anything”) on Reddit on December 7, at 14:00 PST (22:00 UTC, 17:00 EST). The questions and Dr. de Grey’s responses can be found here.

Literature

[1] Boominathan, A., Vanhoozer, S., Basisty, N., Powers, K., Crampton, A. L., Wang, X., 
 & O’Connor, M. S. (2016). Stable nuclear expression of ATP8 and ATP6 genes rescues a mtDNA Complex V null mutant. Nucleic acids research, 44(19), 9342-9357.

[2] Gaspar, J., Mathieu, J., & Alvarez, P. (2016). A rapid platform to generate lipofuscin and screen therapeutic drugs for efficacy in lipofuscin removal. Materials, Methods and Technologies, 10, 1-9.

[3] Mathieu, J. M., Wang, F., Segatori, L., & Alvarez, P. J. (2012). Increased resistance to oxysterol cytotoxicity in fibroblasts transfected with a lysosomally targeted Chromobacterium oxidase. Biotechnology and bioengineering, 109(9), 2409-2415.

[4] Draghici, C., Wang, T., & Spiegel, D. A. (2015). Concise total synthesis of glucosepane. Science, 350(6258), 294-298.

 

About Steve Hill

As a scientific writer and a devoted advocate of healthy longevity technologies, Steve has provided the community with multiple educational articles, interviews, and podcasts, helping the general public to better understand aging and the means to modify its dynamics. His materials can be found at H+ Magazine, Longevity Reporter, Psychology Today, and Singularity Weblog. He is a co-author of the book Aging Prevention for All – a guide for the general public exploring evidence-based means to extend healthy life (in press).

About Nicola BagalĂ 

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.