Leonard Hayflick, a dragon twelve years older than me, is a professor of anatomy at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), and is previously from Stanford University. He is known for the Hayflick Limit (most cells divide 20-100 times before dying, as a limit for humans), which directed research towards the cell as the controller of aging. Importantly, he determined that the capped telomere enzyme region appeared to be the key to aging. He effectively found this biological clock in 1961, when I was a chemical engineering junior at Stanford.
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Every time a cell divides, a small segment of telomeric DNA is lost, so, the telomeres shorten, or age, like a burning fuse. Cancer cells have found a way to ignore this process. However, we now know that this mechanism, the shortening, could well be the body’s mechanism for eliminating cancerous cells. Thus, if we can find out how cancer cells do this, or otherwise prevent this shortening, life should go on forever. The attraction of stem cells, too, is that they appear to be able to regenerate new cells as long as the organism lives. Thus, finding out why stem cells are so different, combined with deactivating this natural shortening, if not lengthening them, while still having the capability for eliminating cancerous cells—as perhaps using nanotechnology robots to root them out—are three areas worthy of exploration.
Elizabeth Blackburn, from the UCSF biology department, originally from Australia, was a co-discoverer of telomerase, for Carol Greider was using Blackburn’s lab at the University of California at Berkeley when the enzyme was found. Blackburn won the Lasker and Gruber Prizes for her work on telomeres and telomerase, a nice pathway to a potential Nobel. She might best be known for her being fired from the President’s Council on Bioethics in 2004 for her “non” conservative views on the subject. A firestorm of protest came from the scientific community. The council was created in 2001 to monitor stem cell research.
University of Colorado behavioral geneticist Thomas Johnson, in 1988, extended the life of a worm called Caenorhabditis elegans by 60%, thus introducing this nematode to the scientific world. He chaired two Gordon Conferences on the Biology of Aging.
A third UCSF faculty member, biologist Cynthia Kenyon, MIT PhD associated with Lenny Guarente, holding the Herbert Boyer (who was earlier mentioned) Professorship, and who previously worked for Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner, wants to live to be 150. She has increased the life span of C. elegans by a factor of six, meaning the equivalent human life of 400 years. She has merely suppressed the regulator gene, daf-2. C. elegans is a good lab model because it only has about a thousand types of cells and is translucent, so you can see the organs. She helped found a company, Elixir, with Guarente, raising $37 million to find a Fountain of Youth pill. Kenyon believes it is in the realm of possibility that just changing the right human gene could double our lifetime. Then, who knows?
Aubrey de Grey a biomedical gerontologist from the United Kingdom, has been working on “strategies for engineered negligible senescence" (SENS), or, finding a cure for human aging. He lists seven types of aging damage, but I’ve compressed them into five:
o cancer
o mutations
o junk molecules
o death of cells
o loss of elasticity linking cells
He co-founded the Methuselah Mouse Prize (MMP), with a sum of $4.5 million to fund researchers to extend the lifespan of mice. Methuselah reached the age of 969 years in The Bible. However, there are arguments that the secrets for aging will come from a fruit fly or worm, rather than a mouse. Grey has been quoted to say that people will start living thousand year lives at any selected age in 25 years. MMP and Technology Review of MIT sponsored a $20,000 ($10k each) prize to the first scientist who could show that SENS was so wrong that it was unworthy of debate. Preston Estep and his colleagues proved to be the most eloquent, and were given the TR share, but not good enough to blow SENS out of the water.
Michael West offers a personal journey in his The Immortal Cell. He was initially a creationist, devoted to dispelling evolution, but made a full reversal after witnessing the death of his father, shifting from Greek and Hebrew to biology, gaining a PhD degree, and turning to immortality science. He co-founded Geron in 1990, the first to biotechnologically treat age-related disorders, becoming a pioneer in stem cell R&D. Very simply, their goal is to take the patient’s own cells, rejuvenate and modify them, and insert them back in the person to treat diseases. Specifically, telomeres would be lengthened. Their experimental cells now double more than a 100 times. Macular degeneration and atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) will someday thusly be treated. He is now president and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, which is the only American company pursuing human therapeutic cloning research, and serves as Adjunct Professor Bioengineering at the University of California at Berkeley. West, no doubt, came full circle when President George W. Bush denounced the intent of West from the Rose Garden of the White House.
Among the other pioneers:
o Michael Rose, evolutionary biologist from the University of California at Irvine, has extended the life of the fruit fly.
o Stephen Helfand, biology professor at Brown Medical School, discovered an aging gene called INDY (for “I’m not dead yet”) in fruit flies.
o Valter Longo, molecular geneticist at the University of Southern California, has deleted the SIR2 gene from yeast, extending the life span by a factor of six. He suggests that the SIRT1 gene might be the mammal analog.
o SIR2 was co-discovered in life extension studies in Lenny Guarente’s (with Elixir) lab at MIT by Matt Kaeberlein, who now is at the University of Washington.
o Richard Weindruch, professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin, seems to have shown that rhesus monkeys eating 30% fewer calories lived longer.
o The interesting link was a possible connection between restricted diets and SIR2, for the increase in yeast life span occurred only when SIR2 was present. Further, SIR2 was dependent on another molecule, nicotinamide adenine dinocleotide, or NAD, but this is getting too scientific.
o David Sinclair, a post-doc of Guarente, now at Harvard, showed that fat mice fed resveratrol (yes, trans-3,3,4’-trihydroxystilbene, that compound found in red wine) lived 15% longer. Sinclair has founded Sirtris, a company dedicated to finding polyphenyl drugs to affect the SIRT1 gene, basically mimicking caloric restriction. Remember champagne and polyphenyls?
o The same effect was seen in yeast, worms and fruit flies, but there have also been contrary reports that resveratrol has no effect on SIR2 activity.
Sirtis and Elixir are companies currently focused on finding FDA-approved drug pathways to combat diabetes and neurological disorders, one step towards immortality. There are many more scientists exploring the boundaries of this field, and, like in string theory, the best is hopefully to come.
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The Dow Jones Industrials sunk 186 to 9310, with Europeans markets all declining and those in the Orient increasing. Crude oil slid to $68/barrel and gold rose $4/toz to $955.Elizabeth Blackburn, from the UCSF biology department, originally from Australia, was a co-discoverer of telomerase, for Carol Greider was using Blackburn’s lab at the University of California at Berkeley when the enzyme was found. Blackburn won the Lasker and Gruber Prizes for her work on telomeres and telomerase, a nice pathway to a potential Nobel. She might best be known for her being fired from the President’s Council on Bioethics in 2004 for her “non” conservative views on the subject. A firestorm of protest came from the scientific community. The council was created in 2001 to monitor stem cell research.
University of Colorado behavioral geneticist Thomas Johnson, in 1988, extended the life of a worm called Caenorhabditis elegans by 60%, thus introducing this nematode to the scientific world. He chaired two Gordon Conferences on the Biology of Aging.
A third UCSF faculty member, biologist Cynthia Kenyon, MIT PhD associated with Lenny Guarente, holding the Herbert Boyer (who was earlier mentioned) Professorship, and who previously worked for Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner, wants to live to be 150. She has increased the life span of C. elegans by a factor of six, meaning the equivalent human life of 400 years. She has merely suppressed the regulator gene, daf-2. C. elegans is a good lab model because it only has about a thousand types of cells and is translucent, so you can see the organs. She helped found a company, Elixir, with Guarente, raising $37 million to find a Fountain of Youth pill. Kenyon believes it is in the realm of possibility that just changing the right human gene could double our lifetime. Then, who knows?
Aubrey de Grey a biomedical gerontologist from the United Kingdom, has been working on “strategies for engineered negligible senescence" (SENS), or, finding a cure for human aging. He lists seven types of aging damage, but I’ve compressed them into five:
o cancer
o mutations
o junk molecules
o death of cells
o loss of elasticity linking cells
He co-founded the Methuselah Mouse Prize (MMP), with a sum of $4.5 million to fund researchers to extend the lifespan of mice. Methuselah reached the age of 969 years in The Bible. However, there are arguments that the secrets for aging will come from a fruit fly or worm, rather than a mouse. Grey has been quoted to say that people will start living thousand year lives at any selected age in 25 years. MMP and Technology Review of MIT sponsored a $20,000 ($10k each) prize to the first scientist who could show that SENS was so wrong that it was unworthy of debate. Preston Estep and his colleagues proved to be the most eloquent, and were given the TR share, but not good enough to blow SENS out of the water.
Michael West offers a personal journey in his The Immortal Cell. He was initially a creationist, devoted to dispelling evolution, but made a full reversal after witnessing the death of his father, shifting from Greek and Hebrew to biology, gaining a PhD degree, and turning to immortality science. He co-founded Geron in 1990, the first to biotechnologically treat age-related disorders, becoming a pioneer in stem cell R&D. Very simply, their goal is to take the patient’s own cells, rejuvenate and modify them, and insert them back in the person to treat diseases. Specifically, telomeres would be lengthened. Their experimental cells now double more than a 100 times. Macular degeneration and atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) will someday thusly be treated. He is now president and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, which is the only American company pursuing human therapeutic cloning research, and serves as Adjunct Professor Bioengineering at the University of California at Berkeley. West, no doubt, came full circle when President George W. Bush denounced the intent of West from the Rose Garden of the White House.
Among the other pioneers:
o Michael Rose, evolutionary biologist from the University of California at Irvine, has extended the life of the fruit fly.
o Stephen Helfand, biology professor at Brown Medical School, discovered an aging gene called INDY (for “I’m not dead yet”) in fruit flies.
o Valter Longo, molecular geneticist at the University of Southern California, has deleted the SIR2 gene from yeast, extending the life span by a factor of six. He suggests that the SIRT1 gene might be the mammal analog.
o SIR2 was co-discovered in life extension studies in Lenny Guarente’s (with Elixir) lab at MIT by Matt Kaeberlein, who now is at the University of Washington.
o Richard Weindruch, professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin, seems to have shown that rhesus monkeys eating 30% fewer calories lived longer.
o The interesting link was a possible connection between restricted diets and SIR2, for the increase in yeast life span occurred only when SIR2 was present. Further, SIR2 was dependent on another molecule, nicotinamide adenine dinocleotide, or NAD, but this is getting too scientific.
o David Sinclair, a post-doc of Guarente, now at Harvard, showed that fat mice fed resveratrol (yes, trans-3,3,4’-trihydroxystilbene, that compound found in red wine) lived 15% longer. Sinclair has founded Sirtris, a company dedicated to finding polyphenyl drugs to affect the SIRT1 gene, basically mimicking caloric restriction. Remember champagne and polyphenyls?
o The same effect was seen in yeast, worms and fruit flies, but there have also been contrary reports that resveratrol has no effect on SIR2 activity.
Sirtis and Elixir are companies currently focused on finding FDA-approved drug pathways to combat diabetes and neurological disorders, one step towards immortality. There are many more scientists exploring the boundaries of this field, and, like in string theory, the best is hopefully to come.
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Hurricane Jimena is now down to 120 MPH, and should further decline into a Category 2 hurricane when she makes a Baja landfall late Wednesday. In the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Erika is now at 50 MPH, following the approximate path of Bill and Danny, and could strengthen into a hurricane in two days.
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2 comments:
Michael Rose is at UC Irvine, not Davis. Thanks.
Oh, thanks, I'll correct that in my next edition of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity.
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