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Scientists Are Working To Eliminate Senescent Cells (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In a lab just south of San Francisco I am looking at two blown-up images of microscope slides on a computer screen, side by side. The slides are the same cross-sections of mouse knees from a six-month-old and an 18-month-old animal. The older mouse's image has a splattering of little yellow dots, the younger barely any. That staining indicates the presence of so-called senescent cells -- "zombie cells" that are damaged and that, as a defense against cancer, have ceased to divide but are also resistant to dying. They are known to accumulate with age, as the immune system can no longer clear them, and as a result of exposure to cell-damaging agents such as radiation and chemotherapy. And they have been identified as a cause of aging in mice, at least partially responsible for most age-related diseases. Seeing the slides, it makes me worried about my own knees. "Tell us about it," says Pedro Beltran who heads the biology department at Unity Biotechnology, a 90 person-strong company trying to halt, slow or reverse age-associated diseases in humans by killing senescent cells.
Developing therapies to kill senescent cells is a burgeoning part of the wider quest to defeat aging and keep people healthier longer. Unity, which was founded in 2011, has received more than $385m in funding to date including investment from big tech names such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. It went public this May and is valued at more than $700m. Its first drug entered early clinical trials in June, aimed at treating osteoarthritis. Other startups with zombie cells in their sights include Seattle-based Oisin Biotechnologies which was founded in 2016 and has raised around $4m; Senolytic Therapeutics whose scientific development is based in Spain and which was established last September (it won't disclose its financing other than to say it has a first round, which will allow it to reach clinical trials); and Cleara Biotech, formed this June backed by $3m in funding and based in the Netherlands. In addition, Scottish company CellAge, also founded in 2016, has raised about $100,000 to date, partly through a crowdfunding campaign. The report goes on to detail Unity's plan to kill senescent cells. Their method is to target the biological pathways senescent cells use to resist the normal death of aging cells. "The company's approach is to find small molecules (so called 'senolytics') that can do this," reports The Guardian. "But because small molecules, by their nature, can get everywhere in the body, the approach is prone to unwanted side-effects." As a result, the company has turned to localized treatment.
Meanwhile, Oisin is trying to kill all a person's zombie cells in one go. "The idea is to load the body with nanoparticles that insert a 'suicide gene' into every cell," reports The Guardian. "It only triggers if a cell has a lot of particular protein (p16) that acts as a marker of zombie cells, albeit imperfectly." It plans to test this method on late-stage cancer patients next year.
Developing therapies to kill senescent cells is a burgeoning part of the wider quest to defeat aging and keep people healthier longer. Unity, which was founded in 2011, has received more than $385m in funding to date including investment from big tech names such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. It went public this May and is valued at more than $700m. Its first drug entered early clinical trials in June, aimed at treating osteoarthritis. Other startups with zombie cells in their sights include Seattle-based Oisin Biotechnologies which was founded in 2016 and has raised around $4m; Senolytic Therapeutics whose scientific development is based in Spain and which was established last September (it won't disclose its financing other than to say it has a first round, which will allow it to reach clinical trials); and Cleara Biotech, formed this June backed by $3m in funding and based in the Netherlands. In addition, Scottish company CellAge, also founded in 2016, has raised about $100,000 to date, partly through a crowdfunding campaign. The report goes on to detail Unity's plan to kill senescent cells. Their method is to target the biological pathways senescent cells use to resist the normal death of aging cells. "The company's approach is to find small molecules (so called 'senolytics') that can do this," reports The Guardian. "But because small molecules, by their nature, can get everywhere in the body, the approach is prone to unwanted side-effects." As a result, the company has turned to localized treatment.
Meanwhile, Oisin is trying to kill all a person's zombie cells in one go. "The idea is to load the body with nanoparticles that insert a 'suicide gene' into every cell," reports The Guardian. "It only triggers if a cell has a lot of particular protein (p16) that acts as a marker of zombie cells, albeit imperfectly." It plans to test this method on late-stage cancer patients next year.
It's the only way for change to happen. Imagine in people from 200 years ago were still alive and voting. We'd never progress as a society.
"And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
"zombie cells" ... have ceased to divide but are also resistant to dying.
Init will take care of them eventually.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Spoiler alert: You die anyway.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Or would we be better served to fight child abuse
Finally an effective way to kill those zombies.
Hopefully it is better than using a chainsaw.
Nanoparticles. That insert a 'suicide gene' into every cell at once. But rely on them having a zombie marker. Yes. This all sounds just fine.
I've seen this movie before! It ends with the population being turned into zombies, or vampires. I can't really recall which, maybe it was zombie vampires.
In reality though for all of you who believe that 80 ought to be enough years for anybody, there is literally no reason we HAVE to die. It is possible to live, if not forever, at least so long that suicide becomes the only thing we have yet to experience.
Trees live for thousands of years, turtles live for hundreds for years. This "death" thing was evolved to allow life to continue even in the face of severe damage. But we are rapidly approaching a point where man made machines will be able to quickly and easily repair all the damage inside a cell and effectively give that cell immortality. Imagine if this were placed into stem cells and embryonic cells.
We would evolve a race for whom death is merely a tale told to scare young children.
but then I realized it would mean creimer would never go away
"The only cure for AIDS is to avoid the SIN of homosexuality"
Converting to heterosexuality doesn't cure aids, and you don't have to be homosexual to get aids.
And the first person to undergo this life extension will be...Hitler.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Oisin is trying to kill all a person's zombie cells in one go.. what could possibly go wrong?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30007266
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3005548/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5009497/
http://mct.aacrjournals.org/content/10/7/1161
https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-drug/def/cannabidiol
Cannabidiol has been shown time and again to propagate cellular apoptosis in unhealthy cells.
Perhaps ignoring information based on a cultural bias demonstrates a lingering social cell which is quite possibly tumorous to the well-being of our collective society.
How do we know senescent cells don't play some other important role?
So many times we think something is 'bad', when it's actually quite helpful (and a reason it evolved to that point). Let's sterilize everything - oh wait, now our immune function is compromised and pathogens get stronger. Lactic acid is why muscles hurt and stop - oh wait, it's actually fuel for muscles and transports out the actual 'bad stuff'.
Maybe they're genuinely bad, useless cells...but it seems more often than not this is the wrong way to think about it.
If you would do us the kindness to RTFA, you would realize that your lifespan will not be increased if you were suddenly able to eliminate all of your senescent cells. Life extension is not on the table with this approach, as it is with techniques that mimic caloric restriction.
However, should your senescent cells all undergo sudden removal, you would find yourself free from a number of age-related diseases. The article asserts that even a small number of senescent cells are able to act as powerful pathogens in otherwise healthy tissues.
I also wholeheartedly agree that your type of people need to die. I, however would prefer any and all options for life extension, and I would gladly undertake environmental responsibilities and obligations to ameliorate my "footprint."
More likely it will lead to Zombies.
In all seriousness, this is a dangerous thing, and not in the anti-vaxx context. If people are given some kind of treatment that auto-kills cells, it doesnâ(TM)t take any stretch to see that the treatment can backfire.
It's interesting that the comments have skewed toward a fear, an existential fear, of this research. MIT Tech Review (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612124/clearing-out-old-cells-might-help-the-brain/) on 9/19/2018 first caught my eye. The goal seems less about extending one's lifespan as retaining 'vigor' as we age. The diseases, age-related impairments, that are within the scope of this research are considerable. I haven't seen any documentation about the possible benefit of longer life. Doesn't sound unreasonable, however. We have a serious problem with ageism in the States. In the Bay Area, the 40's can be more than just a bump in the road for your career. More like a concrete barricade. We take for granted that there'll be a decline in our quality of life rather early on.
For those with the appropriate science background, here's a relevant article from Nature: https://go.nature.com/2PkZqLR (hope this shortened url works, the original was tremendously long). Also, under patent 9,980,962 May 2018, the abstract states, "Methods are provided herein for selectively killing senescent cells and for treating senescence-associated diseases and disorders by administering a senolytic agent. Senescence-associated diseases and disorders treatable by the methods using the senolytic agents described herein include cardiovascular diseases and disorders associated with or caused by arteriosclerosis, such as atherosclerosis; idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; osteoarthritis; senescence-associated ophthalmic diseases and disorders; and senescence-associated dermatological diseases and disorders."
In sum, not scary at all. At least to those with related conditions or the possibility of same. And that's just about all of us.
Nature already figured this out. Autophagy kicks in in a fasted state.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
How's the progress in reducing human fertility going? We can't have old people living longer and more younger ones being born at the same time given how we're already faced with so many resource and space shortages already on our planet.
It may be dangerous, but I don't much like the alternative.
My life sucks and I want to die as soon as possible.
I think the only thing that isn't dying is this story; I've read an article talking about how Death itself will be cured "any day now" for the past 20 years, and we are still nowhere near closer to a cure than when Indiana Jones set out looking for the Holy Grail.
We can't even cure Male Pattern Baldness, where the cure has been 5 years away for 50 years.
One other thing, if a cure does come out I'll be glad to take it; if only to find out what discoveries they make out in the Universe. It is strange to see that the average Slashdot poster has such a bad life that they would welcome Death; is the stereotype about the average Slashdot user true? or is it simply because the average Slashdot user comes from the USA and so would only be working for that 300 years anyway?
120 characters should be enough for anybody
So What. It Won't Change Anything. People Are Meant To Die At 80 And Increasing Lifespan Is Unnatural....... The LORD Will Prevent This From Working Because God Is Supreme And The Span Of Man On This Fallen World Is Short As A Mercy Not A Problem...... If Our Leaders Were Really God-Fearing Men They Would Fire A Nuclear Crusade On Islam... But They're All Afraid Of Dying... Gee I Wonder Why????
That old views would never die out is complete nonsense.
People often change their views over time and young people can have horrible conservative views, too.
Only people with old diseased brains who are incapable of processing new information don't.
Those are going to be cured!
Technically correct while missing the greater point. It's not the "who" so much as the "what kind of person"? Life extend every dictator and see what happens.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
How ironic if we were to eliminate ageing just as the planet decides to rid itself of us irritating little ticks.
""The idea is to load the body with nanoparticles that insert a 'suicide gene' into every cell," reports The Guardian. "It only triggers if a cell has a lot of particular protein (p16) that acts as a marker of zombie cells, albeit imperfectly.""
There's not enough faith in the entire hooman species that would allow me to comfortable accept that proposal... lol.