As researchers peer more deeply, the accelerated aging condition progeria continues to look very much like one aspect of “normal” aging run amok: “Children with Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS) exhibit dramatically accelerated cardiovascular disease (CVD), causing death from myocardial infarction or stroke between the ages of 7 and 20 years. We undertook the first histological [...]

The mainstream view of aging in the adaptive immune system is that too many memory T cells exist, uselessly specialized and using up limited resources that should be devoted to the naive T cells needed to tackle new threats. An alternative (and not mutually exclusive) theory is presented in this paper: that memory cell populations [...]

An example of the next generation of targeted cancer therapies: “Since last April, 19 cancer patients whose liver tumors hadn’t responded to chemotherapy have taken an experimental drug. Within weeks of the first dose, it appeared to work, by preventing tumors from making proteins they need to survive. The results are preliminary yet encouraging. With [...]

Broadly, we might think that there are two types of degeneration that accompany aging: the forms that are largely preventable via lifestyle choices, and the forms that you can only slow down, even with the best tools presently available. Insulin resistance is an example of the former, and mitochondrial damage is an example of the [...]

From The Week: “In 20 years, we will have stem cell banks like pharmacies. You will get a specific diagnosis and take a specific type of stem cell. … Meantime, scientists are using cells to produce pig hearts, rat livers, and mice teeth that grow independently in a lab. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake [...]

From Nature: “A model published this week questions a popular theory dubbed the ‘grandmother hypothesis’, which says that human females, unlike those of the other great apes, survive well past their reproductive prime because of the benefits that post-menopausal women offer to their grandchildren. … Chimps almost never live into their forties in the wild, [...]

A press release from InnoCentive and the SENS Foundation announces a short-term incentive program “seeking innovative ideas to biologically reverse one of the causes of aging and age-related diseases believed to be attributed to glucosepane, a protein crosslink that reduces elasticity throughout the body. This is a Theoretical Challenge, so Solvers need to submit a [...]

From the SENS Foundation: “A comprehensive suite of rejuvenation biotechnologies must include the removal of extracellular aggregates from aging cells and tissues. The most clinically-advanced such biotechnology is immunotherapy against aggregated beta-amyloid protein (Abeta), a characteristic neuropathological lesion that accumulates in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients and as part of “normal” brain aging. [...]

Cancer chemotherapy is harrowing is because it is indiscriminate. But all of the old chemotherapies can be made much better and safer when used as the payload in one of the new cell targeting nanotechnologies: researchers “have developed a nano-sized vehicle with the ability to deliver chemotherapy drugs directly into cancer cells while avoiding interaction [...]

Researchers continue to produce improvements to infrastructure technologies needed for stem cell research and development: “Human pluripotent stem cells, which can become any other kind of body cell, hold great potential to treat a wide range of ailments, including Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries. However, scientists who work with such cells have [...]