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Archive for the ‘life extension’ category: Page 532

Jul 24, 2017

New Cancer Vaccine Shows Promising Results in Human Clinical Trial

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

Customized cancer vaccines that match the unique genetic makeup of individual tumors have just passed phase 1 trials.


Cancer is predominantly a disease of aging caused by genomic instability. Finding effective ways to prevent and treat cancer is therefore of great interest to those working in the field of aging research as well as those working in oncology.

Therapies that target combinations of neoantigens, distinctive markers on the surface of cancer cells that the immune system learns to identify, is one potential approach to treating cancer. These neoantigen combinations vary between one patient and another and this is the focus of a new study which we will talk about today[1].

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Jul 22, 2017

Zoltan Istvan: the poster boy for immortality

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, economics, genetics, life extension, open access, robotics/AI, transhumanism

I’m really excited to announce a 5-page feature spread on my #transhumanism work and Libertarian Governor campaign in today’s Times of London Magazine, one of England’s oldest and largest papers. There’s a paywall for digital but I think you can get two articles free without registering. If you have access to the print, it’s in the magazine:


Zoltan Istvan is launching his campaign to become Libertarian governor of California with two signature policies. First, he’ll eliminate poverty with a universal basic income that will guarantee $5,000 (£3,800) per month for every Californian household for ever. (He’ll do this without raising taxes a dime, he promises.) The next item in his in-tray is eliminating death. He intends to divert trillions of dollars into life-extending technologies – robotic hearts, artificial exoskeletons, genetic editing, bionic limbs and so on – in the hope that each Californian man, woman and AI (artificial intelligence) will eventually be able to upload their consciousness to the Cloud and experience digital eternity.

“What we can experience as a human being is going to be dramatically different within two decades,” he…

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Jul 21, 2017

Aubrey’s trump cards

Posted by in category: life extension

Aubrey de Grey’s famous ‘general answers’ to all concerns about rejuvenation.


Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey, the father of SENS, always likes to answer to all objections to/concerns about rejuvenation with two general arguments. I think it is actually worth taking the trouble to answer each objection separately (which I did), but Aubrey’s answers are very good as well. I will discuss them here and add my own considerations. (If you’re interested in Aubrey’s pure thoughts, unpolluted by mine, you might want to try this short book.)

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Jul 20, 2017

Elliott Small – AgeMeter The Functional Aging Biomarker System

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, neuroscience

Chronological age has been typically used as a way to gauge how someone is aging, however this is a poor measure indeed. People tend to age at different rates due to a variety of reasons, environment, diet, diseases in earlier life, stress, exercise and lifestyle all play a role in how a person ages.

Clearly a better way to measure aging is needed if we are to accurately assess how someone is aging for the purposes of health monitoring and research. One way to do this is to use functional aging as a way to determine how someone is aging.

Functional aging is defined as a combination of the chronological, physiological, mental, and emotional ages of a person that give an overall measure of their rate of aging.

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Jul 19, 2017

A Son’s Race to Give His Dying Father Artificial Immortality

Posted by in categories: life extension, robotics/AI

So I am anxious to explain the idea to my parents. The purpose of the Dadbot, I tell them, would simply be to share my father’s life story in a dynamic way. Given the limits of current technology and my own inexperience as a programmer, the bot will never be more than a shadow of my real dad. That said, I would want the bot to communicate in his distinctive manner and convey at least some sense of his personality. “What do you think?” I ask.


For months, he recorded his dying father’s life story. Then he used it to re-create his dad as an AI.

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Jul 18, 2017

The Edge of Medicine and Ageing — David Sinclair

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

David Sinclair. Of note in this lecture:

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Jul 18, 2017

AgeMeter: Physiological Biomarkers to Determine Functional Age

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Today Lifespan.io / Life Extension Advocacy Foundation has launched the fifth research project since we began 1.5 years ago. We are working with the Centers for Age Control Inc who plan to develop a multiple aging biomarker system to aid clinical research, healthcare providers and enthusiasts.

For more details check out the press release here: http://www.leafscience.org/introducing-agemeter/

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Jul 18, 2017

Altering Microglia Types to Combat Degenerative Eye Diseases

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Tweaking the types of microglia to favour a healing type over an inflammatory type has been the focus of a number of recent studies. This time the tremedous regenerative ability of zebrafish is the focus of research.


The evidence that the immune system, and in particular the various types of tissue resident macrophages play an important role in the regeneration of tissue continues to mount up.

The difference in the behaviour of these macrophages varies between species and may significantly contribute to the differences in regenerative capacity observed between slow regenerative species like mice and humans and species capable of robust rejuvenation such as salamanders and zebrafish. The latter two species being able to regenerate lost limbs and organs and the former two being far more limited.

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Jul 16, 2017

Scientists reverse ageing in mammals and predict human trials within 10 years

Posted by in category: life extension

Salk Institute. 4 genes.


A n end to grey hair and crows-feet could be just 10 years away after scientists showed it is possible to reverse ageing in animals.

Using a new technique which takes adult cells back to their embryonic form, US researchers at the Salk Institute in California, showed it was possible to reverse ageing in mice, allowing the animals to not only look younger, but live for 30 per cent longer.

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Jul 16, 2017

Altering Macrophage Types to Treat Parkinson’s

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

A new approach to Parkinson’s alters immune cells to favour healing.


As we reported in an article yesterday, researchers are becoming increasingly interested in the potential of changing the ratio of types of macrophages present in the body to facilitate tissue regeneration and healing.

This is a line of research that covers a number of topics, including aging, regeneration, tissue repair, and inflammation. Over the last year or so we have seen a number of publications focusing on altering populations of macrophages to elicit repair and regeneration of tissues, which is a positive sign that things are moving forward.

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