Blogterview with Fight Aging!’s Reason: answers to life extension questions

Our first answerer to the 6 questions is Reason, who is the main driving force of the biggest and most established life extension site, Fight Aging! (Technorati Rank) and The Longevity Meme, continuously from 2001.

1. What is the story of your life extension commitment?

I don’t like the idea of decaying, suffering and dying. I reached the point in life at which you realize you can make a difference. The rest is just logic.

2. Is it a commitment for moderate or maximum life extension?

As much as possible. I endorse the concept presently known as actuarial escape velocity (de Grey), a bridge to a bridge (Kurzweil), the step by step approach, etc. The essence of the idea has been around for longer, but it’s getting more press these days; if the next advance increases your healthy life span enough, then you will be able to benefit from the life extension granted by the advance that follows. At some point, the ability to repair the damage of aging increases more rapidly than the damage accrues – and then we are ageless.

It is an open question as to whether this process will get underway soon enough for those young today. But it certainly won’t if we fail to organize and accomplish meaningful goals. None of the science, advocacy or fundraising is particularly hard or strange; it’s “just” going to require a great deal of work, money and infrastructure to get the job done. That fact didn’t stop the cancer research advocates, and it shouldn’t stop us.

3. What is your favourite argument supporting human life extension?

That it is possible, that it harms no-one, and that some people want to do it. No action needs any further argument or justification.

5 simple questions to life extension supporters, 1 plus for bloggers

My plan is to make short interviews using the same 6 questions with today’s life extension supporters/bloggers around the blogosphere. The first answerer will be Reason, the engine behind Fight Aging! and Longevity Meme.

Here are the questions:

1. What is the story of your life extension commitment?

2. Is it a commitment for moderate or maximum life extension?

3. What is your favourite argument supporting human life extension?

4. What is the most probable technological draft of human life extension, which technology or discipline has the biggest chance to reach it earliest? (regenerative medicine, nanotechnology, gene therapy, caloric restriction, bionics, hormones, antioxidants, …)

5. When?

6. What can blogs do for LE?

New lingo: Stells in RegMed and TEg

Here at the beautiful Costa Brava in the Stem Cells in Tissue Engineering Conference we hear the terms stem cells, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine so many times, so here I am pleased to offer some abbreviations, which are the results of a yesterday late night beer brainstorming: Stem cells: Stells, Tissue Engineering: TEg, Regenerative Medicine: RegMed. In fact, the word stells was a misnomer at a yesterday talk.

Stem Cells in Tissue Engineering Conference: Blog and Wiki

As I’ve mentioned before from tomorrow I will be at Sant Feliu de Guixols, Spain, at the Conference Stem Cells in Tissue Engineering, 28.10-2.11,2006 organized by the European Science Foundation. The official website of the conference is: http://www.esf.org/conferences/lc06213

In the IT sector it is more and more natural that a Conference has a wiki and different blogs, but things are a bit slower in the life sciences-biotech sector in that respect, although there is a huge development in the field. So I created a blog (WordPress of course) and a mini wiki for the Conference:
blog: http://stemcellconf.wordpress.com/
wiki: Stem_Cells_in_Tissue_Engineering_Symposium

These webtools are ideal for a better communication and information exchange in order to form a real scientific and social community during Conference time.

Rational Longevity: life extension as a project for critical thinkers

Anne Corwin, technological progressive from California wrote a nice philosophical essay, called What Is Meant By “Rational Longevity”, in which she delineates the territory of the new buzzword referring to clear critical principles:

What would happen if Bill Gates invested 3 billion dollars to embryonic stem cell research?

There is a dense comment debate on Bodyhack for more than a week concerning the electoral Missouri Stem Cell Hunter issue, celebs with ESC pro- or contra ads.
Here is an effective comment from today’s related post by the commenter named Orrin:

“I wonder what would happen if Bill Gates invested 2 billion dollars to embryonic stem cell research and just got people to shut up. I’m sure there would be those who accused him of murdering babies while others would say that is still isn’t enough money.“

Well, Bill Gates is now a full-time charity man, which makes him more attractive in the eyes of many people, comparing to the times when he was a chief technology officer or software architect at a company. It was in a William Gates III building, as I know from the the Google story, where the PageRank algorithm was born, for example. In the case of embryonic stem cell research, we do not really know the opinion of Mr. Gates, but I think this would be really a useful celeb opinion to know.

Interestingly the Gates Foundation has already put a little money, with 3 zero minus than 3 billion in embryonic research, but in China, not in the U.S.: Still, some billionaires have shied away from this science scrap. Bill Gates’ foundation, the largest in the world with $29 billion on hand, has put less than $2 million into research on human embryonic cells–at a lab at Peking University in China. Researchers there are implanting human cells in mice to look for better ways of making vaccines against aids and hepatitis C. A spokesperson for the Gates Foundation says the Peking researchers hit on the right idea; that the foundation hasn’t funded a single stem-cell test in the U.S., she adds, isn’t related to the anti-abortion fight.
So if Mr. Gates does agree with the purposes of embryonic stem cell research, than it is time to invest big bucks in it. Who knows, maybe this contribution could decide the debate in the U.S….

3 free articles in the November Issue of Tissue Engineering

Thanks to a new rapid publication policy you can download now 3 excellent articles from the November Issue of Tissue Engineering published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.:

Ex Vivo Engineering of Living Tissues with Adult Stem Cells by Bonnie Barrilleaux, B.S., Donald G. Phinney, Darwin J. Prockop, and Kim O Connor. This is maybe the first comprehensive report on the possibilities of adult stem cells in tissue enginnering.

Collagen Scaffolds Reinforced with Biomimetic Composite Nano-Sized Carbonate-Substituted Hydroxyapatite Crystals and Shaped by Rapid Prototyping to Contain Internal Microchannels ELEFTHERIOS SACHLOS, DUCE GOTORA, and JAN T. CZERNUSZKA. Do not afraid of the title, Rapid Prototyping here is the scientific name of the hilarious concept of 3D organ printing, so I hope you have the newest wax printer on your desk.

History of Tissue Engineering and A Glimpse Into Its Future by CHARLES A. VACANTI. Wow, is it so old then? Anyway in natural sciences with legendary short-term memory historical approach is sometimes exhilarating. You know…gossips, priorities, networking, diplomacy.

Stem Cells get viral and part of the pop culture: The Stem Cells – live

The term ‘Stem Cells’ eventually stepped out its scientific home and became the viral name of a music-performance group. Hear their Human Stem Cell Audio Therapy blabla from their website transmitted to audio by me via Odeo:

Anyway, I offer the next music names for future generations: Tissue Engineers, DJ RegMed, MC Growth Factor, Mesenchymal RapStar, stem n bass….

Now back to my poster and the real human amniotic stem cells…

New England All-Stars Award goes to Advanced Cell’s Lanza

Dr. Robert Lanza, vice president of Research and Scientific Development for Worcester-based Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), will be honored at the 11th annual Mass High Tech All-Stars Awards Networking Reception on Wednesday at the category biotechnology. Link
Lanza is a key person in American human embryonic stem cell technology. Some public rearguard actions of the ACT’s controversial Nature Publication on the derivation of hESCs from a single cell without destroying an embryo, can be found here and here. Main point is the possibility to generate human embryonic stem cells from a single cell that is isolated from an embryo during routine preimplantatation genetic diagnosis (PGD).
The award could be interpreted as an East Coast support for Lanza and co. arm-in-arm with embryonic stem cell research. Meanwhile parts of the ACT labs are now in California: “To accelerate its development programs, the article noted that ACT recently moved to California. If you’re going to survive you must be close to the capital,” said William Caldwell IV, CEO of ACT.

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Stem cell-related videos: the sides of (how many) coins?

As time goes by stem cells not just become more and more political, but a part of pop culture beyond the scientific experiments.

First full-time biotech employee at Google BioLabs

Hello everybody, let me introduce myself: I am the first full-time biotechnologist at Google Inc. My job at Google is fascinating: I have to plan and build a comprehensive regenerative database/map of the complete human body which will be the input of the ultimate human regenerative software. It is so, because in the long run, Google Regeneration Clinic will open its doors to offer a continuous regeneration treatment for its patients, aka partial immortalization or pimm. No surprise, that my nickname here at G is: the Pimmer. The aim of regenerative medicine is to regenerate all tissues and organs of the human body with the help of stem cells’ regenerative potential. Theoretically, if all tissues and organs of an adult body were regenerated once, then it could be regenerated two and eventually n times. This technological possibility is called partial immortalization.

Even my bosses do not really understand how the continuous regeneration treatment will work, but they placed their confidence in me. Although not being biotechnologists, they caught the brand-new concept of regenerative medicine, the science and technology built around stem cells’ regenerative capacity: the aim here is to facilitate and amplify or simply replace the native regenerative potential of the organism, the targeted tissue or organ. Regmed does not care about the causes and the detailed effects of the injury, but about the replacement, and the renewal of the damaged function.
So I have the tremendous opportunity to build Google BioLabs and thanks to the cooperation with California Institute of Regenerative Medicine our new experimental lab is about to open. What we need: smart geek biotechers, engineers and 20 years of masturbatory intensity of concentration (the words of Michael Chabon) to fulfill the task. What we already have: the money, the most innovative corporate environment and the lifetime commitment.
Questions for the would-be Google BioLabs members (but I promise there won’t be 7 interviews for 14 hours with 28 Googlers):
1st With an ordinary FACS machine, how long does it take to count 10-100 trillion cells which is the order of magnitude of the human body?
2nd: Delineate a non-invasive method capable of counting so many cells within a day.
3rd Plan the algorithm of the consecutive order of a complete tissue and organ regeneration.

Brutal competition in stem cell research: Harvard fears

At 13th, October, a daylong event, the Stem Cell Leadership Summit Friday was organized by AAAS in Cambridge, US. Some quotes worth mentioning:

The controversial Lawrence H. Summers, former Harvard president: “we are not alone in seeing the enormous impact biomedical research in general, and stem cell science in particular, will have on the region and the nation. And the stakes here are very high. So make no mistake, there will be brutal competition. And there is much in which to take satisfaction. ...we not confuse a moment of leadership with enduring competitive strength.”

Early science protocol video: OpenWetWare Drosophila CHiP

One previous post of Pimm was about the advantages of online, open source-like science protocol videos. So thanks to Sri Kosuri, here is an early sample protocol movie (3 parts) made by John Cumbers on the preparation of fixed chromatin from Drosophila embryos to use the DNA in a genomic array technology, developed in Rob White’s Cambridge lab.

FDA Stem Cell Therapy Regulation: the Framework

Dina Gould Halme and David A. Kessler wrote an article, called FDA Regulation of Stem-Cell–Based Therapies in The New England Journal of Medicine. The key concerns are:

i., Stem-cell–based products as therapeutic agents are or could be: biologic products, drugs, devices, xenotransplantation products, human cells, tissues, and cellular and tissue-based products. Human cells, tissues, and cellular and tissue-based products is defined as “articles containing or consisting of human cells or tissues that are intended for implantation, transplantation, infusion, or transfer into a human recipient.”

ii., Donor’s risk of transmitting infectious or genetic diseases

iii., Contamination or damage risk of the cell or tissue processing: expansion or differentiation of the cells are minimal manipulations, nonhuman fetal calf serum as possible prion source, anymal feeder cells, karyotypic =genetic stability through passages,

iv., Cell types: purity, potency, characterization, the expression pattern of identifying markers

v. In vivo safety and efficacy: experiments in animal models, tumorigenicity

vi., Stem-cell–based products and gene therapy

Link

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Embryo research history to understand the Science effect

Geldof in a stem cell centre and declining fertility

Science: video protocols can help to share the tacit dimension

Matias Pasquali has a short piece in recent Nature Magazine on the upcoming role of DIY videos in protocol sharing between scientists: “Probably the most feasible approach is to publish movies describing the methods, a service already offered by some publications and protocol websites, but which could become routine. Much more information on the essential steps of a new protocol, including audio commentary on the trickiest steps (from the position of the Petri dishes to the speed of dispensing), could be accessible using video format and published online with the paper. Such videos could transform the way in which methods are communicated.”

Pasquali has right. There are many possible advantages of the video-format. First, videos can show the insider tricks of a rigid lab science protocol, can reveal the tacit dimension behind the algorithm of mitochondrial DNA isolation from human fibroblasts for example. Second, short online protocol movies can resolve the ever-growing data amount problems of original life science articles. Recent biology articles have deep disadvantages encoded in the Methods section, which are the most unnoticed parts of the papers. Materials and Methods sections became more and more ornamental, and you can hardly repeat the original experiment if you can lean only them. Third, videos show the way to an open source and publicly visible science, which is a good entrance into the DIY age.
Unfortunately not all scientists are geeks at the same time. One working solution for protocol documentation could be the Helmet Cam which is a head-mounted video camera that makes you capable of hands free protocol video production. Saul Griffith inventor of Helmet Cam says in current MAKE magazine Backyard Biology Issue that the aim is “to make how-tos a no-brainer.”
There are initiatives to share science protocols on the web, and wiki is obviously one good candidate to do that, just see OpenWetWare for example. So I can hardly wait the emergence of a YouTube-like science website. Unfortunately I did not find good sample science recipe videos on YouTube, Google or Yahoo Video, if you were lucky enough to find one, please do not hesitate to share it with all of us.

Update: Thanks to Sri Kosuri, here is an early sample protocol (part of) movie on the preparation of fixed chromatin from Drosophila embryos to use the DNA in a genomic array technology, developed in Rob White’s Cambridge lab. Link

Financial update to stem cell patent debate: California vs Wisconsin?

The story of the first human embryonic stem cell’s patent (isolated by Thomson) at Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) continues. The amount of money behind stem cell patens became visible thanks to David Wahlberg’s exploration in today’s Wisconsin State Journal: The stem-cell patents have brought $3.2 million in license fees to WARF. About 75 percent of the money is funneled back to stem-cell research on campus. … WARF’s patents, which cover both the cells and the methods to grow them, are being challenged by the Los Angeles-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer rights. The foundation, involved in California’s new $3 billion stem-cell research initiative, is being joined in the effort by the New York-based Public Patent Foundation. Thomson said the challengers are attacking WARF’s patents because they want California to profit from future patents on discoveries made through its stem-cell research initiative. The initiative is run by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, or CIRM. “The only real difference is that the CIRM-funded patents will largely benefit California, and the WARF patents largely benefit Wisconsin,” he said. Link

Is it the only difference?

Table: tariffs of the first human embryonic stem cell line.

Stem Cells’ growing role in U.S. politics: StemCandidates meet Pacman

John Hlinko, veteran internet grass-roots organizer has launched a website called StemCellCandidates to highlight – and facilitate donations for — the races in which the stem cell issue is most likely to tip the scales. Hlinko is also the man behind StemPac, a U.S. stem cell research supporting coaliton, which includes professional political consultants, scientists (for instance E.Y. Snyder, see previus post), patient advocates. Kristen Bodyhack Philipkoski wrote an interesting Wired piece about the topic: To be featured on StemCellCandidates, a candidate must first strongly support stem cell research. Second, they must be running against an incumbent who opposes stem cell research. Lastly, the pro-stem-cell candidate must have a chance at winning. Link

Stem Cells in Tissue Engineering: Conference in Sant Feliu de Guixols, Spain

I have a chance to participate with a poster at an upcoming conference on Stem Cells in Tissue Engineering – Isolation, Culture, Characterisation and Applications in Sant Feliu de Guixols, Spain, 28.10-02.11. Here are some lectures from the programme, which I’d like to visit by all means (my comments in italics):
29.10. Sunday 11.45-12.35 J. Itskovitz-Eldor Technion, Haifa, IL – Scientific Promises in Embryonic Stem Cells
Hopefully a good and comprehensive overview of the much debated field.
12.35-12.50 Guido Stadler Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Experimental & Clinical Traumatology, Linz, AT
– In Vitro Characterisation of Immunomodulatory Properties of Human Stem Cells Derived from Amnion and Adipose Tissue
Stem cells from the placenta are hot, I can tell ya.
13.05-13.20 Jon Alderson University of Birmingham, UK – The Role of Mitochondrial Polymerase Gamma (POLG) in the Differentiation of Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells into Beating Cardiomyocytes
17.15-17.30 Joao Facucho-Oliveira National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, Tsukuba, JP – The Effects of Retinoic Acid Stimulation on Mitochondrial DNA Replication During Murine Embryonic Stem Cell Differentiation
Mitochondrial involvement in the stem cell machinery.
30.10. Monday 10.40-11.30 Jeffrey M. Gimble Louisiana State University System, Baton Rouge, US – Bone from Fat Cells
18.10-18.25 Caire Vinatier University of Nantes, FR – Chondrogenic Differentiation of Human Adipose-derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells
Adipose-derived adult stem cells for bone and cartilage repair can easily become one of the earliest success of human tissue engineering.
01.11. Wednesday 09.50-10.40 Evan Y. Snyder Harvard Medical School/Children’s Hospital Boston, US – Neural Stem Cells for Therapies
Brain regeneration is the most crucial part of every overall and continuous regeneration treatment of the adult human body. The Snyder lab is a radiant centre of neural stem cell research.
16.30-17.20 James Kirkpatrick Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, DE – The Role of Vascularisation in Tissue Engineering
Good vascularization of the tissue graft means good oxygen and food supply, and proper waste removal. Hard problem: how can the vessels of the donor tissue construct anastomize (i.e. coalesce) with the arteries of the recipient organ, so the end result is a functional and integrated circulatory system.
01.12. Thursday 10.55-11.55 Anthony Atala Wake Forest University Health Sciences, NC, US – Stem and Progenitor Cells in Clinical Applications
Atala – originally a surgeon – is one of the most powerful engine behind bladder tissue engineering.

I hope I can blog the events, make photos and little videos, and if you are a participant too, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yet another industrial stem cell alliance: Aldagen meets IMT

From PharmaLive: Aldagen, Inc. and Innovative Micro Technology (IMT) today announced that they have formed an alliance to co-develop and commercialize a version of IMT’s Rare Cell Purification System, customized specifically for clinical cell therapies. This system, called the ALDESORTER(TM), will be used with Aldagen’s ALDESORT(R) product and is designed to isolate unique stem cell populations for the treatment of chronic heart failure, peripheral vascular disease, leukemias, genetic enzyme deficiencies and other diseases. The first ALDESORTER is scheduled for completion in early 2007, with clinical trials planned to begin in late 2007. Link

The isolation method of stem and progenitor cells is based on the elevated expression of an intracellular enzyme, aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH). Stem cells have been isolated from almost all tissues, and an emerging idea is that they share common characteristics out which high aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) activity is one candidate, raising the hypothesis of a set of universal stem cell markers.
Anyway, this whole regmed biotech industry field is in a big hurry now, I can hardly report the exciting news. And if you can not see the forest for the trees just think about that for all the regmed companies in the world there is only one direction and Partial immortalization(=time) is its only measure.

(First post using the Windows partition of my MacBook. Not very comfortable.)

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Non-profit trial to speed up embryonic stem cell research through patent narrowing

From The Scientist by Cathy Tran: At the request of a coalition of non-profit groups, which was initiated by groups in California, a state that has a lot at stake as a result Proposition 71, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) is reexamining patents covering all primate embryonic stem cells, as well as stem-cell culturing techniques, held by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). The patent was held by University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher James Thomson, a University of Wisconsin-Madison developmental biologist whose group was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cell lines in 1998. The groups challenging the patents argue that the methods for isolating a primate stem cell line were obvious based on previous work and therefore not patentable. Patenting all human embryonic stem cells is “like Microsoft patenting computing,” said John Simpson of California’s Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, one of the groups challenging the patents. “It’s overreaching.” According to stem cell researcher Jeanne Loring of the Burnham Institute, the technique used by Thomson to cultivate the human embryonic cells was the same method used to make mouse embryonic stem cell lines in 1981. Loring said the first person to isolate human stem cells was Ariff Bongso at the National University of Singapore in 1994. Thomson, however, maintains that his discovery was far from obvious. “In the early 1990s, when we started this work, it was not at all clear that the isolation of human embryonic stem cells was really possible, as other groups had tried and failed,” he told The Scientist in an email. Mahendra Rao predicts that there will be a narrowing of the patents to the lines originally generated by Thomson. Such a decision would alleviate the concerns of many scientists who feel that the WARF patent on all human embryonic stem cells, regardless of how they are derived, is too broad. Link

Now I think this action is a very important step in the history of pushing the public acceptance of regenerative medicine forward. Pros of embryonic stem cell research in the U.S. have already collected enough money to do significant research due to the political decision manifested in Proposition 71, but this new type of proactive trial to legally speed up events is the next tool for reaching their aims. The case also illustrates well that fastening science and medicine is more important than personal priorities. Isolating new types of valuable cells demands usually an extremely useful engineering-like team work, but it is not about inventing brand new concepts, hypotheses and theories. The methodological part of experimental science is the backbone of it.

Another interesting momentum is the institutional one concerning governmental science support. According to Loring the first human embryonic stem cell line wasn’t created until 1998 in part because the National Institutes of Health did not fund research on human embryos before 2001, which made it “pretty close to impossible” for any U.S. academic lab to derive human embryonic stem cells. In addition, it was “not easy to find an in vitro fertilization clinic that wanted to go to the trouble of providing embryos for this research.”

Tissue Genesis’s alliance with Tulip BioMed: adipose stem cells in cosmetics

IT&BT: First Cell-Based supercomputer for life sciences research

$2.9 million NIH Quantum Grant for Neuro-Vascular Regeneration to help stroke patients

For the first time Quantum Grant goes for international research initiative to regenerate damaged brain cells and blood vessels for the treatment of stroke which occurs when an artery in the brain is blocked. The three-year, $2.9 million grant, funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), part of the NIH, will support research on neuro-vascular regeneration, which will make new brain tissues in the laboratory. The new brain tissue is planned to have its own blood supply to allow it to be placed into the damaged brains of stroke patients where it will provide a source of neural and vascular cells that will continue to develop and differentiate, repairing the injured tissue in the process. Main participants are: Karen Hirschi, deputy director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center within the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine, Jennifer West of Rice University, Department of Bioengineering, Robin Lovell-Badge, head of the division of developmental genetics at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. Link

So this will mainly be a tissue engineering approach for brain regeneration, that is growing implantable brain tissue in vitro in a bioreactor with working blood vessels in it, which needs the combination of more then 2 differentiated cell types. Hard task. My questions: What kind of stem or progenitor cells will be the sources of neural cells? What is the planned volume of the tissue constructs? What type of neurosurgery is needed for a successful implantation?

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Bodies in the Making book, essays by UC Santa Cruz professors

A new book coedited by UC Santa Cruz Literature and Anthropology professors Helene Moglen and Nancy Chen, Bodies in the Making: Transgressions and Transformations, explores a range of practices that aren’t usually linked: tattooing, cosmetic surgery, body-building, life extension technologies, self-cutting. The common denominator is intended to be body hacking, modification and our fascination with altering our bodies. “Is there anyone not at some time obsessed with aging?” asked Moglen. “Is there anyone over 40 who is not at least thinking about what it might be like to get some kind of cosmetic surgery? Is there anyone over 60 not interested in hearing about life extension technologies? Link

Sounds like real Californian to me and real human. Agree fully with that: thinking about eliminating the effects of aging is as natural (I know it is a controversial and philosophically overloaded concept) and universal for every human being as thinking about love.

 

Weekend joke: Pimm Regeneration search engine

The web is usually dead at the weekends, but here is a brand new service from bioGoog: just type the name and last regeneration date of your tissue and organ into the stomach of the Pimm search engine and you will see which local clinic accepted your request and when for next regeneration.

Link: Custom Google via Lifehacker

Stem Cell Career Prospects: Multiple Potentials

Today’s ScienceCareers.org has a comprehensive and enthusiastic ad section considering Careers in Stem Cell Research: Rejuvenating Biology and Medicine by Mike May: Beth Donley, executive director of the WiCell Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison says ”For stem cells, the breadth of application will depend largely on the extent of the scientific imagination.” According to Olle Lindvall, professor of neurology at Lund University: “From my perspective, stem cell research – in the long term – can completely change our possibilities to repair the brain and do something for many neurological patients where we have nothing today.” “Beyond bench skills, Lindvall says that stem cell scientists need a knowledge of ethics. I ask my new students about their view on the ethical aspects of working on stem cells. If they see none, that is negative from my perspective.” Randall T. Moon, director of the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle has the opinion: “There are no quick answers here and no quick therapies.” He points out that it took scientists about 15 years to make bone marrow transplants safe and effective.”.. “California universities will have the most jobs in stem cell research” – he adds. Moon says, “people may eventually get at least part way to where a starfish has been all along: If it loses an arm, it grows one back. We may not be able to regrow arms, but we can certainly entertain the goal of leveraging knowledge of stem cells to improve treatments for diseases and injuries.” Link

Stem cell research is a full interdisciplinary enterprise: core knowledge of cellular and molecular biology – understanding the lab techniques and the analytical approaches, developmental biology, computational biology, bioengineering, nanotechnology.

So what about the disease called ageing which is – by the very concept of regenerative medicine – the most promising and final candidate of a possible regenerative treatment? Consider this: Ageing is nothing but the overall regenerative failure of the adult human body.

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Factors to consider before saying YES to the extension of life

A study at the University of Queensland, Australia examined community attitudes to the extension of life headed by project Research Manager Dr Mair Underwood (left): Dr Underwood said the most important consideration was quality of life as participants did not want to spend their extra years in a nursing home. But study participants also mentioned other considerations such as:
• Would their loved ones be extending their lives too?
• What financial support would they have, and would they be extending their working lives rather than their retired lives?
• How would we decide who could extend their life? Would it just be those that could afford to do so? Link

Here are my answers concerning the most probable possibility of introducing life extension into real life at the first cost stage, when the costs of the treatment are very high:

quality of life: It is hard to imagine, that anyone wants to live long with a continuously ageing condition, losing gradually vital functions (of course we do not want it, this is not a Swift story), instead we want first to fix the ageing process, so that the biological age of the individual can remain constant, and his metabolism and energy household normal. Really different parameters.
loved ones: well, the decision to participate in a life extension treatment could be a family decision and it will depend on the family budget at the outset.
financial support, working life: Any serious concept of maximum life extension is about fixing your physiological age in a working and healthy state, so you can support yourself and you must when the costs are extremely high, because the state obviously cannot guarantee it.
who would decide, who could extend their life? It is my first question considering how to protect the right for pimm when the costs are extremely high. Well, in a liberal democracy the principle of equal dignity require us to make the treatment possible for those, who can afford it, because immortalized persons are rational moral persons too, and forbidding their participation in the treatment would degrade them as morally inferior ones. The continuous regeneration treatment called pimm will be permissible to those who can buy it from the same reason. If the treatment would not be permitted to them, this would violate their right to self-determination, and their right to self-determination cannot be legitimately interfered with.

We really have to modify our intuitions, we have to learn thought experimentation if we want to catch the idea of maximum life extension.

Coating heart stents with human stem cells.

A stent is a small metal coil, slotted tube, or mesh structure that is placed in a coronary artery to keep it open and wide allowing more blood through. It is a permanent implant and the most common intervention for Coronary Artery Disease. From Yorkshire Post Today: Scientists from Sheffield University are developing the world’s first regenerative device to be inserted into diseased arteries. ..The stent has to be covered with chemicals so the body does not attack it and prevent the heart fully healing. One option is to stop the defensive reaction by coating the stents with human stem cells. Link

But hey, there is not a word about what type of stem or progenitor cell do they use and there is not a hint of the cells’s source???
Imagine a world where every bionic, artificial device in your body is coated with cells of your own before implantation so the body thinks first that the device is the organic part of its own make-up.

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MIT Tech Review Editor on biotech’s rising star

Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief and publisher of MIT’s Technology Review Magazine who was speaking last week, at MIT’s Emerging Technologies Conference had the opinion in a discussion, that “It’s probably fair to say there’s more revolutionary innovation occuring in biotech and in the material sciences (nanotech) than there is in IT at the moment.” Link
It is not by accident that the Magazine is the home of the SENS Challenge aka the De Grey Technology Review Controversy on healthy life extension.

IT folks: more attention please to biotech and regenerative medicine! Thank you.

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Stem Cell Company’s Merger with a Cosmetics Company

As I mentioned before, continuous regeneration treatment of the whole human body called Pimm could be interpreted as inside plastic surgery for functional reasons. And now here comes one nice example of the present biotech trend:

U.S. stem cell companies: a new roundup

From Investor’s Business Daily: Big pharmaceutical firms and major biotechs are holding back as well, William Caldwell CEO of Advanced Cell Technology says. “While all of them have stem cell development labs someplace in the bowels of their organizations, they are not putting capital into the sector.” These companies are nervous about the political and ethical climate associated with the science, he says. The same holds true for venture capital firms. “VCs will take any risks — except political,” Caldwell said. Despite the political fallout, there’s plenty of research going on. Plenty of companies are trying to turn the stem cell therapy business into a success.
StemCells, which develops therapeutics to treat damaged or deteriorating organ systems, has followed a path away from embryonic stem cells in developing a treatment for Batten’s disease, a rare genetic disorder in children that is always fatal. Using nonembryonic human stem cells, the firm is about to launch a phase one trial on six children. Targeting Batten’s might seem odd, considering that as few as 600 Americans suffer from the condition. But StemCells Chief Executive Martin McGlynn says doing so is the best way to make use of available money and leverage the technology into other diseases. The challenge is convincing others, including Wall Street, of the long-term payoff. A handful of firms are moving into various clinical-trial phases. Aastrom Biosciences is running a phase two trial of its bone repair technology based on adult stem cells. Osiris Therapeutics has a phase three trial of its stem cell drug for a life-threatening immune condition that can hit cancer patients after a bone marrow transplant. ViaCell is monitoring subjects who received its stem cell treatment for post-chemo-radiation blood cancer patients. The stem cells in the phase one trial came from umbilical cord blood.

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Pimm in Cambridge

I have just arrived in Cambridge to work in an established stem cell lab from October till December. It is a tremendous opportunity for a rookie researcher. That means I’ll be doing experiments heavily, acquire new methods and hopefully work on my favourite puzzle topic yet.

Oh, I almost forgot: this is old U.K. Cambridge, not the Massachusetts one. When I was Cambridge in June, I found it familiar, attractive. Cambridge seems to be the place, when “half of western science” was born, just think about Newton, Crick&Watson.

Actually Charles Darwin had other experiences: Although, as we shall presently see, there were some redeeming features in my life at Cambridge, my time was sadly wasted there, and worse than wasted.

But my favourite C moment is this: On Feb. 28, 1953, Francis Crick walked into the Eagle pub in Cambridge, England, and, as James Watson later recalled, announced that “we had found the secret of life.” Actually, they had.
And when I last saw Aubrey de Grey, it was in the Eagle Pub too.

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