Money in Aging Research, Part II

Part II : A Survey of For-profit Research Centers

How much money is going into aging research? The information is not so easy to come by.  This interview estimated that companies working on medical solutions to aging have a market cap of $300 billion as of 2018.  I’m guessing this number is rather too optimistic. This Business Insider article counted $850 million in venture capital funding in 2018.  That’s million with an m–a lowball estimate, it seems.  It’s safe to say the answer lies somewhere in the vast ocean between these distant shores.

I have not found comprehensive data on startups in anti-aging medicine, so this survey is incomplete and biased according to my own familiarity with the companies and their programs.  And the more important disclaimer: I have strong ideas about what the end of aging will look like, and this has colored the view I present of each company below. If you know of companies that you think should be on this list, please make suggestions in the Comments below.

Partial List:

Mature drugs

Geron is ancient by present standards, founded in Silicon Valley in 1990 by Michael West, who was already an advocate of telomerase therapies.  They are long established, with market cap of $260 million but only 15 full-time employees. Clearly, their mission is research rather than production. Over the years, they have turned their telomerase expertise into drugs that block telomerase, useful as a cancer treatment, since most tumors cannot continue to grow without telomerase.GRN163L (Imetelstat), is a drug under development that targets telomerase.  They apparently made the decision years ago, when they sold the IP for their best telomerase promoter to Noel Patton that telomerase was too dangerous to let out of the cage.  I wonder if even now they realize that was a mistake.

Elysium Health is Len Guarente’s company selling a formula of NR and pterostilbene.  Pterostilbene is a “better resveratrol”. Interest in both resveratrol and the NADH pathway grew out of Guarente’s long-time study of sirtuins.  I believe that modest health benefits have been established from this approach, but NADH is so well studied that if there were dramatic results, we would have seen them by now.  And NR treatment is not without risks.

Telomere therapies

Sierra Sciences (Bill Andrews) is focused on small molecules that promote expression of telomerase, lengthening telomeres and preventing cell senescence.  Screening hundreds of thousands of chemicals in vitro for telomerase activity, they came up with TAM 818, which is now for sale in New Zealand as a skin cream.  In an unrelated approach, they are offering a clinical trial (in a South Pacific island where regulatory agencies permit) using gene therapy to add copies of telomerase.  My personal opinion: Several years ago, I believed that telomere shortening was an aging clock of primary importance, but then a large Danish study demonstrated that the scatter in telomere length is greater than the consistent drift toward shorter telomeres with age.  I still think elongation of the shortest telomeres is an anti-aging strategy, but no longer regard it as centrally important.

Telocyte (Michael Fossel) is experimenting with telomere elongation to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and even to restore neurological function.  Fossel understood aging and had the vision to appreciate the role of telomere erosion more than 20 years ago, and I have the highest respect for him, but from what I know, AD as a target seems to be mismatched to the biology of telomeres.  Telocyte has recently announced a strategic partnership with Maria Blasco, a Spanish researcher whose lab has produced most of the biggest milestones in telomerase therapy.

Gene therapy

Rejuvenate Bio The Harvard laboratory of George Church was early in recognizing the potential for CRISPR technology to bring gene therapy into mainstream medicine.  Rejuvenate Bio is offering a gene therapy program to dogs who are at genetic risk for mitral valve disease, a congenital heart disorder. It’s cheaper than human trials, with less liability when something goes wrong, and it’s a viable lab for gaining experience and honing technique. [Writeup at FightAging!]

Stem cell therapy

Stem cells are among the most promising technologies we have for regenerative  medicine.  I’m surprised not to find more companies doing basic research, but there are lots of companies bringing the present (hit-and-miss) state of the art to patients.  Advanced Cell Technologies, a leader in the field, is now a part of Astella Therapeutics. Apceth Biopharma delivers stem cell technologies in the health marketplace but doesn’t seem to do much research.  Pluristem Therapeutics and Brainstorm Cell claim to have active research programs.  I have found no companies focused on the potential of stem cell therapies for extending lifespan.

Clinics and personalized medicine

AHNP (Apollo) acquired MPI, which was Dale Bredesen’s vehicle for bringing his Alzheimer’s protocol to the medical public.  I give AHNP special mention because I believe that Bredesen’s program is not only the first credible treatment for bringing brains back from AD; further, I think that Bredesen’s Alzheimer’s preventative program doubles as a comprehensive program to slow aging.  With individualized programs based on a battery of diagnostic tools, it’s a new model for how to do preventive medicine. I believe the program has transformative potential, but translation to the clinic has led to growing pains at AHNP. They can’t train new staff fast enough, and they’ve fallen behind explosive demand from new patients. Their software interface is buggy and there’s a backlog of requests for personal support, but they’re aware of the problems and building capacity as fast as they can.

Leucadia Theraputics has a diagnostic and treatment model for Alzheimer’s Disease based on drainage of amyloids from the brain, and physical blockage of the drainage pathway.

L-Nutra is Valter Longo’s company, offering programmed, packaged meals that provide some of the benefits of fasting with less of the hunger and deprivation.

Data Mining

Human Longevity is mining hospital records and genomic data to look for correlations. They offer testing and counseling to customers, then base their study on their customer base.

ASDERA is Knut Wittkowski’s small but important New York think tank.  Like other math geek operationss, they are using computers to mine data for patterns that lead to new drugs.  But unlike the others, they are not relying on the black box approach of neural networks. Wittkowski is an old-school statistician, familiar with an arsenal of classical statistical tests, choosing with judgment and expertise applied to the caseat hand.  Both approaches are computationally intensive. The difference is whether computations are guided by expertise and experience or by an algorithm that directs its own search toward a human-defined goal. Think of it as Artificial Intelligence vs Human intelligence, if you like.  Supervised learning vs a purely algorithmic search. Time will tell which approach yields more leads to actual treatments. I’m rooting as usual for the underdog, the classical against the avant garde.  Neural networks may yield a prescription, but you don’t know if it’s a fragile artifact of the particular data you used or a robust new truth about biochemistry, and the computer can’t tell you what it’s thinking.  With more human participation in the process comes more understanding of where the result comes from and (at least) a guess as to what it probably means.

 Acturx is another data mining project, headed by Edouard Debonneuil.  Debonneuil’s background is in actuarial science for insurance companies, and he is mining insurance records of millions of patients.  By correlating prescription records with health outcomes, they look for unknown benefits from known drugs.

Senolytics

Everon Biosciences was founded in 2010 by Andre Gudkov, with awareness of programmed aging built into their strategy. Gudkov believes that endogenous DNA damage in somatic cells is a primary clock driving diverse aging phenotypes.  A prominent kind of DNA damage is the duplication of regions of DNA that contain no genes (retrotransposons, including LINEs and SINEs).  NRT1 is a drug in development that inhibits the enzyme that makes the copies.  Another locus of research is senescent cells as emitters of signals that drive inflammaging.   But while other companies are racing to find agents that selectively kill senescent cells (leaving normal cells undamaged), Everon has focused on the innate immune system, including neutrophils and macrophages.  Their hypothesis is that the innate immune system takes care of senescent cells when we are young, but the system has a fixed lifetime capacity, and once its limit is reached, senescent cells accumulate and the vicious cycle of increased inflammation begins.  EBS3899 is a molecule they are testing for its ability to sensitize macrophages to senescent cells, and it seems to work better in vitro than in vivo.

Unity Biotechnology works on one molecule at a time, exploring their potential to relieve arthritis or degeneration of the eye or age-related disease in lungs, liver, kidneys and the CNS.  UBX0101 is their arthritis drug, in trials.  Other drugs at earlier stages of development target senescent cells and cognitive decline.

Oisin Biotechnologies is searching senolytic drugs, joining a crowded race to minimize toxicity to normal cells while efficiently eliminating senescent cells.

Biomarkers and Age Clocks

Spring Discovery and InSilico Medicine. In order to study anti-aging interventions, we need to evaluate them, and the traditional measure — waiting for experimental subjects to die — is too slow. This is the reason the Horvath clocks are so important.  His algorithms based solely on methylation profiles are the best measures of human biological age we have so far. Spring and InSilico are both trying to improve on that, combining other measures along with methylation, and using neural network analysis — the black box of AI — to look for patterns that evade human brains. These two companies are unrelated and working on opposite coasts, but if there’s a difference between their goals or methods, I have yet to understand what it might be.  [ScienceBlog article on InSilico]

Signal Molecules in Blood Plasma

[Background in my blog from 2 years ago.]

Jesse Karmazin’s Ambrosia  was an ambitious start-up, turned to object lesson in hazards of the fast track.  The basic premise is sound — that blood factors from the young are able to set back the clock of the older animal (or person) in whom they are introduced.  But which blood factors? And how much is needed? And how many treatments would be needed before the body would set its own clock back, and start producing the youthful factors by itself?  Karmazin’s plan was to ask these questions with clinical trials funded by his subjects, people willing to pay thousands of dollars for two transfused pints of blood from a young person. This past winter, the FDA stopped him in his tracks.

Tony Wyss-Coray’s Alkahest has taken the same promising premise and followed with more care toward a promising future.  In the early 2000s, Wyss-Coray was one of the Stanford pioneers of parabiosis. Originally, Alkahest seemed to be headed in the same direction as Ambrosia, offering small quantities of young blood to wealthy clients afflicted with Alzheimer’s.  But now they’ve made some important discoveries about the active ingredients that give young blood its rejuvenating power. They are well aware that it’s all about dosage–that some plasma components need to be downregulated and some upregulated to turn old blood to young (and perhaps turn old bodies to young…).  They’ve coined the term “chronokines”, key proteins that increase or decrease with age, and they’ve identified a few of these and launched clinical trials for macular degeneration and, Parkinson’s, and dementia. I’m impressed. My only suggestion is that they should be alert to the possibility that the interaction among these chronokines might be non-linear and, perhaps, surprisingly complex.

Other approaches

Google CALICO is well funded, but their relevance to progress in the field is hard to assess.  We might guess that their research direction follows the intersts of Cynthia Kenyon and David Botstein, i.e., understanding the genetic contributors to aging in worms and yeast cells.  They are partnering with Harvard’s Broad Institute and California’s Buck Institute in basic research.  They are in it for the long haul, building biochemical knowledge from the ground up. If someone doesn’t get there first, we may be very glad for their industry in another 10 years.

Google has also invested in shorter-term drug development through Verily Life Sciences, with partnerships that include GlaxoSmithKline. Personal note: I see a danger here, in which the company that we trust to direct us to the best information sources is allied with an industry that has done so much to promote its products with disinformation about health.

Lyceum is Michael Rose’s effort to commercialize research he’s done on the genetics of aging in fruitflies.  The web site claims a systems approach, which sounds right to me, but no details are offered at this early stage.

resTORbio is developing variants of rapamycin, which is perhaps the most credible anti-aging drug commercially available.  Rapamycin is not patentable, the main reason we see more research on variants and less on rapamycin itself.

CHAI = California Healthy Aging Initiative
Game-changer on the horizon

Activists in California are gathering support for a ballot initiative to provide $12B in state funding for anti-aging research over the next 12 years.  CA is one of the states in which the people can create legislation directly with their votes; and in 2004, this process was used to appropriate $4B for stem cell research.  Promoters of CHAI are trying to build on this precedent. But they face a dilemma. Gathering signatures and educating the public is an expensive proposition. They will need a broad coalition of research interests in the field to get their measure off the ground.  But of course, these organizations will want to write the text in such a way as to direct future funding to themselves. The grass-roots activists who are energizing this initiative believe that adding incrementally to institutions that are already well-funded is less likely to generate disruptive technologies than many small grants to individuals and start-ups with idiosyncratic theories of aging.  I like the idea of supporting small people with big ideas, perhaps because I are one.  This is a science still in its exploratory phase, where we do not have a definite idea what will work, and there are competing theoretical frameworks to guide us.  Once the proof-of-concept is complete, it’s appropriate to pursue the “D” part of “R&D”, and for that, industrial-scale research is the most efficient course.

My perspective on the state of research

I believe that aging is regulated under epigenetic control, but that the biochemical language of epigenetics is complicated, and it will be a slow road indeed if we persist in studying one intervention at a time.  The time is right for open science, open communications, interdiciplinary collaboration, and the testing of treatments in sets of 2 and 3 and 4. (If we study only treatments in isolation, we miss the boat; but if we try to study 5-way and 12-way interactions, the number of combinations will overwhelm our neural networks–both silicon and wetware.)

I continue to promote DataBETA because I think that it is a methodology for exploring the landscape from a perspective of radical empiricism, and point us in new directions.  DataBETA is looking for a university partner with experience in large-scale trials and otherwise is funded and ready to launch.

Our knowledge of biochemistry comes mostly from a reductionist framework.  We understand cellular systems better than we understand organs and tissues. We understand least of all the global signaling and interactions by which the body coordinates its growth, its homeostasis and (I believe) its aging.  The primitive state of systems biology counsels an empirical approach.

Im glad to see money and talent pouring into aging research, and it’s refreshing to see how much of it goes to people without theoretical preconceptions.  But many of the engineers and computer geeks coming into aging science are experienced in a world where problems can be split into manageable parts—divide and conquer.  My guess is that aging will be refractory to this approach, and will yield in the end to a multi-pronged but holistic therapy.

I gave up on the stock market years ago, the pride of the mathematician laid low by the surprises of the real world; but if I were a gambling man, I’d bet on Bredesen/Apollo.  There’s a solid core of biochemistry under a mountain of clinical data, and sparked to life with a bit of inspired guesswork.  They are modest (or prudent) enough to claim ‘only’ to have cured Alzheimer’s, but I would be eager to see methylation tests that relate their protocol to the best aging clock we’ve got.

39 thoughts on “Money in Aging Research, Part II

  1. De Grey is also involved in a startup AGeX therapeutics. It is listed on NYSEMKT. They are into adult stem cell therapy if I read their page correctly.

  2. Agree that telomerase activation is still a missed opportunity. Andrews’ company has no funding AFAIK… where ARE those tech billionaires? There was supposed to be a mouse-lemur experiment on chemical telomerase activators reporting by now.

    Geron hasn’t even made it to a Phase 3 trial in 29 years. There are many telomerase antagonists among cancer drugs, including azacitidine, AZT, Velcade, etc. etc. Imetelstat may stagger into approval in 2023, but JNJ dropped its collaboration for good reason.

    The NAD+ boosting field’s major player is not Elysium (fortunately, as Guarante’s retraction of papers with Photoshopped gel pics was a major scandal in the field). It is the public company Chromadex, with a major interest held by Hong Kong multibillionaire Li Ka-Shing. CDXC had a shady start, but Dr. Brenner and Ka-Shing give it a good chance of making NR mainstream…. and they have a new synthetic NAD+ booster as well.

    • Bill Andrews abandoned the planned lemur trial in favour of Libella Gene Therapeutics’ trials for Alzheimers, starting imminently.

      Likewise Biovia/Integrated Health Systems’ telomerase Gene therapy is also based on his work. As far as small molecules go, TAM818 is available in various forms (including pills), from Defytimer, who have licenced the chemical from Andrews.

      Michael Fossel is also approaching Phase I (FDA approved) trial for Alzheimer’s using the telomerase gene therapy developed by Blasco’s team (I believe).

      One other addition/correction – Oisin are not looking for Senolytic drugs, theirs is a superior gene therapy based approach to remove senescent cells, using a gene payload delivered by lipid nanoparticles, and triggered by their signal of choice (which means it could target anything they want, including cancer).

      I’m betting on telomerase therapies surprising everyone with their efficacy. I also think people will be getting induced pluripotent stem cell infusions in a few years, with great results.

      • Thanks for the updates! Sounds like it will be a while before we have any data on TAM-818 effects on humans.

        Mouse lemurs sound a lot more useful than mice… too bad no one is using them.

        all those billions of cancer-research dollars poured into “models” that don’t turn off telomerase.

    • Ha, what on Earth are you talking about? A postdoc in Guarente’s lab fumbling gels was not remotely a “major scandal in the field.” Guess that goes along with claiming a supplement retailer is the “major player in the field.” What, are all the PhDs at bodybuilding.com preoccupied with senolytics? Chromadex coasts on a patent. It’s a shame it doesn’t actually do anything with it to study aging.

      • No one “fumbled gels” (I’ve dropped a couple in my time, I know what that looks like ;), they intentionally cut and pasted with PhotoShop, flipped the pics upside down. Faking data is no joke.

        Chromadex, on the other hand, WAS a joke at first 😉

        And I’m no fan of the current patent system. But it’s nice to see Li Ka-Shing putting some money into nicotinamide riboside research. CDXC just finished a human study on NR and sleep quality this April. There are 37 human studies on NR listed on clinicaltrials.gov, and CDXC claims a couple of hundred “research partnerships” with academic labs.

        Of course this isn’t the kind of scale you and I would like to see, but it’s more than “nothing”… there’s also Sinclair and Elysium working on NMN studies, which if nothing else will help elucidate the MOA of NR.

  3. BTW, I’ve used nicotinamide riboside myself for over two years now… and all my numbers improved, from blood pressure to cholesterol ratio to triglycerides to hours of sleep. Quality of REM sleep also improved, as did my skin and nail growth.

    I’m having a hard time believing that NR does anything but reduce inflammation.

  4. Looking back over the last decade, this blog has taught me as much as any other, largely because it pulls overwhelming information into a coherent summary, and because it is especially skeptical of mainstream dogmas. Keep up the fine work, Josh!

  5. ResTorBio had recent headline in AARP magazine, “can a single pill keep you Healthy to 100 ?.
    They tried to act like had something new instead of an Everlimus knock-off or just another rapalog. About 3 new rapalogs in works to try and monitize Rapamycin.
    People who want human clinical studies should get some results in 10 years.

  6. Samumed has utilized interventions on the Wnt pathway with very impressive results on diseases of aging that have not been cured yet. Here are some examples :
    Osteoartrhitis: currently on phase 3 human trials, with success in increasing knee cartilage and reducing pain
    Androgenetic Alopecia: currently on phase 3 human trials
    Also, on verious phases of human trials for: Alzheimer’s Disease, Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, Tendinopathy. All are caused by aging, and appear to be “reversing” the damages of aging.
    Here is a link with their pipeline: https://www.samumed.com/pipeline/default.aspx

    What is interesting, is that I have never seen anything in any of the “antiaging” websites. Yet, the results to date IMO are more impressive than those achieved using senolytics. What might be the reason?

  7. There is newer study on TA65 (by almost a decade to those on mice…) conducted on humans https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5178008/ – A Natural Product Telomerase Activator Lengthens Telomeres in Humans: A Randomized, Double Blind, and Placebo Controlled Study.

    And, besides, now TA Sciences have a page describing vaguely what modifications (“packaging”) they made to get TA65 through stomach acids. Sadly, much better TAM-818 lacks such shield yet and gets destroyed in stomach entirely, just another firm does the work totally from scratch.

    • Says who? The absorption of a chemical through the stomach depends largely on what it is; not all require any ‘packaging’ to enhance bioavailability – astralagus extracts obviously do, we don’t know whether TAM818 does or not. My guess is not, as it is a designed molecule.

    • What I can find from Sierra Sciences and their joint partners and marketing info they publish and patent info, it’s a very small artificial modification to the original TA-65 active ingredient molecule. TAM-818 is doing telomerase gene demethylation completly and thus force telomerase to be produced full level (in humans naturally this takes place only in replicative cells, and after senescence/mutation in cancer cells), and thus escape Hayflick limit forever. Sierra has molecule, TA Sciences has technology to put it through stomach acids into blood (developed for its’ natural predecessor during last 15 years), and because of licence and patent matters they can’t so far mate them together. :<

      • Totally incorrect. TAM818 and TA-65 very different molecules. Latter is derived from astralagus extract so is natural product. TAM818 is a manufactured isoxazole molecule. Sierra Sciences and TA Sciences totally different companies, only commonality is Bill Andrews worked at both. TAM818 is far stronger telomerase activator, but evidence only in vitro so far.

    • Thanks for posting, silverseeker… the TA-65 study shows the low dose more effective than the high dose, which of course makes things very unclear (except that it’s clear that these studies are too small and underfunded… even if our telomerase ideas are completely wrong, it would be worth a lot to know that…)

  8. It is often stated that aging trials with humans are impractical because of time scale. Thing is, are we aware the data is hidden in plain sight. Approx 20 years ago Longevinex launched as a resveratrol micronized matrix of nutrients, proven to activate 9 times more longevity genes than resveratrol. It is only recently that research can explain why, its ingredients such as IP6 and quercetin are known senolytics. Resveratrol and Vitamin D are now known to work in synergy. There is a database held by Longevinex with thousands of individuals who have been taking this matrix of nutrients. If money was spent in researching this data, then according to what is believed, there should be a mortality effect like shown on Metformin data. Could initial instant findings show if anything happening, by comparing the National mortality statistics, ie, age group 75-84 is an annual mortality rate of 1 in 15. How will we ever know if the resveratrol matrix group might be say 1in 20/ or more, except by analysing the data.

      • I have sent an email to Bill Sardi, containing the same question regarding the data that Longevinex holds, and if he would use the data for perhaps the unique research it could hold. Bill sent back prompt reply, which was: Dear Ray, thank you for your kind comments. It does strike me, that Bill Sardi, Bruce Ames and your good self, have three different concepts of the aging process, and yet there is so much that seems to come together between your competing concepts. I personally believe that if the three of you were to come together for the advancement of ideas and research, Bill could be open to you and Bruce in seeking proof of his aging concept of chelation and rusting of tissues by the longevinex data which holds a long time of thousands of individuals which could show Human proof of concept.

    • I am in touch with Harold in India, and he reports that they continue to see success in rejuvenation with a larger trial. Akshay, his business rep, is looking for financing and a big push into commercialization. I have no details.

      • Hi Josh,

        Thanks for this blog and all that you do.

        Don’t forget to include https://www.turn.bio/ on your list. They are doing great work with partial cell reprogramming to reverse cellular ageing a la, Ocampo et al at the Salk institute.

        Their studies used naturally aged geriatric mice rather than Progeroid mice and are using clinically translatable transient mRNAs to trigger partial cellular reprogramming. They’ve also studied 50 to 95 year old human tissue of multiple types.

        I didn’t see a category or company on your list focusing in this area (Although there was a reply to add “AgeX Therapeutics”) which I believe could have huge potential. As you like to say, the body already knows how to be and act young when it’s programming is aligned with that.

        Here is a recent excellent interview with co-founder Prof. Vittorio Sebastiano.

        https://www.leafscience.org/an-interview-with-prof-vittorio-sebastiano-of-turn-bio/

  9. Hi Josh,

    I have developed an interest in Rapamycin. Coulple of days ago in Nature, a paper was published on results by Aeonian Pharmaceuticals where it identified DL001, a FKBP12-dependent rapamycin analog 40x more selective for mTORC1 than rapamycin. This is HUGE news, since rapamycin targets BOTH mTORC1 and mTORC2. And we are interested in inhibiting mTORC1 only. Aeonian Pharma is supported by a venture capital firm called Apollo Ventures. So far as I could tell, Aeonian Pharma will not launch it in an aging trial first, because there happens to be a disease called tuberous sclerosis that has overactivation of the mTOR pathway. Thus, Aoenian will try it in that disease first. If it’s safe and effective, then they will use this for muscle loss, neurodegenerative diseases and anti aging. Here is the Nature paper:

    Any thoughts?

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11174-0?fbclid=IwAR0DFtPftxPRl2fRO38icOxdGxrcWsC5glkylLFAE_7UuemkL2DkifAjKLQ

    • It’s a promising theory, but biology is always full of surprises. So let’s hope that Aeonian is collecting data on how DL001 affects mouse lifespan and human methylation age.

  10. Just a thought here on the amount of money going into anti-aging. If I could use a metaphor of a pyramid to represent all the research and work being done on anti aging, we are still at the base, even withstanding tremendous work and dedication of individuals as Jose. Why not raise our sights and ambitions and go straight to the top of the pyramid, to the end point of anti aging, our demise and death. The process of the stages of a natural death are well known and documented as to what happens, as I understand it, no serious money or research has attempted as to the why and how of the process. It would be solved when a physician could enter a room of a dying person, and diagnose the individual as having the ultimate illness of the Human body, the death process, and by knowing how and why it was happening, thereby having the knowledge and control of how and what was happening, to be able to treat and stop the process. This might sound deluded, but if it was made a mission statement like the moon shot by government or individual billionaires, it would be of greater historical importance. Of course, the object would not be to prolong a life that had reached the end process, but understanding and the ability to control the top of the pyramid, the bottom of the pyramid puzzle could start to fall in unexpected ways that we dont yet realise, and realise the dream of ending Human suffering by knowing the complete picture of how, why and what controls aging.

    • Not a crazy idea. Ira Pastor at Bioquark has done work in this space (reanima project and work on cadavers- reversing death and reversing aging not exactly the same thing but related). Incidentally Josh, Bioquark should be on this list.

      • Thanks for that link, the online interview article with Ira Pastor is the most enlightened Ive read. The quote of people unable to make up their mind as to wether Pastor is on the verge of something miraculous or is out of his mind sums up where he is going. As he states, the “trickle down” for our knowledge of aging is enormous.

  11. Hi Josh:

    Do you have an opinion on Sierra Sciences (Bill Andrews) clinical trial (on that South Pacific island).? Is this real science or Medical Touri$m? Any info on this trial would be appreciated.

    D. Jones

  12. I believe there is an area of anti-aging that will never be covered by money or research. An example being how Mitochondria is linked to aging and disease. From the start of its availability, I have been taking MitoQ, having read all the research, it is a permanent daily must have. Reading Al Sears longevity posts, again, PQQ, based on the multiple research articles that are quoted, to me, it must be an essential daily must have. Having read the research of David Sinclair and NAD+, again,to me, it is a daily must have. My question is, there are hundreds of research papers on these three new developments, but not one research paper on taking all three, which I have done daily from availability, so thus what the effect of this may be will remain unknown. The only way our anti-aging knowledge of these unknowns could be known, might be solved by an overall anti aging body, set up to research things that, understandably, no one else will, with funds coming from say a 1% levy on all sales of companies joining a federation. I realise that there is a lot of expert knowledge here, does anyone have any ideas, for good or bad, on this. It must apply to the majority of people seeking anti-aging outcomes.

    • Another would be the case of the Metformin substitute, Berberine, what we want to know is, would Berberine actually have the same healthy life extension that is shown in the Metformin data. No one is going to do the trials because no one will get any return on money spent on the results. If it is of any help to anyone, the only other pill you can take to extend life that I have read, is from the Al Sears longevity posts, where he states research that people taking daily supplement of K2, lived 8 years longer than people who did not, adding another pill to my daily regime.

      • More evidence for the benefit of mitochondrial turnover through autophagy, and there is solid data on a reduction of mortality through glucosamine, and also coffee consumption. No evidence for mitochondrial antioxidants yet.

      • This from this months MIT Technology Review:
        “Trying to forestall age isn’t without risk. The day I met him, Clement was recovering from a serious fall after he blacked out. Two years ago, he got a pacemaker installed. He believes a serious problem with his heart was brought on by an over-the-counter neutraceutical, the root extract berberine. It can cause the heart to beat slower, a condition called bradycardia. “I think that’s a legitimate story to tell people,” he says. “You don’t always know.”
        https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614078/transhumanists-live-forever/

  13. On this subject of research, I wonder if anyone could throw any light on this mystery, some years ago, news came of research on rats fed bucky balls that had healthy life extension never seen before. I assumed it was so ground breaking that all over the world researchers would be scrambling to repeat the simple research to verify it. I have heard of no verification, for or against since. The other surprise was that using just olive oil proved nearly as good. If it is of any help to anyone, I have found the easiest way to consume olive oil on a daily basis, is to put 1-2 tablespoons on my daily health start to the day of porridge. Ditto with walnut oil, for its known benefits, and also vinegar, which has recently been shown to have some of the benefits of Metformin.

    • You suggest that 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil will result in a substantial healthy life extension. While olive oil is healthy, I doubt that it will be as effective as you suggest. In Greece where I live (and probably Italy, Spain, and Portugal) most people consume more than that on a daily basis throughout their lives. Life expectancy is not all that higher than in other European countries. Particularly if you take into consideration the fact that other aspects of diet in these countries are also healthier (I.e. consumption of fish vs red meat, less processed food, etc.)

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