Experimental Drug Targeting Alzheimer's Disease Shows Anti-Aging Effects (nextbigfuture.com) 101
schwit1 writes with news that researchers at the Salk Institute have found that an experimental drug candidate aimed at combating Alzheimer's disease has a host of unexpected anti-aging effects in animals. Says the article:
The Salk team expanded upon their previous development of a drug candidate, called J147, which takes a different tack by targeting Alzheimer's major risk factor–old age. In the new work, the team showed that the drug candidate worked well in a mouse model of aging not typically used in Alzheimer's research. When these mice were treated with J147, they had better memory and cognition, healthier blood vessels in the brain and other improved physiological features.
"Initially, the impetus was to test this drug in a novel animal model that was more similar to 99 percent of Alzheimer's cases," says Antonio Currais, the lead author and a member of Professor David Schubert's Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at Salk. "We did not predict we'd see this sort of anti-aging effect, but J147 made old mice look like they were young, based upon a number of physiological parameters."
"Initially, the impetus was to test this drug in a novel animal model that was more similar to 99 percent of Alzheimer's cases," says Antonio Currais, the lead author and a member of Professor David Schubert's Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at Salk. "We did not predict we'd see this sort of anti-aging effect, but J147 made old mice look like they were young, based upon a number of physiological parameters."
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Usually it was hilarious to think about how that somehow related to the article.
cellular level anti-aging sounds good NOW... (Score:2, Informative)
I've seen the documentaries. This can only lead to one thing.
The zombie apocalypse.
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"Secondly, everything in the media is airbrushed. There are minimal ugly, or fat people on TV,"
You should watch more BBC series, they have people without fake teeth, fake boobs, fake hair, fake lips, etc
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Firstly, race should be off topic for this web site.
No, it shouldn't, because the site's owners don't want it that way.
Absolutely **everything** is on-topic for this web site. Anything. Try posting a message about anything at all, no matter how offensive. It will not be deleted, it can only be moderated down. Now, try posting that same message over and over, **hundreds** or even **thousands** of times in the same article. Again, nothing will be done to stop this spam. APK has been spamming the hell ou
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RTFM for once ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Worth looking at the actual article, especially the before and after pic they've included ...
I wouldn't be so quick to trumpet 'anti-aging effects', the after-guy looks 30 years older !! ^_^
planet of the apes (Score:1)
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In my day, people knew the good, honest value in growing old.
Get off my lawn, dammit!
Where are my teeth? Who am I?
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"Anti-aging! On my Slashdot? Cue the Luddites!"
Not at all! If we live forever, we would even have time to read TFA.
This is Awesome! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't wait for them to try this on Humans!
Note that the anti-ageing effects were seen in a strain of mutated mice that "exhibit rapid ageing". It may turn out that the drug's effects are specific for the pathway affected by the mouse line's particular genetic fault, rather than against ageing in general.
But even if that's the case, I expect it would retard SOME aspects of age-related debilitation in normal mice and in humans. I await the results of the upcoming human trials.
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Problems (Score:1)
I'm not saying this is true, but just imagine if it was. What would pharmaceutical companies charge for something like this? Who gets access to what will at first be a limited supply? What are the social implications? It boggles the mind.
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Re:Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't afford it, just keep walking — you aren't any worse off than before.
Rich people begin to live (much) longer — CEOs, Senators, judges, and generals alike do not retire restricting career-growths of their underlings. Similar effects in families, with (grand)children never seeing the inheritance. Official retirement age raised (very) high.
A movement springs up denouncing the procedure as somehow unethical — while the Bible's long-living characters suddenly seem less implausible.
A separate movement springs up to demand "free" dosage for everyone — told, there is not enough for all, they demand none get it and proceed to destroy what little stock there is. Fortunately, a break-through — its development funded by the cash windfall from the millionaire "early adopters" — allows to produce enough of the stuff to add it to water supply (in developed countries).
Secret e-mails with government-officials discussing these very predictions and considerations are leaked and discussed by the media as awesome forethought by some and evil conspiracy by others.
Yet another movement begins to claim suffering from allergic and other mysterious-yet-painful reactions to the stuff and try to avoid it.
Something like that... Oh, and, of course, PROFIT!
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I'm not saying this is true, but just imagine if it was.
We already have life extension technology. It is called "a healthy diet and exercise". Surprisingly, there is little demand for it.
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If a real "fountain of youth" drug were developed, unless it were sold fairly cheaply (or at least at a reasonable cost), it would probably be copied. The only reason we have a limited supply right now of various drugs is because of patent law. That doesn't keep pharma companies in places like India from manufacturing their own, they just ignore US IP laws. And we don't get that stuff over here because it isn't lucrative to import some, say, anti-AIDS drug and sell it on the black market here. There's l
Easier to address aging than its symptoms. . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, people will have to work longer but you will not work yourself to death to save up for retirement (just for the occasional break). There are plenty of problems in the world, so having more able people to address those problems is probably a good thing. Also, people will put off having kids longer and everyone is going to start to care a lot more about the "longterm" of things. Seems like a positive direction for humanity. . .
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some argue that the world has to many people on it now, what happens when new people keep being born but old ones dont die?
Re:Easier to address aging than its symptoms. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
A short explanation is to point out the well documented fact that people have fewer kids and tend to have kids later in life the longer they live. Consequently, a cheap pill that allows people to live hundreds of years would cause an immediate effect of a DECREASE in the number of kids born, and would POSTPONE a lot of births that would have otherwise have had happened sooner. So the birthrate would decrease GREATLY over this initial period, while other causes of deaths would continue. As a result, over the "short term" (probably centuries, to immortals) you probably would see a population DECREASE, as a result.
Eventually, though, people will reach some equilibrium of having kids, so the initial period before this is crucial. Basically, we will have an army of well educated, experienced, and healthy people to tackle some key technologies (e.g. space elevators, etc. .
Just because we have learned to live with death does not mean death is some kind crucial component to ensure the continuation of our species. In fact, it is the exact opposite. . .
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I doubt Haitians would fit your model.
Re:Easier to address aging than its symptoms. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides, I am sure there was much more poverty when people were living to just be 40 years old. . . it seems that living longer gives you more time to claw your way out of poverty.
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make a Dyson sphere, or whatever else help ensure the continuation of the species.
ONE Dyson sphere is not enough. We still need redundancy, But there is only room for one per star. We need interstellar travel.
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However, I do want to add that seeing significant anti-aging effects but no extension of life expectancy would seem to imply that aging is programmed. There is growing evidence that aging is not programmed [nih.gov], though. Instead, aging seems to be the result of wear and tear on a very complicated system, so that reducing wear and tear should extend the life of the system.
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How do they explain problems like the natural decline all athletes face around age 40?
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Evolution's only driver for maximum age is how long it takes you to have kids and get them old enough to live without needing you anymore. Accordingly, modern technology (like sanitation) has allowed us to roughly double that max age and there is no reason to assume that it will stop there.
Re:Easier to address aging than its symptoms. . . (Score:4, Insightful)
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So you want to steal my money to give it to people who didn't earn it?
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steal my money
Why are you assuming that you have any money to steal in this scenario? Do you honestly believe that there is a job that exists that cannot be automated within the next couple of centuries? When it is YOU receiving a basic income, will you have "earned it" at that point?
I am trying to determine whether you are an overzealous workaholic puritan or just out of touch with technological progress.
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Uhh, some of us need to be the ones *working* on the computers doing the automation.
Plus, I don't care about my wealth over the next couple of centuries.. just the next couple of decades.
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Plus, I don't care about my wealth over the next couple of centuries.. just the next couple of decades
I see, so you basically glazed over the entire article and the context of this entire thread that I started and saw an opportunity to score a political point. "Next couple of decades" does not equ
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No, I just literally meant the people working on/programming/debugging the computers that are doing the automation, not anything really "deep".
Also, I didn't really ignore the article. I don't think we're going to get to centuries of lifetime soon.
I almost responded to one of the articles about this issue, but many/most of the responses seemed to assume that all of the anti-aging work would essentially "stretch out" time evenly. (For example, the ones talking about the birth rate going down and implying t
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Economics and the best interest of the human race only conflict for people who do not understand one or both.
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I'm not convinced this is anything but flying cars in the 50's (wishful thinking).
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Not obviously so. It also means that old ideas will hang around for a lot longer because people who are mentally stuck in their ways will take even longer to die off.
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people who are mentally stuck in their ways will take even longer to die off.
Seems like you are assuming that "being stuck in your ways" has nothing to do with the aging of the brain when it probably has a lot to do with declining function as the brain gets older and diminishing returns of taking risks when one reaches the end of one's life.
.
Besides, "waiting for them to die off" does not seem like a very sophisticated approach to dealing with our social problems. .
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Yes, people will have to work longer but you will not work yourself to death to save up for retirement (just for the occasional break). There are plenty of problems in the world, so having more able people to address those problems is probably a good thing.
I assume you've never seen Soylent Green! The world is over populated as is
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For instance, the last 5 ~ 10 years has resulted in some technological breakthroughs [energy.gov] that should greatly change the traditional views of overpopulation. We are increasingly doing more with less, such that the concept of "over population" i
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Don't be so proud of this technological terror that you've created.
We may be 'doing more with less' but we're doing a hell of a lot more. To the point where we are clobbering the planet's capacity to maintain some sort of homeostasis. Like the homeostasis needed to feed all of the happy little fruits and vegetables you seem to think would be a good idea.
A planet isn't a farm. We know just enough about ecology to know we don't know jack shit about it.
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You are more than welcome to reduce the impact on the Earth by 1 human being and only 1. The rest of us will push on to drive humanity from being a mere occupant to becoming a caretaker of this precious planet. This will be accomplished b
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To quote Kosh (Score:2)
Curry is cheaper and tastier. (Score:3, Interesting)
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Here's a source (Score:2)
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Patent protected (Score:2)
From the published paper:
Salk has an issued patent on J147 licensed to Abrexa Pharmaceuticals.
It will be interesting to see if this makes its way through the labyrinth of FDA testing within the next 40 years.
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At $100/gram.
And hit the "terms" tab. Excerpt:
Life is good - if you are a mouse (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently it is the mice that are running the planet and they got us trained to solve their health problems.
Why Would Anti-Aging Effects Be Surprising (Score:2)
Rather than target amyloid, the lab decided to zero in on the major risk factor for the disease–old age. Using cell-based screens against old age-associated brain toxicities, they synthesized J147.
If they're targeting "old age", why would anti-aging effects be surprising?
Does anyone understand exactly what this drug is doing? I'm not able to parse that second sentence, possibly because my brain is too old.
Shai Halud (Score:1)