Medical 12 2011
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This document summarizes several recent medical studies and developments: 1) Common elements of longevity diets include low red meat/animal product consumption, high fruit/vegetable intake, legumes, nuts, and exercise. 2) A study found that the drug rapamycin increased lifespan in mice by suppressing tumors and extending lifespan through TOR signaling inhibition. 3) Researchers engineered cartilage replacement using stem cells and degradable beads that release growth factors to stimulate new cartilage growth. 4) Several studies showed progress using stem cells to generate liver/pancreas cells and potentially treat diseases, provide proof that non-fetal stem cells can treat Parkinson's, and engineer blood cells to generate cancer
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Medical 12 2011
- 1. Medical and Longevity News Dec 5, 2011
- 2. Which diet is best? Perhaps not Paleo..
- 3. Common Elements in Longevity Diets • No or very low consumption of red meat • No or low consumption of meat (excluding fish) in general • Large consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables • Use of free range hens’ eggs • No or low consumption of butter • No or low consumption of unfermented milk products • Emphasis on legumes in the diet • Emphasis on the regular consumption of nuts • Fat intake primarily in the form of polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fats of vegetable origin • Regular exercise • Maintenance of near ideal body weight over the lifespan • Abstention from smoking
- 4. Rapamycin increases lifespan (mice) • 29% of treated mice lived longer than the longest lived members of control group • Tumor generation was suppressed • Prior evidence (2009) of anti-aging effects in diverse mice populations • Works by inhibiting TOR signaling pathway o Fair evidence this extends lifespan
- 6. Spider silk and muscle produce self replicating poly-peptide • ested on mice as an injectable adjuvant for H1N1 swine influenza virus killed vaccine
- 7. Engineered Cartilege Replacement • Stem cells permeated with tiny beads to increase growth and thickness • Microspheres provide structure, scaffolding.. o Gives better water retention • As the beads degrade growth factor is released to the interior cells.
- 8. Engineered Cartilege Replacement • Stem cells permeated with tiny beads to increase growth and thickness • Microspheres provide structure, scaffolding.. o Gives better water retention • As the beads degrade growth factor is released to the interior cells.
- 9. Liver and pancreas precursors from stem cells • Useful amounts of these cells created from pluripotent stem cells • Important for treatment of Type 1 diabetes and many liver diseases • Possible eventual treatment for pancreatic cancer. • The approach focuses on the efficiency of differentiation
- 10. Barrier to using stem cells for anti- aging crossed • Potential of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells Released in a Model of Parkinson's Disease • Proof of benefits of non-fetal stem cells • Used in treating Parkinson's
- 11. Engineered blood cells to fight cancer • Engineered blood stem cells to fight melanoma o Stem cells created cancer killing T cells • First proof that blood cells in a living creature can be tweaked at stem cell level to produce more T cells • While the study was done in mice it was on implanted human tissue. • Goal of cancer immuno-therapy is producing anti-tumor T-cells on populations
- 12. Safe gene therapy for Muscular Dystrophy • Cut and pasted many viruses to create better vehicle for stem cell treatment delivery o This approach was not previously known to be safe • No side effects obverved in phase 1 trials • Delivers replacement gene for an essential muscle fiber MD patients have a lack of
- 13. Turning muscle to HIV antibody factories • Part vaccine, part gene therapy • Muscle is not affected directly by HIV and thus can continue to pump antibodies when thus treated • Treated mice were able to resist infection even at 100x the exposure that would normally lead to infection • Injects muscle tissue with genes that produce potent HIV antibodies
- 14. Miracle Weight Loss Pill • Seems to work on obese monkeys o In 4 weeks the monkeys lost 7 – 15% of body weight • Adipotide, targets the bassod vessels that feed fat cells, or adipocytes o Targets only blood vessels associated with fat cells
Editor's Notes
- : Survival of California Adventist men (1980-1988) and other California men (1985) beyond the age of 30 years. The difference between the 2 groups was significant (P,.001). These were non-Hispanic white subjects. Hazards for 1989 are used for non-Adventist Californians older than 94 years (see the “Subjects and Methods” section of the text). AHS indicates Adventist Health Study; CI, confidence interval. http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/08/20/interventive-gerontology-1-0-02-first-try-to-make-it-to-the-mean-diet-as-a-life-extending-tool-part-3/
- The results of the Seven Countries Studies and the Lyon Heart Study based on a modified Cretan diet that is balanced in (n-6) and (n-3) fatty acids, rich in antioxidant micronutrients, and in chemoprotective trace minerals from fruits, vegetables, wild growing herbs and greens is associated with decreased rates of heart disease and cancer; more so than any other diet, drug intervention, or technique. Indeed, all attempts to date to administer nutrients believed to be protective against disease as supplements have been unsuccessful. Attempts to reduce the incidence of CVD with vitamin C, vitamin E and with folic acid and vitamin B-6 (the latter to achieve reduction in elevated serum homocyeteine levels) have failed, suggesting that the biochemical protection these molecules provide in vitro, and in laboratory animal settings, requires the presence of other molecular species in order to act in vivo.
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22107964 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19587680 TOR signalling: http://jcs.biologists.org/content/117/20/4615.full.pdf
- The death rate from cardiovascular disease in the US has plummeted since the turn of century in part due to the replacement of saturated fats with of polyunsaturated fats in the diet.[31] What appears to be unique about the Cretan (and to a lesser extent the SDA diet) is the content of bioprotective nutrients with a broad range of action, specifically the following: 1) a more balanced intake of essemtial fatty acids (EFAs) from vegetable, animal and marine sources; a ratio of (n-6) to (n-3) fatty acids of ;2:1 instead of the 15:1 in most Western diets (it is 16.74:1 in the US); and 2) a diet rich in antioxidants, i.e., high in vitamin C, vitamin E, b-carotene, glutathione, resveratrol, selenium, phytoestrogens, folate, and other phytochemicals from green leafy vegetables; phenolic compounds from wine and olive oil; high intakes of tomatoes, onions, garlic and herbs, especially oregano, mint, rosemary, parsley and dill, which contain lycopene, allyl thiosulfinates, salicylates, carotenoids, indoles, onoterpenes, polyphenols, flavonoids and other phytochemicals used in cooking vegetables, meat and fish.
- Because of its high water content and polymer network, peptide hydrogel is a promising material for protein storage and transfer without significant loss of their biological activity. These hydrogels have potential as injectable materials for medical applications, e.g., liquid injection agents that become gelatinous in the human body to keep drugs around cancerous tumors. In this study, scientists from Kansas State University, University of Nebraska, and PNNL used two native functional sequences from spider flagelliform silk protein and a trans-membrane motif of human muscle L-type calcium channel to design a self-assembling peptide, h9e. biologically safe, improved immune response on killed H1N1 virus antigen by approximately 70%, and induced a similar H1N1-specific IgG1 antibody response compared with an oil-based commercial adjuvant.
- Self-assembling sheets of mesenchymal stem cells permeated with tiny beads filled with growth factor formed thicker, stiffer cartilage than previous tissue engineering methods. "We think that the capacity to drive cartilage formation using the patient's own stem cells and the potential to use this approach without lengthy culture time prior to implantation makes this technology attractive," said Eben Alsberg The rate of microsphere degradation and, therefore, cell differentiation, can be tailored by the degree to which the microsphere are cross-linked. Within the microspheres, the polymer is connected by a varying number of threads. The more of these connections, or cross-links, the longer it takes for enzymes the cell secretes to enter and break down the material. The researchers made five kinds of sheets. Those filled with: sparsely cross-linked microspheres containing growth factor, highly cross-linked microspheres containing growth factor, sparsely cross-linked microspheres with no growth factor, highly cross-linked microspheres with no growth factor, and a control with no microspheres. The last three were grown in baths containing growth factor. After three weeks in a petri dish, all sheets containing microspheres were thicker and more resilient than the control sheet. The sheet with sparsely crosslinked microspheres grew into the thickest and most resilient neocartilage
- Self-assembling sheets of mesenchymal stem cells permeated with tiny beads filled with growth factor formed thicker, stiffer cartilage than previous tissue engineering methods. "We think that the capacity to drive cartilage formation using the patient's own stem cells and the potential to use this approach without lengthy culture time prior to implantation makes this technology attractive," said Eben Alsberg The rate of microsphere degradation and, therefore, cell differentiation, can be tailored by the degree to which the microsphere are cross-linked. Within the microspheres, the polymer is connected by a varying number of threads. The more of these connections, or cross-links, the longer it takes for enzymes the cell secretes to enter and break down the material. The researchers made five kinds of sheets. Those filled with: sparsely cross-linked microspheres containing growth factor, highly cross-linked microspheres containing growth factor, sparsely cross-linked microspheres with no growth factor, highly cross-linked microspheres with no growth factor, and a control with no microspheres. The last three were grown in baths containing growth factor. After three weeks in a petri dish, all sheets containing microspheres were thicker and more resilient than the control sheet. The sheet with sparsely crosslinked microspheres grew into the thickest and most resilient neocartilage
- http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-scalable-amounts-liver-pancreas-precursor.html Scientists in Canada have overcome a key research hurdle to developing regenerative treatments for diabetes and liver disease with a technique to produce medically useful amounts of endoderm cells from human pluripotent stem cells. The research, published in Biotechnology and Bioengineering, can be transferred to other areas of stem cell research helping scientists to navigate the route to clinical use known as the 'valley of death'. The research focused on the process of using pluripotent stem cells (PSC) to generate endoderm cells, one of the three primary germ layers which form internal organs including the lungs, pancreas, and liver. The ability to differentiate, or transform, PSCs into endoderm cells is a vital step to developing regenerative treatments for these organs.
- The promise of this approach has been foreshadowed in murine models of PD, in which DA neurons derived from mouse ESC have been found highly effective in reversing motor symptoms. But the performance of ostensibly DA neurons derived from human pluripotent stem cells in the same systems has so far been poor, due to uncertain and unstable differentiation of the cells. In a new study,(3) a team of researchers led by Dr. Lorenz Studer of the Sloan-Kettering Institute’s Center for Cell Engineering have used their novel DA neuron differentiation strategy to resolve these difficulties, leading to robust and stable engraftment of human pluripotent stem cell-derived DA neurons into the striatum and substantial evidence of efficacy in two rodent models of the disease, and provided preliminary data on the viability of their approach in nonhuman primates http://sens.org/node/2506 .
- Researchers from UCLA's cancer and stem cell centers have demonstrated for the first time that blood stem cells can be engineered to create cancer-killing T-cells that seek out and attack a human melanoma. The researchers believe the approach could be useful in about 40 percent of Caucasians with this malignancy. Done in mouse models, the study serves as the first proof-of-principle that blood stem cells, which make every type of cell found in the blood, can be genetically altered in a living organism to create an army of melanoma-fighting T-cells http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/11/ucla-scientists-engineer-blood-stem.html .
- http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/11/clinical-trial-for-muscular-dystrophy.html Clinical trial for muscular dystrophy demonstrates safety of customized gene therapy. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that it is safe to cut and paste together different viruses in an effort to create the ultimate vehicle for gene therapy. In a phase I clinical trial, the investigators found no side effects from using a “chimeric” virus to deliver replacement genes for an essential muscle protein in patients with muscular dystrophy. As they move on to the next phase of clinical trials, Samulski says they are carefully considering how best to administer the gene therapy vectors to patients. Delivering enough replacement genes to a therapeutic effect could require larger doses of virus, which in turn could elicit an unwanted immune response. So the researchers are exploring a number of different options, including using a new high pressure technique developed by William J. Powers, MD, professor and chair of neurology at UNC, reported last July in the same journal, to get the virus into muscle at lower doses.
- http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/11/gene-therapy-turns-muscles-into-hiv.html The team loaded a harmless, cold-related virus called adeno-associated virus (AAV) with genes that make potent antibodies to HIV. Then they used them to "infect" the leg muscles of mice with genes that pump out the antibodies. "The idea here is to basically supply the body with its own factory for making anti-HIV antibodies," says Baltimore. The mice continued to make the antibodies throughout their lives, and stayed healthy despite the researchers' best efforts to overwhelm them with HIV. "We expected that at some dose, the antibodies would fail to protect the mice, but there was no infection even when we gave mice 100 times more HIV than would be needed to infect seven out of eight mice," says Balaz
- http://singularityhub.com/2011/11/22/obese-monkeys-given-miracle-weight-loss-pill-video/ The study, published November 9th in the journal Science Translational Medicine, was headed by husband-and-wife team Wadih Arap and Renata Pasqualini at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Their drug, called Adipotide, targets the blood vessels that feed fat cells, or adipocytes. Attacking those blood vessels chokes off the nutrient supply that the fat cells need to survive and they either die or become stressed to the point that they don’t function. Of course, blood vessels are needed to keep all cells alive. But the major medical advancement that adipotide brings is its ability to kill blood vessels associated with fat cells while leaving other blood vessels alone. The strategy has been long sought after by cancer biologists trying to kill cancer cells while leaving normal cells unharmed. Where others had failed, Arap and Pasqualini, cancer biologists themselves, succeeded by taking an approach that was novel in multiple ways. 9uX3DShj9uX3DShjjjjj