Lifeboat Foundation

Excellent. Now, the question is “has Microsoft seen this?” as they are working on solving Diabetes too as part of their Synbio program that has already shown us their DNA Data Storage.

People with type 1 diabetes must inject themselves with insulin multiple times per day. This is because their immune system has destroyed cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin to maintain a healthy blood glucose level.

A team of bioengineers now report a possible alternative to such injections. The researchers engineered human kidney cells to act like pancreatic β cells, namely to sense blood glucose levels and produce insulin accordingly (Science 2016, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf4006). When implanted in mice with type 1 diabetes, the cells prevent high blood glucose levels, also known as hyperglycemia.

Continue reading “Potential diabetes therapy: Engineered cells that control blood sugar” »

After getting off its $100 million-plus IPO in the summer, gene editing biotech Intellia Therapeutics is getting ready for human tests of its preclinical CRISPR tech with new digs designed to help bolster its research capabilities.

The biotech, which has the backing and partnerships of the likes of Atlas, Novartis and Regeneron, is on the move as it heads over to its new lab facilities at 40 Erie Street, in Cambridge, MA.

“The field of genome editing is rapidly evolving and our work to develop therapies for patients requires that we have the infrastructure necessary for R&D growth and prepare for preclinical studies and clinical trials,” said Dr. Nessan Bermingham, CEO and founder of Intellia Therapeutics.

Continue reading “Intellia gears up for human testing of CRISPR with new HQ, set to double staffers” »

The CellAge AMA is open for questions, come along and ask about biotechnology, senolytics and so on.

Welcome to the CellAge AMA with Mantas Matjusaitis, PhD student in synthetic biology and founder of CellAge. I am here to talk about our work to improve the targeting of dysfunctional “senescent” cells in the body, and thereby aid in their eventual removal. This is important because removal of these cells has been shown to be a critical component in the effort to improve healthy human lifespan.

In short, CellAge is going to develop synthetic DNA promoters which are specific to senescent cells, as the promoters that are currently used for this purpose, such as the p16 gene promoter, suffer from various issues and limitations (not comprehensively targeting all senescent cells, collateral damage in targeting some cells that are not senescent, etc.). You can find more details in our technology video here, and on our Lifespan.io information page.

Continue reading “CellAge AMA: Targeting Senescent Cells with Synthetic Biology for Human Longevity : Futurology” »

Check out the The Longevity Reporter interview with CellAge as they talk about rejuvenation biotechnology.

Innovative new startup Cell Age is using synthetic biology to develop new ways of targeting and removing senescent cells. We caught up with CEO Mantas Matjusaitis for an interview as their first fundraiser goes live on Lifespan.io (find it here)

Continue reading “CellAge: A New Startup Targeting Senescent Cells With Synthetic Biology — Longevity Reporter” »

Synthetic Biology Diabetes mellitus affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Blood glucose levels are chronically deregulated in diabetics, and this can lead to many serious disorders, including cardiovascular disease and renal failure. Xie et al. engineered a synthetic circuit into human.

FightAging! interviews Mantas from CellAge about their campaign on Lifespan.io / Life Extension Advocacy Foundation and talks about senolytics and synthetic biology.

I mentioned CellAge some weeks ago; a new entry to the collection of companies and research groups interested in developing the means to safely identify and remove senescent cells from old tissues. A few days later one of those companies, UNITY Biotechnology, announced a sizable $116 million venture round, which certainly put the field on the map for anyone who wasn’t paying attention up until that point. In contrast, CellAge are determinedly taking the non-profit route, and intend to make the progress they create freely available to the field. Why are senescent cells important? Because they are a cause of aging, and removing them is a narrowly focused form of rejuvenation, shown to restore function and extend healthy life in animal studies. An increasing number of senescent cells linger in our bodies as we age, secreting signals that harm tissue structures, produce chronic inflammation, and alter the behavior of nearby cells for the worse. Senescent cells also participate more directly in some disease processes, such as the growth of fatty deposits, weakening and blocking blood vessels, that takes place in atherosclerosis. By the time that senescent cells come to make up 1% of the cell population in an organ, their presence causes noticeable dysfunction and contributes significantly to the progression of all of the common age-related diseases.

This coming Monday, the CellAge team will be hosting an /r/futurology AMA event — the post is up already if you want add your own questions for the scientists involved. Earlier this week, the CellAge principals launched a crowdfunding campaign with Lifespan.io: they are seeking $40,000 with stretch goals and rewards beyond that to get started on their vision for senescent cell therapies. If you’ve ever wanted the chance to have a DNA promoter sequence named after you … well, here it is. This has certainly been a busy year for community fundraising in rejuvenation research: I imagine that things will heat up even more in the years ahead. The CellAge view of the field of senescent cell clearance is that the markers currently used to identify senescent cells are too crude and lacking in specificity.

Continue reading “An Interview with Mantas Matjusaitis of CellAge, Crowdfunding New Senescent Cell Markers and Removal Methodologies” »

We recently wrote an article about how we need to redefine what “nanotechnology” means in the context of looking for “nanotech” companies to invest it. When you can use synthetic biology and gene editing to change the way that bacteria function by genetically modifying them, the result are microscopic biological machines. These tiny biological machines sound a whole lot like the nanobots that we were promised which would go around doing cool things without even being visible to the human eye. Earlier this year we profiled three companies that we claimed were working on building nanobot factories that create designer organisms on demand. Let’s take a closer look at one of these companies called Ginkgo Bioworks.

Founded in 2008, Massachusetts based startup Ginkgo Bioworks has taken in a total of $154 million in funding so far with their latest $100 million Series C round closing in summer of this year. The Company refers to themselves as “the organism company” and their value proposition has attracted investment from a whole slew of investors who realize the potential of developing new organisms that can replace technology with biology. In their own words, Ginkgo Bioworks is doing “programming without a debugger, manufacturing without CAD, and construction without cranes” which requires a whole lot of intellectual firepower and may be why they have 5 founders:

Researchers have discovered a way to program cells to inhibit CRISPR-Cas9 activity. “Anti-CRISPR” proteins had previously been isolated from viruses that infect bacteria, but now University of Toronto and University of Massachusetts Medical School scientists report three families of proteins that turn off CRISPR systems specifically used for gene editing. The work, which appears December 15 in Cell, offers a new strategy to prevent CRISPR-Cas9 technology from making unwanted changes.

“Making CRISPR controllable allows you to have more layers of control on the system and to turn it on or off under certain conditions, such as where it works within a cell or at what point in time,” says lead author Alan Davidson, a phage biologist and bacteriologist at the University of Toronto. “The three anti-CRISPR proteins we’ve isolated seem to bind to different parts of the Cas9, and there are surely more out there.”

CRISPR inhibitors are a natural byproduct of the evolutionary arms race between viruses and bacteria. Bacteria use CRISPR-Cas complexes to target and cut up genetic material from invading viruses. In response, viruses have developed proteins that, upon infection, can quickly bind to a host bacterium’s CRISPR-Cas systems, thus nullifying their effects.

Senolytics meets Synthetic biology so come along and ask them anything!

Hey folks, We are excited to announce that the CellAge longform AMA opens Friday for questions and the CellAge team will answer them from Monday 11am PST/2pm EST/6pm GMT. We will update the link to the Futurology AMA once it is ready.

CellAge are using synthetic biology to create new biomarkers for senescent cell detection, developing a new therapy to remove senescent cells which drive the aging process using custom synthetic biology. Come along and ask them all about it.

Continue reading “The CellAge long form AMA Starts Friday with questions answered Monday 11am PST/2pm EST/6pm GMT” »