Lifeboat Foundation

Life Biosciences is a company co-founded by the celebrity geroscientist David Sinclair and is based on his Harvard team’s research into partial cellular reprogramming. In the heated race to translate this promising technology to the clinic, Life has emerged as one of the favorites, inching closer towards clinical trials in humans. Life is counting on its proprietary reprogramming technology that uses only three out of four classic reprogramming factors and on its strong team of scientists and managers. We talked to Dr. Sharon Rosenzweig-Lipson, Life’s Chief Scientific Officer, about the company’s journey, delving deep into the technology and its future.

I’ll start by saying that Life Biosciences is one of the most exciting companies in the longevity field. You might actually become the first company to have a partial reprogramming-based therapy approved.

At Life Biosciences, we’re focused on something that matters to everyone: helping people stay healthier as they age. We’re working on what we call cellular rejuvenation technologies, basically finding ways to turn back the clock in cells and make them more youthful. I came on board as Chief Scientific Officer about a year and a half ago, but I actually got to know the company pretty well before that. I consulted for them for a year, which gave me a chance to look under the hood, see the science they were doing, and I got really excited about what I saw.

Accumulation of senescent cells drives aging and age-related diseases. Senolytics, which selectively kill senescent cells, offer a promising approach for treating many age-related diseases. Using a senescent cell-based phenotypic drug discovery approach that combines drug screening and drug design, we developed two novel flavonoid senolytics, SR29384 and SR31133, derived from the senolytic fisetin. These compounds demonstrated enhanced senolytic activities, effectively eliminating multiple senescent cell types, reducing tissue senescence in vivo, and extending healthspan in a mouse model of accelerated aging. Mechanistic studies utilizing RNA-Seq, machine learning, network pharmacology, and computational simulation suggest that these novel flavonoid senolytics target PARP1, BCL-xL, and CDK2 to induce selective senescent cell death. This phenotype-based discovery of novel flavonoid senolytics, coupled with mechanistic insights, represents a key advancement in developing next-generation senolyticss with potential clinical applications in treating aging and age-related diseases.

LJN and PDR are cofounders of Itasca Therapeutics, developing senotherapeutics for aging and age-related diseases. LJZ, LJN, PDR and the University of Minnesota have filed a provisional patent on the application of flavonoid analogs, including SR29384 and SR31133, as a strategy to treat age-related diseases.

Prof. Leslie Leiserowitz first became intrigued by malaria when he was a young boy in South Africa. His father, who scouted the continent in search of wood for the family business, brought back not only tales of elephants and gorillas but also skin rashes and ringing in his ears, side effects of the quinine he took to prevent malaria.

An estimated one in five Americans live with chronic pain and current treatment options leave much to be desired. Feixiong Cheng, Ph.D., Director of Cleveland Clinic’s Genome Center, and IBM are using artificial intelligence (AI) for drug discovery in advanced pain management. The team’s deep-learning framework identified multiple gut microbiome-derived metabolites and FDA-approved drugs that can be repurposed to select non-addictive, non-opioid options to treat chronic pain.

The findings, published in Cell Press, represent one of many ways the organizations’ Discovery Accelerator partnership is helping to advance research in healthcare and life sciences.

Treating chronic pain with opioids is still a challenge due to the risk of severe side effects and dependency, says co-first author Yunguang Qiu, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Cheng’s lab whose research program focuses on developing therapeutics for nervous system disorders. Recent evidence has shown that drugging a specific subset of pain receptors in a protein class called G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) can provide non-addictive, non-opioid pain relief. The question is how to target those receptors, Dr. Qiu explains.

CRISPR/Cas9 is a gene editing tool that has revolutionized biomedical research and led to the first FDA-approved CRISPR-based gene therapy. However, until now, the precise mechanism of exactly how this tool works and avoids creating detrimental off-target effects was not well understood.

Supramolecular metal-based structures have immense potential for biomedical applications as multimodal theranostic platforms. This Review gives an overview of the design principles and synthetic strategies; it also highlights the achievements in the field of radiochemistry.

A new photonic processor efficiently solves complex NP-complete problems using light, offering faster computation and scalability for future applications in optical neural networks and quantum computing.

As technology continues to evolve, the limitations of traditional electronic computers are becoming more evident, particularly when addressing highly complex computational problems. NP-complete problems, which grow exponentially in difficulty as their size increases, are among the most challenging in computer science. These issues affect a wide range of fields, from biomedicine to transportation and manufacturing. To find more efficient solutions, researchers are turning to alternative computing methods, with optical computing showing significant promise.

Breakthrough in Photonic Processor Development.

Michael Levin is a Distinguished Professor in the Biology department at Tufts University and associate faculty at the Wyss Institute for Bioinspired Engineering at Harvard University. @drmichaellevin holds the Vannevar Bush endowed Chair and serves as director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts and the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. Prior to college, Michael Levin worked as a software engineer and independent contractor in the field of scientific computing. He attended Tufts University, interested in artificial intelligence and unconventional computation. To explore the algorithms by which the biological world implemented complex adaptive behavior, he got dual B.S. degrees, in CS and in Biology and then received a PhD from Harvard University. He did post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School, where he began to uncover a new bioelectric language by which cells coordinate their activity during embryogenesis. His independent laboratory develops new molecular-genetic and conceptual tools to probe large-scale information processing in regeneration, embryogenesis, and cancer suppression.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 — Introduction.
1:41 — Creating High-level General Intelligences.
7:00 — Ethical implications of Diverse Intelligence beyond AI & LLMs.
10:30 — Solving the Fundamental Paradox that faces all Species.
15:00 — Evolution creates Problem Solving Agents & the Self is a Dynamical Construct.
23:00 — Mike on Stephen Grossberg.
26:20 — A Formal Definition of Diverse Intelligence (DI)
30:50 — Intimate relationships with AI? Importance of Cognitive Light Cones.
38:00 — Cyborgs, hybrids, chimeras, & a new concept called “Synthbiosis“
45:51 — Importance of the symbiotic relationship between Science & Philosophy.
53:00 — The Space of Possible Minds.
58:30 — Is Mike Playing God?
1:02:45 — A path forward: through the ethics filter for civilization.
1:09:00 — Mike on Daniel Dennett (RIP)
1:14:02 — An Ethical Synthbiosis that goes beyond “are you real or faking it“
1:25:47 — Conclusion.

Continue reading “Michael Levin: What is Synthbiosis? Diverse Intelligence Beyond AI & The Space of Possible Minds” »

A lithium-ion battery made from three droplets of hydrogel is the smallest soft battery of its kind – and it could be used in biocompatible and biodegradable implants.