Lifeboat Foundation

Discovering And Developing Medicines To Keep You Biologically Young — Dr. Marco Quarta, Ph.D. — Co-Founder and CEO, Rubedo Life Sciences; CEO, Phaedon Institute.

Dr. Marco Quarta, Ph.D. is Co-Founder and CEO of Rubedo Life Sciences (https://www.rubedolife.com/), a biopharmaceutical company developing a broad portfolio of innovative therapies engineered to target cells which drive chronic age-related diseases. The company’s proprietary ALEMBIC™ drug discovery platform has engineered novel first-in-class small molecules designed to selectively target senescent cells, which play a key role in the progression of pulmonary, dermatological, oncological, neurodegenerative, fibrotic and other chronic disorders.

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Anencephaly is a rare birth defect in which a baby is born without most of its brain. The disease largely can be prevented with folic acid.

This November, researchers, clinicians, and investors will descend on Miami, Florida for the annual Wonderland conference. This year, the world’s leading psychedelics conference is expanding its focus to include longevity for the first time, welcoming top speakers from across the field, from Bryan Johnson to Aubrey de Grey.

Through a series of keynotes, round table and panel discussions, and town hall open mic sessions, the event aims to explore the increasingly linked topics of psychedelic medicine, mental health, and longevity medicine.

Longevity. Technology: Every month it seems, more and more research is highlighting the connection between mental health and longevity – from accelerated biological aging to reduced life expectancy. With psychedelics simultaneously demonstrating compelling results in the treatment of mental conditions, from depression to PTSD, the synergies between longevity and psychedelic medicine are clear. We caught up with leading longevity physician Dr Halland Chen to tap into his views on recent developments in longevity medicine and its links with the psychedelic world.

A tiny device implanted during brain surgery could help provide personalized information about a tumor’s potential responses to cancer-fighting drugs.

Stanislaw Ulam Memorial Lecture Series Ricard Solé Universitat Pompeu Fabra, SFI Lecture 2: Synthetic Brains and Minds: What is Possible? In our search fo…

As befits the child of a scientist, Martin Picard’s young son, 3, is already learning about biology with an age-appropriate textbook, “Cell Biology for Babies.” Picard winces a little whenever the book calls mitochondria the “powerhouses of the cell” but figures he has plenty of time as his son grows older to explain why the tiny organelles are much more than simple energy sources.

Picard is a leading proponent of mitochondrial psychobiology (a phrase he coined), an emerging field that examines how psychological states like stress influence mitochondrial functions, which in turn influence mental and physical health.

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Children whose mothers had a higher exposure to certain phthalates during pregnancy tend to show smaller total gray matter in their brains at age 10. This is one of the main conclusions of a study led by the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), and published in Molecular Psychiatry.

The study also found that maternal exposure to plasticizers during pregnancy is associated with lower child IQ at age 14, which confirmed the results of two previous study on the topic. Moreover, the research team observed that this relationship between exposure to certain phthalates and lower child IQ is partially influenced by total gray matter volumes. In other words: exposure to plasticizers before birth could lead to smaller total gray matter in childhood, which in turn could be related to a lower IQ.

Finally, the results showed an association between gestational exposure to plasticizers and smaller white matter volumes in girls.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of long-term disability and premature death, especially among military personnel and those playing contact sports. Substantial research has examined acute and chronic neurological consequences of TBI; however, non-neurological conditions associated with TBI are understudied.

A new review paper by investigators from Mass General Brigham presents key findings on long-term associations between TBI and cardiovascular disease, highlighting that nervous system dysfunction, neuroinflammation, changes in the brain-gut connection, and post-injury comorbidities may elevate risk of both cardiovascular and cognitive dysfunction in TBI survivors compared to the general population.

The review, published in The Lancet Neurology, emphasizes the need for future cardiovascular research, surveillance and intervention in TBI survivors.

Psychoses like schizophrenia cost billions of dollars annually and derail the lives of people struggling with the disease. Now Monash University researchers have modeled how the effects of psychosis spread through the brain, allowing them to isolate areas where these changes may originate from and which could be targeted by therapies designed to reduce the disease’s progression.