Researchers continue to explore what stem cells might be able to achieve for the regeneration of serious injuries: "adult human mesenchymal stem cells may have an important role in the treatment and repair of spinal cord injuries. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are found mainly in the bone marrow and are the focus of many clinical trials that investigate potential methods of neurological repair and other regenerative applications. ...Although mesenchymal stem cells are widely known to be used in replacing damaged tissue, these stem cells may also recruit endogenous cells (those made within the body) to help accelerate the repair process. ... For the first time, [researchers] examined the use of human MSCs to prompt repair of spinal cord injuries in transgenic (genetically engineered or altered) zebrafish embryos. Zebrafish are especially valuable to researchers due to invertebrate characteristics that are similar to those of humans, the transparency of their bodies and their ability to initiate regeneration of damaged tissue. The study demonstrates that human MSCs affix to the injury site and influence spinal cord cells to accelerate the repair process. ... Our results indicate that MSC therapy not only augments recovery after spinal cord injury, but also accelerates the recovery time"

Link: http://www.newswise.com/articles/research-indicates-that-adult-human-mesenchymal-stem-cells-may-be-viable-treatment-for-spinal-cord-injury-repair

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

Via ScienceDaily: "Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer. Rather than presenting as a well-defined tumor, glioblastoma will often infiltrate the surrounding brain tissue, making it extremely difficult to treat surgically or with chemotherapy or radiation. ... [scientists] developed a method to combine a tumor-homing peptide, a cell-killing peptide, and a nanoparticle that both enhances tumor cell death and allows the researchers to image the tumors. When used to treat mice with glioblastoma, this new nanosystem eradicated most tumors in one model and significantly delayed tumor development in another. ... This is a unique nanosystem for two reasons. First, linking the cell-killing peptide to nanoparticles made it possible for us to deliver it specifically to tumors, virtually eliminating the killer peptide's toxicity to normal tissues. Second, ordinarily researchers and clinicians are happy if they are able to deliver more drugs to a tumor than to normal tissues. We not only accomplished that, but were able to design our nanoparticles to deliver the killer peptide right where it acts - the mitochondria, the cell's energy-generating center. ... In this study, our patients were mice that developed glioblastomas with the same characteristics as observed in humans with the disease. We treated them systemically with the nanoparticles. Once the nanoparticles reached the tumors' blood vessels, they delivered their payload (a drug) directly to the cell's power producer, the mitochondria. By destroying the blood vessels and also some surrounding tumor cells, we were able to cure some mice and extend the lifespan of the rest,"

Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111003151828.htm

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

Long-standing businesses must index everything they do to the changing - almost always falling - value of their regional currency, but very few smaller businesses do this in any sort of a deterministic way. Your average talented and determined fellow willing to start a company knows a lot about the business itself, but generally isn't very knowledgeable regarding currencies, inflation, finance, and so forth. That sort of expertise doesn't emerge in a company as a matter of course until it becomes much larger. So smaller businesses deal with the falling value of money by raising their prices as best they can on an ad hoc basis, but this is ever a challenge for products that involve very long memberships. Trying to raise rates on existing customers is, frankly, one of the hardest things a business can do. But raise rates they must, as modern paper currencies have long been set on a relentless spiral of devaluation.

This happens because politicians and government bureaucrats can use the strategic devaluation of their national fiat currency as a way to generate significantly more revenue for a given level of public upheaval than can be achieved through direct taxation - so of course they tend to do exactly that. This is why inflation exists, and is arguably why fiat currencies continue to enjoy such wide, legally-enforced use. So fiat currencies are somewhat systematically, somewhat opportunistically devalued over time in ways that result in a transfer of wealth from the public at large and into the control of politicians, bureaucrats, and their close supporters.

This is one of a number of processes that make long-term prognostication on future costs a challenge. Others include assumptions on the economies of scale that will emerge with success in development, or success in popularity of a product - successful products invariably become much cheaper as they become more widespread. This happens because competitors figure out more effective means of building the product, and because it is usually cheaper on a per-unit cost to build a hundred widgets rather than ten widgets.

The cryonics industry is presently running into a number of these issues. It offers products that are commonly paid for over decades, or where decades might elapse between the ink drying on a contract and the actual provision of service. The industry is decades old, but never grew to the point at which experience in managing the consequences of currency devaluation and other long-term strategic issues would naturally emerge amongst the major players in a field. At Alcor, this manifests as a growing underfunding issue, and to the credit of the present management they are openly publishing their current thinking on the matter:

The cryonics economies anticipated by Robert Ettinger in 1965 were never realized. By the 1970s, the cost of whole body cryopreservation as offered by TransTime and Soma (the for-profit arm of IABS, which later merged with Alcor) was $60,000. As shown in Fig. 1, the nominal dollar cost of cryonics has risen steadily with Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation since then. By 2011, the minimum funding for whole body cryopreservation with Alcor was $200,000. Even this large number has not kept pace with inflation, so another increase will be necessary soon.

Whenever Alcor has increased cryopreservation minimums, it has traditionally only required new members to meet new minimum funding requirements. Existing members were "grandfathered," and allowed to remain members even if their cryopreservation funding fell below new minimums. This was and is believed to be important for members who due to age or disability become uninsurable, and would otherwise have to leave Alcor after many years of supporting the organization. ... However the main way that Alcor coped with grandfathering was by just taking the loss on what was historically a small number of underfunded cases. There was never a quantitative analysis of the impact of grandfathering, or a specific financial plan for dealing with it. ... The sustainability of this has been questioned on numerous occasions.

You should read the whole thing; it outlines the problem, puts numbers to it to show the size, and presents a range of possible solutions, along with discussion of their merits.

The bottom line is that businesses must act like businesses, even when they have their roots in the non-profit space, research, advocacy, and saving the world, as is the case for most of the ongoing cryonics concerns. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and the cost of providing a service has to be met somehow - if it isn't, then the whole product structure and relationship with the customer has to be rethought. The challenges of managing business agreements across decades have to be addressed by cryonics providers one way or another, such as by continually and clearly indexing against inflation for customers, or by using specialized financial instruments akin to futures contracts, as is the practice in many industries that have to make very long-term commitments and want to shield their customers from the complexity inherent in doing that.

In practice, things are always more complicated and intricate than the sweeping statements I give above, but I think an organization willing to put out a document that talks through their issues in this way is an organization with the right mindset to come to a solution. Openness is a virtue in this modern world, and I think that it is a very beneficial approach to customer relations when those relations have to extend across decades. Many of the most successful companies can be said to have communities as much as they have customers, and I don't see that as being a bad thing for the cryonics industry.

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

MItochondrial function, structure, and damage are clearly important to longevity, both within and between species, so it should be no surprise to find mitochondrial DNA haplogroups associated with variations in human longevity: "Human longevity is a complex heritable genetic trait. Based on substantial evidence from model organisms, it is clear that mitochondria play a pivotal role in aging and lifespan. However, the effects that mitochondrial genome variations have upon longevity and longevity-related phenotypes in Zhuang people in China have yet to be established. By genotyping 15 variants for 10 haplogroups in 738 Zhuang subjects, including 367 long-lived individuals and 371 controls, we found that haplogroup F was significantly associated with longevity in females of Zhuang population of China. Additionally, haplogroup F was related to higher HDL levels in long-lived individuals. Further analysis suggests that the non-synonymous variant m.13928G>C in haplogroup F was also associated with longevity in female Zhuang Chinese which might account for the beneficial effect of F."

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21945877

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

The Volokh Conspiracy on the correlations between health and wealth in a region, a connection with compelling evidence both before and after the Industrial Revolution: "for most of history, gains in human life expectancy were made at the beginning, not the end of life. It is true that older people have always been part of society, but they were less numerous and more weathered than today's seniors. ... But that is not the end of the story. Rather, it is the beginning of a new chapter where humanity takes on ill health and death at later ages. Indeed, those efforts have already had an impact on the growth of life expectancy. ... For many years, it's been clear that there is a positive correlation between health and wealth, but it was most commonly thought that wealth creates health. While it is certainly true that the rich can afford to take better care of themselves, it is now known that health also begets wealth. Put another way, poor health causes a decline in productivity for the simple reason that it's very difficult to work effectively when you're in ill health, thereby increasing the chances of falling into poverty. ... based on the available research, if there are 'two countries that are identical in all respects, except that one has a 5 year advantage in life expectancy,' then the 'real income per capita in the healthier country will grow 0.3-0.5% per year faster than in its less healthy counterpart.' While these percentages might look small, they are actually quite significant, especially when one considers that between the years of 1965 to 1990, countries experienced an average per capita income growth of 2% per year. When countries only have an average growth of 2%, an advantage of 0.5% is quite the boost. Now, those numbers are based only on a 5 year longevity advantage. What if a country had a 10, 20, or 30 year advantage? The growth may not continue on a linear basis, but if the general rule holds - a jump in life expectancy causes an increase in economic growth per capita - then having a longer-lived population would facilitate enormous differences in economic prosperity."

Link: http://volokh.com/2011/10/04/healthier-and-wealthier/

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm

I stumbled upon a series of open access review papers today, entitled "The Changing Understanding of Aging," written by a veterinarian for an audience of practitioners largely unfamiliar with the history and present state of aging research. As a consequence it's very readable for the layperson, and it really doesn't matter that the papers are as much focused on the animal kingdom as on human research: at the high level much of what is the case for the mammals we keep as pets is also the case for humans - the same theories apply. Only the details of our biochemistries are different, which does lead to greatly differing life spans and rates of aging, but all proceeding according to much the same fundamental mechanisms.

Part 1: Evaluating ageing theories and studies (Full PDF)

This is the first of three discussions on emerging views of ageing, its derivation, and ageing-related diseases. To offer a context for the series, this first report briefly reviews several major early and recent theoretical debates. Arguments for and against several well-known ageing theories are presented for their veterinary relevance, including mutation, pleiotropy, reproduction-longevity trade-offs, oxygen metabolism and ageing as a genomically programmed product of natural selection. ... Central ideas of these discussions include why post-reproductive life span is relatively common among animals, the nature of age-related diseases relative to stochastic or programmed origins and the disease-related implications.

Part 2: Body composition, metabolism and cell death (Full PDF)

This second of three discussions about ageing biology and diseases continues at the level of the organism, examining the relationship among body composition, late life and diseases. ... Sarcopenia is declining mass and strength of skeletal muscle during aging. Healthy humans experience a 20%-40% reduced physical strength during decades 7 and 8. In one study, prevalence of sarcopenia among 883 elderly persons ranged from 13%-24% over the ages 65 to 70 and >50% after the age of 80. ... It is disconcerting that investigators have identified early skeletal muscle mass decline in some humans, with substantial change by decade five. Potential life span implications for individuals in this category need to be monitored by primary care and specialist physicians, and not just by geriatricians. Additional implications are that new studies need to be conducted to establish whether or how subtle mid-life changes in muscle mass and strength can be observed across animal species and what concerns accrue for their health and longevity.

Part 3: Diseases of ageing (Full PDF)

A contentious debate revolves around whether ageing is purely a combined effect of stochastic events on residual programming relating to reproductive robustness, or whether ageing itself is programmed by natural selection. Emerging data indicate that the influence of genetic programming on specific late-life diseases, and even individual tissue pathologies, will probably need to be reconsidered in the light of newer theoretical possibilities.

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm