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Anti-aging stem cell treatment proves successful in early human trials
- Numberwang 9y agoIs there a credible source for this?
- King-Aaron 9y agoPhase 1 trial article: https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/72/11/1505/3746183/Allogeneic-Human-Mesenchymal-Stem-Cell-Infusions https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/72/11/150... Phase 2 trial article: https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/72/11/1513/3977809/Allogeneic-Mesenchymal-Stem-Cells-Ameliorate-Aging https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/72/11/151...
- Pica_soO 9y agoVery interesting. Kudos to the researchers, who really went for improvement in condition- and not just reported stabilizing conditions and the placebo effect of exercise as a false positive.
- Tepix 9y agoThe question is this: Will those bone marrow donors have adverse side effects (faster aging)?
- orting 9y agoThe phase 2 study primarily looked at safety. There was no correction for multiple hypothesis testing on the efficacy endpoints. So it seems that the only conclusion that is warranted is that the study shows no adverse health effects and that "larger clinical trials are warranted to establish the efficacy of hMSCs in this multisystem disorder." as they state in the conclusion. It is interesting if it works, but lets wait for the next phase before assuming it does.
- nopinsight 9y ago“In the first trial 15 frail patients received a single MSC infusion collected from bone marrow donors aged between 20 and 45 years old. Six months later all patients demonstrated improved fitness outcomes, tumor necrosis factor levels and overall quality of life. The second trial was a randomized, double blind study with placebo group. Again no adverse affects were reported and physical improvements were noted by the researchers as "remarkable". "There are always caveats associated with interpreting efficacy in small numbers of subjects, yet it is remarkable that a single treatment seems to have generated improvement in key features of frailty that are sustained for many months," writes David G. Le Couter and colleagues in a guest editorial in The Journals of Gerontology praising the research.”
- orting 9y agoI am not criticizing the study. I am highlighting that the conclusion that the paper arrives at i the correct one: That it warrants large scale studies. This work is a prime candidate for being misrepresented as showing that this stem cell treatment is effective for age related health issues. There are 30 participants in the phase 2 trial. There are two treatment groups (100M and 200M) with different dose and one placebo group. Each group has 10 participants. None of the treatment groups showed adverse effects. There is a difference between asking "Are there any adverse effects?" and "are there positive effects for parameter 1 to n"? If you ask the second kind of question and do not correct for multiple hypothesis testing, you will make many errors. The small dose treatment group (100M) showed improvement in many parameters vs placebo, whereas the other (200M) showed improvement in fewer parameters vs placebo. Since no corrections where made for testing, this only tell us that there where no statistically significant adverse effects. As I noted initially, I think it is interesting. Once we have seen the results of a couple of large studies, we can talk about the effects of this treatment.
- nopinsight 9y agoThank you for your reply, in particular for the specific issue with the results. I quoted the article to show that the researchers seem to believe that the trial results are more promising than a formal analysis would suggest. I agree that further studies are required.
- RahulVats 9y agoEarly human trials are a bit late ...I am already turning 40 soon. Nevertheless, a great achievement
- mcv 9y agoLet's start harvesting bone marrow from young people to help old rich people. It has no downsides, I hear.
- ourmandave 9y agoBut the system will collapse without young healthy people signing up.
- brixon 9y agoThis is where clones would be helpful.
- away2017throw 9y agoSilicon Valley already has blood boys.
- dingo_bat 9y agoThe show or the city?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- faltad 9y agoThis comment on reddit (and all the subchildren) shines a different light on that study: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/78f3wg/antiaging_stem_cell_treatment_proves_successful/dotd0ep/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/78f3wg/antiaging_s...
- m3nu 9y agoLet's hope he's right. Life is a cycle and without death the world will be a very boring place.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- keymone 9y agoyou're welcome to die whenever you want, just don't speak for the rest of us.
- hohenheim 9y agoA better way to put is that, without death we wouldn't have progressed as a race as much as we have done. We need new people with fresh ideas to come to top, take higher roles and make radical decisions. People living longer will stay in power longer and keep the status quo alive. In a longer stretch, conservationism, which grows like age, is an impediment for innovation and progress, IMHO.
- jokoon 9y agoThis sounds like darwinism. Evolution is a law of nature, not a law of society. What you say is true for species that don't have language or civilization. But since humans have technology, evolution happens in our minds, not in our DNA. And new ideas don't necessarily require new people. > radical decisions Like what? > People living longer will stay in power longer and keep the status quo alive. What kind of prediction is that?
- alexee 9y agoIf you google stem cells + <disease name> you can find <promising> research for almost any disease, can anyone explain in simple terms, what is so magical in stem cells therapy?
- nsomaru 9y agoMy layman's understanding is that stem cells have not yet 'differentiated' into a specialised cell type which makes them useful for many different types of treatments. Edit: so you can use them to create "healthy" versions of whatever you need.
- dandare 9y agoAs others pointed out this study may not be scientifically conclusive and I am not in a position to comment on that. What strikes me is our lack of preparedness for advances is anti-aging treatments that will inevitably come. Even adding as little as 20 years to the average lifespan will have enormous (devastating?) implications for the economy and society. Especially if the treatment will be expensive and not available universally. I keep hearing about the urgency to focus on research in the safety of AI, but I have not noticed any urgency regarding the consequences of anti-aging medicine.
- hacker_9 9y ago> I have not noticed any urgency regarding the consequences of anti-aging medicine. Because that medicine is usually a hoax of some sort. Saying that, people are living longer and longer, and changes are being made to prepare for that. More people = more houses and jobs. In the UK having a pension is mandatory now etc
- away2017throw 9y agoMore interested in no pensions but 3 day work weeks and 2 months vacation.
- cee_el1234 9y agoIf this turns out to be more effective for younger people - it would decrease the number of people becoming care-seekers, rather than increase them.
- dalbasal 9y agoFirst, let's see some real movement on anti aging. AI can play go and drive cars, what'the anti aging equivalent. 2nd, we've already added those 20 years of average life in most places, without much anti aging. Antibiotics, sterile surgery, vaccination, geriatric medicine. Childhood deaths went down a lot. Mid life deaths too. Old age is much longer than it was with life expectancy at retirement trending towards 90. We've already had the economic/societal consequences in the west/north/rich places. The first (childhood survival) too in the form of population explosions still in play in some places. I doubt anti aging has bigger effects than that within the next 50 years, even if life expectancy at birth leaps to 100 tomorrow. Anyway if it really slows aging it'll extend people's productive middle life, which is mostly good economically.
- germainemalcolm 9y agoCan anyone think of an endogenous way us to do this?
- ourmandave 9y agoOh great, if this works Crazy Head Transplant Guy is out of a job. Thanks a lot. =( (I might have been an early investor.)
- Jaruzel 9y agoTechnically, it's a full body transplant, not a head transplant.
- al_chemist 9y agoTechnically, it's an almost full body transplant (full body minus head).
- psergeant 9y agoSome lobbyist somewhere is super excited about getting pro-lifers and strong-in-crime types sufficiently riled up that they’ll approve this treatment to force prisoners to live out every year they were sentenced to.
- 14xx3 9y agoThis is going to sound slightly tin-foilish, but the question needs to be asked: Are there rich/powerful people who are benefiting from anti-aging technology already? I'm thinking of Robert Mugabe (age 93) who regularly goes to East Asia, as an example, for medical treatment, but there seem to be others.
- lawlessone 9y ago93? he's probably just healthy.
- smitherfield 9y agoHeads of state tend to have staffs watching them all day, so they don't fall and break their hips, and drivers so they don't get into car accidents, and they get immediately rushed to the hospital every time they have even so much as a cold. That's why (US) ex-presidents are now routinely living into their 90's (and longer?).
- saiya-jin 9y agoReaching into 90s ain't that hard if you have OK genes and didn't fuck up along the way with addictions, or very bad lifestyle habits. It's just that most people have a slightly destructive habit or two, which might not be outright terrible but it compounds over decades. Add the fact that very few people do some physically intense activities regularly (ideally daily). Hence the current results. The simple fact is, most rich quickly realize that they can lead pretty awesome lives if they want to, and the motivation to keep this state for as long as possible is strong. So most of them lead actually pretty healthy lifestyles. It just doesn't make good headlines.
- reasonattlm 9y agoThis should probably be considered an anti-inflammatory therapy rather than an anti-aging therapy. Inflammation is a sufficiently sizable driver of frailty syndrome to make that beneficial, but this is not addressing root causes, just compensating a little for one of the secondary consequences. The scope of the possible in the near term is to find way to incrementally improve the condition, not produce a sizable reversal, but that is an improvement over the current situation, given that there is no effective treatment. The closest thing to a standardized, proven, reliable class of stem cell therapies involves the use of mesenchymal stem cells, sourced from a patient, or from lines of cells grown and engineered for transplantation with minimal risk. The primary outcome of mesenchymal stem cell therapies, or at least the reliable outcome, is a reduction in the systemic, chronic inflammation that accompanies old age. While it is entirely possible that other mechanisms are at work, the cells typically don't last long following transplantation, and thus it is the brief signaling changes that must produce benefits that can last for months or longer. Chronic inflammation is a major problem in aging. It drives progression of most of the age-related conditions, and high levels of inflammation are certainly considered to be a major component of frailty syndrome in the old. In the context of a general treatment for frailty based on reductions in inflammation, the focus is less on the acceleration of specific age-related conditions over time, however, and more on the immediate consequences of constant high levels of inflammation for cell biochemistry, pain, cognitive function, joint function, regeneration, and tissue maintenance. Many aspects of age-related dysfunction are to some degree being actively maintained in their current impacted state by the presence of inflammation - take away that inflammation, and the problems subside a little, back to the lower level of harm and loss expected due to accumulated cell and tissue damage. In recent years, it has become clear that chronic inflammation, as opposed to the normal short-term inflammation resulting from injury or infection, disrupts the finely tuned dance carried out between tissue and immune system needed for regeneration. This is an emerging theme in the investigation of how senescent cells cause aging, for example, as these unwanted cells are potent sources of inflammatory signaling. So if we see unreliable or marginal benefits from stem cell therapies that look like enhanced regeneration, it might well be that this is at root a short-term reduction in the age-related disruption of tissue maintenance - perhaps enough to allow a little reconstruction to take place in some patients. This is speculation, of course, and the cellular biochemistry is challenging to investigate; we should probably expect a first generation of moderately reliable therapies in advance of complete understanding of their mechanisms. Here is another point to consider on this topic: if the inflammation model of benefits is correct, then clearance of senescent cells should be at least as good a treatment for frailty as mesenchymal stem cell transplant, and probably better and more lasting.
- charlesism 9y agoI flagged this. "Successful" suggests it actually prevented aging. From the comments here, and on Reddit, it looks like that's sensationalism.
- perseusprime11 9y agoHonestly when it comes to longevity and anti-aging, look to CRISPR not to these treatments.
- SubiculumCode 9y agoI want anti-aging, but I believe that our modern society will most likely self-destruct in fire and death sometime in the next 100 years the most likely outcome, which would limit the usefulness of such treatments.
- cee_el1234 9y agoSure yes, scores of people are going to die of much sadder causes - natural and manmade disasters, epidemics, crime But a decent number will surive and since they'll have the arduous task of rebuilding civilization (in a much more thoughtful way this time) - such treatments would prove all the more useful
- olegkikin 9y agoAnti-aging is, in my mind, the most important area of research. I'm shocked billionaires are not throwing billions of dollars at it. Everything else can literally wait.