14 ms·
Progress of anti-aging therapies by clinical trial stage
- xiphias2 7y agoWhile I'm taking NMN, as it's proven to be safe, I know that HGH + DHEA is the only drug from the list that has already proven to make healthy people younger. I'm seriously considering it in a few years after it has more time to be proven safe enough. For now I'm planning to measure DNA methylation in my body to understand the reason for my chronic illnesses better. I already got my DNA sequenced, but now that methylation can be measured cheaply as well, I don't see a reason why not to.
- Erlich_Bachman 7y ago> I know that HGH + DHEA is the only drug from the list that has already proven to make healthy people younger. If you have any ready-researched and outlined sources or links for this, please post them here for reference. I know that we all can google, but I think linking here will help a lot of people, me included. HN articles are sometimes used as an online notepad of sorts, a repository of well researched and compiled information with built-in peer review from (hopefully, since they are on HN) somewhat competent even if amateur internet researchers.
- nikkwong 7y agoMy guess is he is referring to this paper, which made headlines a few months ago: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/acel.13028 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/acel.13028
- socceroos 7y ago...tested on 7 people.
- jonplackett 7y agoIs HGH + DHEA available to buy like a supplement? I would have presumed something containing hormones would be more regulated?
- chrisco255 7y agoNot in the U.S.
- JimboOmega 7y agoNot only is HGH regulated, it even is specifically addressed under law (in the US) that lead some to believe that even prescribing it off-label it is illegal. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HGH_controversies#Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HGH_controversies#Law
- xiphias2 7y agoNo, as it requires strong medical supervision. Greg Fahy’s company is running experiments on humans approved by the FDA in his company in Los Angeles.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- waserwill 7y agoMaybe you know this, but: Interpreting DNA methylation isn't straightforward. Since it's involved in gene regulation and cell differentiation, it's variable across cells. Due to regulatory networks, whether any particular methylated region is responsible for some outcome may also be unclear. That being said, if you have reason to believe that the knowledge will help, or are just curious, feel free
- xiphias2 7y agosure, I understand that, but from what I saw the data isn’t that hard to process either, there are multiple R libraries actually that help, I’m currently also learning Genomics Analysis Harvard course at edx.org. I already found multiple papers published in the last few years that identified the important locations with methylation changes, and those targets map to known illneses. I tried to go to many doctors, but as they couldn’t measure any important changes with their toolboxes, they all sent me to psychologists. Thanks for offering help, I’m always interested in learning more about genomics, though right now my plan is to learn by reproducing some articles that I read that contain methylation data sets (after the Harvard course).
- asdff 7y agochances are you had your dna genotyped, not sequenced, if it was cheap. measuring your methylation patterns is not going to be cheap as you need to sequence your dna twice to see what has actually been methylated. i'm not sure if any companies are offering a consumer targeted panel approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisulfite_sequencing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisulfite_sequencing
- xiphias2 7y agoI’m planning to do 450k or EPIC BEADS chip, not whole epigenom sequencing, as most researchers used 450k chip for finding the interesting methylation differences for people affected by high air pollution. I saw about $500/sample, but if it’s significantly more, it’s not a problem for me, my chronic disease isn’t going away anyways.
- arrosenberg 7y ago> I already got my DNA sequenced, but now that methylation can be measured cheaply as well, I don't see a reason why not to. Are they just quantifying how many methyl groups are attached to a piece of DNA? Methylation is a mechanism for site-specific in/activation, so I'm unclear (and curious) how this would be useful.
- xiphias2 7y agoMethylation is changes slowly throughout the life, the strongest predictor of age inside the body (that's why it's used as an aging clock). This also means that it may be the most important thing to learn to manipulate to defeat aging. Also it's the cause of many non-genetic chronic diseases that come with age. In summary it's a really really important thing to study. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetic_clock#Properties_of_Horvath's_clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetic_clock#Properties_of... There are other hallmarks of aging though: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836174/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3836174/
- JimboOmega 7y agoWhat's the difference between NMN vs NR? I take NR and they're chemically similar and I thought both are sold as anti-aging?
- xiphias2 7y agoThey are similar, David Sinclair prefers NMN, but he doesn't have that strong preference.
- chrisco255 7y agoIt's been claimed by some that NR is less stable in the bloodstream and doesn't boost NAD+ levels as much as NMN.
- dpatrick86 7y agoWhat makes you think NMN has been "proven to be safe?" That's a pretty strong standard to conform to. There's virtually no clinical work that's been done at all, for starters. A lot of genuine promising research in animals, but you also have this animal cancer model that suggests at least a little caution... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6448588/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6448588/
- chrisco255 7y agoNMN is a B-vitamin derivative.
- erentz 7y agoHow does one go about measuring their methylation?
- Medicalidiot 7y agoI’m going to give the strong recommendation of NOT supplementing HGH ever unless your physician advises it. HGH is a potential trigger for cancer, onto of how it is a potent anabolic hormone that will enlarge all your organs. Unless you have certain medical conditions, there is very little reason for one needing HGH.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Karlozkiller 7y agoHGH being Human Growth Hormone? I've taken that during puberty, as a medium to get to "normal size" In hindsight doctors say that might have been what triggered my chronic auto immune hepatitis (immune system attacks my own liver). They say basically they don't know and will probably never know, but it has been put forth as a possible trigger. Be careful.
- dannykwells 7y agoInteresting but a bit confusing since most of these drugs are for other conditions, and are not seeking approval based on ability to slow/stop /reverse aging. Thus any approvals would require having a particular condition to get a prescription (or an unethical doctor), and this aren't immediately useful. Would be nice to be able to select only those drugs seeking broad spectrum approval based on specific aging biomarkers.
- enraged_camel 7y agoI mean, this seems to be the biological parallel of everything related to AI: there are massive discrepancies between the general public's perception of and expectations from the technology (a general-purpose AI), vs. what the technology actually does (very specific applications of statistical modeling using lots of data).
- 1996 7y ago> any approvals would require having a particular condition to get a prescription (or an unethical doctor) Wrong on both counts. Let me introduce you to indian online pharmacies, where you can get mostly anything already. I get my eyedrops from less than the US deductible, delivered at my door. I have a prescription, but they didn't even check. Even better: some molecules are on any restricted list, and thus legal to buy. IIRC, mk667 is very popular for weightlifters. So I think everybody will be able to get their hands on these as soon as their efficiency is proved.
- Afton 7y agoOther than the condescending tone, this comment is probably worth keeping. summary: there are extralegal, cheap, and convenient methods of collecting supplements/drugs that will be available to everyone with a credit card and the right risk tolerance, regardless of e.g. FDA approval.
- dannykwells 7y agoGreat, so the advice is, "Take a drug, compounded in a foreign country with different/more lax regulations, for some hypothesized, 100% unproved reason, without a doctor monitoring it." Good luck.
- jcadam 7y agoThey need to hurry up with this, I'm not getting any younger and I haven't saved enough for retirement :O
- chrisco255 7y agoYeah but if they extend your life won't you need even more for retirement?
- jcadam 7y agoIf I'm healthy enough to keep working, retirement isn't really necessary. Also, given enough time, I ought to be able to amass a self-sustaining pile of wealth and then I can retire :)
- ben_w 7y agoIf everyone does that, nobody is making the things you want to buy with that wealth pile. Not until we also get enough automation to also have UBI.
- ItsDeathball 7y agoI don't think that's a problem in their scenario, since the situation is leveraging life extension to work past retirement age. Working until age 80 and living out retirement until 120 would mean a vastly expanded labor pool, unless you're assuming everyone stops having kids.
- iopq 7y agoThis is technically true, but once you plan for a 60 year retirement, going out 90 or 100 years is not as difficult as lasting the first 30 years. I think withdrawing 3% a year would have lasted you the entire time since the 1880s (last 140 years of the stock market)
- ramraj07 7y agoMany studies suggest it's easier to prevent ageing from the beginning rather than de-ageing old people :(
- bhouston 7y agoLooks interesting, but how could I ever afford to buy ~12 designer drugs which I figure likely cost at least $1-2/day if they are effective? Cost per year is $4K- $8K? I'm guessing I'll wait 20 years until they are off patent?
- mkagenius 7y agoMaybe take once a week, then you will need to wait only 20 * (365 - 52) / 365 years?
- chrisco255 7y agoNot all of these are new drugs. NMN, for example, is a supplement that you can buy now. It's a bit expensive but the price is dropping as it becomes more popular. Others mentioned include HGH, which has been around for decades. Only problem there is that it's a controlled substance so getting a prescription for anti-aging purposes may be difficult.
- simonsaidit 7y agoHgh works wonders used it for about 3 months and got sixpack doing hardly any workout. Lost all excess fat. Got a better sleeping pattern. Its easy to get your hands on online. Problem is that its mad expensive even more so with a prescription as the stuff without you might get was stolen or a cheaper brand.
- LinuxBender 7y agoI am not saying there isn't a use case for HGH, but you can increase your own natural HGH production through intermittent fasting, l-glutamine, and cycling up/down a few other molecules. I learned this by mistake, from trying to repair damage to my gut. The weird side effect was quite a bit of muscle development and I don't even work out. On top of that, I dampen mtorc1 with Berberine, Sulforaphane, Myrosinase, TransResveratrol, DIM+Quercertin and that should slow HGH production, but has the opposite effect and increases it. And I second the NMN being expensive. I use about 800mg a day and it is by far the most expensive thing I take.
- lawrenceyan 7y agoProper sleep, a complete diet, minimizing stress (I'm personally biased towards meditation), intermittent fasting, and vigorous cardiovascular exercise complemented by strength training will by far have the most impact in maximizing your natural lifespan. You shouldn't look at doing anything else until you've at minimum mastered all of the listed items above. Nothing else will have as much outsized impact.
- tempsy 7y agobunch of research into metformin for anti-aging, which is very cheap
- chrisco255 7y agoHow do you get a prescription for it if you don't have diabetes?
- tempsy 7y agoyou can't really, unless you have a doctor who is willing to. otherwise only illegally.
- Japhy_Ryder 7y agoA vegan/plant-based diet and now we're talking! I like this list a lot!
- on_and_off 7y agoAgree that eating meat at every meal is a dumb idea but is there much difference between a plant based diet and a mediterranean one in this regard ?
- on_and_off 7y agoI guess not
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- herodotus 7y agoQuick summary of the meaning of Phases in medical trials: Phase 0: exploration of effectiveness Phase I: is the treatment safe? Phase II: does the treatment work? Phase III: is the treatment better than existing alternatives? Phase IV: After approval, monitor the long term effects of the treatment.
- caycep 7y agoI think also w/ increasing phase, the n sample size of the trial increases so the fisherian statistic has more "power" and more practitioners trust the study results...
- lucb1e 7y agoJust to be clear, which of these phases is the "clinical trials" stage? Are all of them clinical trails and we're starting at zero now? (Not that Roman numerals have zero, by the way :).) The dictionary says clinical trials are about "safety and effectiveness" so I guess that is indeed early phases?
- Wohlf 7y agoI may be wrong, but I think they are all different forms of clinical trials.
- herodotus 7y agoNIH Definition of a Clinical Trial: "A research study in which one or more human subjects are prospectively assigned to one or more interventions (which may include placebo or other control) to evaluate the effects of those interventions on health-related biomedical or behavioral outcomes." A phase 1 clinical trial is used to determine safety (including dosage) and involves far fewer people than a stage III clinical trial. For Biotech startups, the companies value usually increases with each successfully completed trial. Conversely, the cost of conducting a trail also increases at each stage.
- Gatsky 7y agoPhase I is more “what is the highest dose that can be given safely?”
- brooklyndude 7y agoYou will get old. You will die. Just face reality. This trying to always put off aging is hopeless. Utterly futile. Enjoy every day, don't waste a second. You will die. And you ain't ready for it. But Mother nature is.
- tempsy 7y agothis is a pretty naive approach to aging. you can age gracefully or you can age terribly. there are many things entirely in your control that can shift you one way or the other. there's dozens of studies that show very strong correlation between calorie restriction and longevity.
- Erlich_Bachman 7y agoYou have misunderstood what this is about. Yes we all know that we will die. And yes we still think that if you can add 1 or 10 or 50 or whatever healthy years by using some simple to use technology - then that is very valuable to a lot of people, and is a very worthwhile scientific pursuit. And no, it is not hopeless or futile. There are animals that live 300 years, what basic biology class did you miss in order for you to think that it would be futile to modify humans which are biological machines with genetic programming to make them live at least that long?
- valgor 7y agoThe common cold use to kill us. Science helped a lot of people overcome the common cold. One day we will look at aging like the common cold.
- GolDDranks 7y agoBy the same mindset, you oughtn't eat healthy or exercise. Remember, it's not only about lengthening the lifespan, but healthspan.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sien 7y agoThere is a real possibility that in the next few decades some of these therapies might work. The book Lifespan by Dr David Sinclair is really interesting. Sinclair is a professor at Harvard. He's highly optimistic that something will come of the various ideas looking at slowing aging. https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/1501191977 https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age_and-Dont-Have/dp/150...
- mambojumbo 7y agoOne can only hope that it wont be yet another hyper inflated bubble like ai is now.
- ganeshkrishnan 7y agoAi is hardly hyper inflated. Everything from your phone to cars to planes use ai and machine learning one way or the other.
- lcnmrn 7y agoBut it's not actually AI, it's just programmable probability.
- wrinkl3 7y agoWhich is what modern AI is - neat linear algebra that can perform certain tasks that are commonly associated with human cognition.
- thelittleone 7y agoHow and when did this become the definition of AI? I feel like we techies lost an important distinction by simply accepting the marketing appropriation of the term. What do we now call real AI?
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- macawfish 7y agoI personally believe that it's not aging and death that are the disease, but our powerful fear and abuse of them.
- MMTP 7y agoThese guys do some neat things like this roadmap and their main news site is really quite interesting too over at :https://www.leafscience.org/ https://www.leafscience.org/
- kpfleger 7y agoSee also: AgingBiotech.info Specifically AgingBiotech.info/companies (esp. the clinical stage & clinical trials columns).