12 ms·
Sight restored by turning back the epigenetic clock
- jy14898 6y agoin mice
- olliej 6y agoRight? Can we get the title updated?
- Metacelsus 6y agoI previously posted this: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2975-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2975-4 Maybe because I included (in mice) in the title, it didn't get upvoted as much as this post.
- andy_ppp 6y agoI’m really starting to hate this trope, I think everyone should just assume “in mice” unless the title states “in humans” as that is a much rarer event for research papers to be at that stage than mice or other mammals.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- joe_the_user 6y agoI'd like to see what happens if all the youth renewal strategies done on laboratory mice are applied to older, wild-caught mice of whatever variety is closest to lab mice. I've heard the claim when calorie limiting applied to wild mice, they ... just die - they already have limited calories. But just that leap might be a decent lesson.
- Turing_Machine 6y ago"In mice" isn't the whole story here. "The authors found that OSK expression enhanced axon regrowth and cell survival in human neurons in vitro." Granted, that's not actually restoring sight to an in vivo human patient just yet, but neither is it "in mice".
- david-gpu 6y agoDavid Sinclair talks about this work in his book Lifespan, in case you are interested in the current state of anti-aging treatments. It's very exciting that we are beginning to unravel a general mechanism that drives aging across species.
- HenryKissinger 6y agoImagine an immortal Mark Zuckerberg. Stuff of nightmares.
- motoboi 6y agoNot imortal, but probably billionaires will be the first to get longer lifespans (250 years). Imagine how much powerful someone can become. There is a very nice book called Pandora’s Star where people live for a very long time and this causes a lot of interesting developments in society.
- quickthrower2 6y agoWill be old enough to see Facebooks decline
- d1zzy 6y agoOr watch Ad Vitam (it's on Netflix).
- chairmanwow1 6y agoThat book feels so much like Atlas Shrugged in a sci-fi universe. It’s dreadfully exciting to read.
- s5300 6y agoEhh, they'll have fun living out those decades in hiding from the populace if so
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 6y ago
- 01100011 6y agoIn other news, they're also close to releasing eyedrops to help with presbyopia: https://modernod.com/articles/2020-sept/coming-soon-presbyopia-correcting-eye-drops?c4src=article:infinite-scroll https://modernod.com/articles/2020-sept/coming-soon-presbyop... UNR844-Cl claims to restore flexibility to the aging lens by breaking the disulfide bonds that form between proteins in the lens. It's a really simple molecule too, composed of common supplements(lipoic acid and choline), so it looks like the risk is fairly low.
- hourislate 6y agoI was just listening to some techniques on YouTube on how to fix presbyopia by switching to older prescriptions from current prescriptions to bring back the elasticity. Apparently focusing on reading or a computer screen too much can create the lens from returning to it's original condition/state as it remains locked/seized up. Might be bullshit but these eye drops would be amazing. I wonder if this is what David Sinclair was talking about when he said they will be able to fix bad vision soon.
- troughway 6y agoIs this Active Focus?
- Tade0 6y agoI've been following this drug's development process since back when it was named EV06. Currently people with presbyopia who get laser eye surgery have one eye corrected for looking at nearby objects and the other for those which are far away - this works, but is not ideal. With UNR844 one could potentially have the same typeof correction in both eyes.
- fnord77 6y agoI've been watching this one for a while. If it works out, it will be fantastic (well, not for optometrists)
- DennisP 6y agoI was confused at first because your link is about a different approach, using drugs that temporarily constrict the pupil. The drug that fixes the lens is in human trials too, and would also just be an eye drop. Here's an article: https://www.healio.com/news/optometry/20201012/further-study-planned-based-on-positive-results-for-presbyopia-drug https://www.healio.com/news/optometry/20201012/further-study...
- reasonattlm 6y agoSeveral research groups and companies are working on in vivo applications of cellular reprogramming. Since its discovery, reprogramming has been used to produce induced pluripotent stem cells from any other type of cell. That process has been found to reverse age-related changes in epigenetic patterns and mitochondrial function characteristic of cells in old tissues. Introducing the factors capable of reprogramming cells into a living animal may produce effects akin to stem cell therapy by converting a small number of cells into induced pluripotent stem cells, followed by stem cell signaling that beneficially affects tissue health more broadly. Alternatively, many cells may have their epigenetic markers reset to a more youthful state without losing their identity to become induced pluripotent stem cells. Or both. Beyond this, there is certainly the threat of cancer or structural damage to tissue through the conversion of too many cells, and this class of therapy will require careful development to ensure safety, even as the mouse data continues to look quite interesting. David Sinclair has been pushing an epigenetic-centric view of aging of late, with analogies to information systems and computing. The most interesting part of the the supporting work suggests that DNA repair of double strand breaks has the side-effect of driving alteration of the epigenome in characteristic ways with age. That will be an important connection between stochastic nuclear DNA damage and deterministic global effects throughout the body, should the evidence continue to hold up. As this illustrates, however, epigenetic change is a downstream issue in aging, a reaction to events and a changing environment, not a first cause. Fixing it may or may not turn out to be particularly useful in the broader picture of aging, depending on exactly where it sits in the web of cause and consequence. As a comparable example, hypertension is a major downstream issue in aging. It is far removed from root causes such as cross-link formation and inflammation, but is also a proximate cause of many forms of further dysfunction, such as pressure damage to delicate tissues in the brain. Controlling hypertension without addressing its causes is both possible and beneficial - but the benefits are limited by the fact that those root causes are still there, chewing away at the body in a thousand other ways.
- treeman79 6y agoLost much of my vision. Was restored by blood thinners and Diamox. Not what the drugs were intended to treat. But a surprisingly effect. 2 dozen doctors had not been able to help me.
- crispyporkbites 6y agoYou saw 25 doctors?
- casion 6y agoDoesn't seem particularly weird to me, I've seen more than that myself for an issue.
- treeman79 6y agoTricky things get dismissed out of hand. Treated as depression. Oh you have anxiety. Take some anti-depressants. Umm doctor my entire right side is completely numb. Doctor: see a neurologist. Umm that’s a 3 month wait. Neurologist. Take this pill call me in six months. We got about 10 meds to get through before I can start on the good ones.
- scsilver 6y agoHe only saw the last doctor.
- ska 6y agoclearly.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoHey, let's focus.
- hinkley 6y agoHe saw 12 doctors but had double vision until the end...
- playcache 6y agoI would love something like this. Over the past 5 years I have experienced my eyesight degrade since reaching 40 years old. I always use to quietly brag to myself about having such good vision. And then suddenly it gets a little bit of challenge to read, so you get a weak strain of reading glasses and from their you continue up in strengh ratings until you realise the person over the road from you has a blurred face and you have gone from needing reading glasses to needing glasses all of the time.
- annoyingnoob 6y agoSame experience, aging sucks.
- thelittleone 6y agoPrecisely same here most noticeable on screens and in morning. My wife passed me her glasses and my screen became sharper than ever. My fear is using them too much might then mess up my non glasses vision.
- mlyle 6y agoProbably not. Age-related near vision loss is due to the lens of your eye losing flexibility with age, and not being able to change shape as much to focus on near things, and not any kind of baseline refractive error.
- rufus_foreman 6y agoHopefully your optometrist has warned you that it just gets worse and there's nothing they can do.
- fpgaminer 6y agoSince we're commiserating: the vergence of my eyes is failing and I'm not even 40. My actual vision is perfect; better than ever. But apparently my eyes don't converge so well anymore, giving me horrific headaches if I look at any kind of screen for more than a few minutes :( Really sucks. Doc gave me prism lens so I can use a computer again, but they're exhausting to use. Hoping I can find a specialist after the pandemic is over and figure out a better option; really don't want this to get worse. Kind of sick joke, considering I spent almost a decade of my career doing computational imaging and computer vision work. 2020 :/
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago> They infected RGCs in mice with adeno-associated viruses. In Mice https://mobile.twitter.com/justsaysinmice https://mobile.twitter.com/justsaysinmice
- bitwize 6y agoIn mice.
- kgin 6y agoThe eye was selected as the area for this research because it is self-contained in multiple ways. Viruses used to insert the OSK genes in they eye will stay in the eye, so there is less concern about possible effects elsewhere in the body. That provides an easier path towards translating and getting regulatory approval in humans. But the very cool thing is there is no reason to believe that this technique couldn't eventually be used throughout the whole body.
- yread 6y agoThis stuff could be BIG deal. Currently, most of therapies involve taking the cells out to reprogram them back to ipsc and trying to stuff them back again. IF this is viable in humans - adenoviruses work for us, too - or nanolipid vesicles. So, it should. Source: wife epigenetics postdoc in ipsc therapy
- daemonk 6y agoI think one of the guys who founded Moderna originally wanted to inject mRNA to induce pluripotent stem cells. It would be great if that can somehow work for this. Instead of using an adenovirus to insert the genes, we can inject mRNA to induce expression of the transcription factors long enough for it to take effect.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoLook how large a collaboration effort: Affiliations Department of Genetics, Blavatnik Institute, Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA Yuancheng Lu, Xiao Tian, Daniel L. Vera, Qiurui Zeng, Doudou Yu, Michael S. Bonkowski, Jae-Hyun Yang, Michael B. Schultz, Alice E. Kane, Karolina Chwalek, Luis A. Rajman & David A. Sinclair Department of Neurology, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA Benedikt Brommer, Chen Wang, Songlin Zhou & Zhigang He Department of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA Benedikt Brommer, Anitha Krishnan, Chen Wang, Songlin Zhou, Emma M. Hoffmann, Margarete M. Karg, Ekaterina Korobkina, Meredith S. Gregory-Ksander, Bruce R. Ksander & Zhigang He Schepens Eye Research Institute of Mass Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA Anitha Krishnan, Emma M. Hoffmann, Margarete M. Karg, Ekaterina Korobkina, Meredith S. Gregory-Ksander & Bruce R. Ksander Division of Genetics, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA Margarita Meer & Vadim N. Gladyshev Department of Pathology, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA Margarita Meer & Morgan E. Levine Department of Genetics, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA Noah Davidsohn & George M. Church Department of Molecular Biology, Cancer Center and Center for Regenerative Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA Konrad Hochedlinger Department of Human Genetics, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA Steve Horvath Laboratory for Ageing Research, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medical Sciences, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia David A. Sinclair
- Metacelsus 6y agoI previously posted this: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2975-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2975-4 Maybe because I included (in mice) in the title, it didn't get upvoted as much as this post.
- justinclift 6y agoLooking at both, your link seems to go to a much less readable version of the article?
- pkaye 6y agoThere is also some drugs being tested for some types of tinnitus and hearing loss. One of them is FX-322 by Frequency Therapeutics. https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/frequency-therapeutics-announces-expanded-fx-322-clinical-development-program-and-upcoming-day-90-phase-2a-analysis-/ https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/frequency-therapeu...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- iandanforth 6y agoIN MICE.
- luckman212 6y agoI am not trying to diminish the work being reported on here. I just want to comment that I see these kinds of articles posted frequently, and they always leave me feeling like Experimental "foo" results in NN% improvement in "quux" in new study. Possible human trials scheduled for "someday far far away" and could "one day" lead to rainbow colored pet unicorns for all humans. Basically, some amazing thing may happen someday and I'll never hear about it and will likely be dead and gone well before it bears fruit. It would be wonderful if there was a site that summarized these kinds of breakthrough research projects in a way that was practical for laypeople. E.g. disease, research being done, possible treatment/cure, stage of testing, availability to general public / how to get it or become part of trial group, cost, risks etc. E.g. I'd love to be able to star & watch this like a Github repo and be notified of progress...
- xiphias2 6y agoThere is, it’s called lifespan.io https://www.lifespan.io/road-maps/the-rejuvenation-roadmap/ https://www.lifespan.io/road-maps/the-rejuvenation-roadmap/
- rubicon33 6y agoI assume that foundation was started by David A. Sinclair? Same author of this book? https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-audiobook/dp/B07QGH1Q43/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=lifespan&qid=1607142318&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-audiobook/dp/B07QGH1Q43/ref=... Very interesting research in that book but honestly, very little actionable paths for the reader. We aren't yet to a point where it's possible to just pop a pill and live another 100 years. Probably the most effective thing you can do right now is caloric restriction, but that can kind of suck. The holy grail would be some way to eat normally, and slow the aging process.
- rishav_sharan 6y agoWasn't blood transfusion from a young another effective method? Though it is a Pandora's box of ethical problems
- alex-lx 6y agoI am a glaucoma patient for 2 years and I'm 30. I hope there will be a cure before I lose my sight.