Re:Gene Therapy Reverses Biological Aging by Six Years
by getpost on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @10:08AM
(#31582001)
It's been possible to increase growth hormone by injection for a couple decades now, and I thought there was a cancer problem[0].
Also, there's the drive for homeostasis. In my own experiments with dietary supplements, I get a short term boost due to the supplement, but the body gradually re-configures itself accordingly, so there's no long term benefit. e.g., caffeine[1]
Re:Gene Therapy Reverses Biological Aging by Six Years
by tayne on Saturday June 04, 2022 @11:19AM
(#31621334)
You point to one example of homeostasis and therefore we should just give up on all medicine? That’s like someone putting down the idea of vaccination because they developed a coffee tolerance. The human body is complicated and diverse and homeostatic forces aren’t omnipresent or present at the deepest mechanistic levels.
Re:Gene Therapy Reverses Biological Aging by Six Years
by pmoriarty on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @09:10AM
(#31581297)
"Two of the authors examined the ethics and regulation of
self-experiments intensively, culminating in a journal publication. There are 14 Nobel Prizes awarded to self-experimenting scientists, with 7 Nobel Prizes in the area of
their self-experiment, and no ethical obstructions to self-experimentations. There are 473 documented self-experiments, 48 of them since 1975, with multiples of this
number estimated."
This reminds me of an interesting book on the history of self-experimentation in medicine called "Who Goes First":
Re:Gene Therapy Reverses Biological Aging by Six Years
by barry-cotter on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @11:57PM
(#31577895)
From thread
> Some very cool things happened. He recovered from injuries faster, had a greater appetite for exercise, slept better, had higher testosterone, some arthritis symptoms cleared, cholesterol improved, heart rate and blood pressure down, and eyesight improved.
Re:Gene Therapy Reverses Biological Aging by Six Years
by Pigalowda on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @08:11AM
(#31580679)
The DNA injected is a plasmid with a myosin promoter supposedly introduced via electroporation through the call membrane and then presumably into the nucleus.
Successful electroporation of large DNA fragments is difficult (31aa here = 93bp). Widespread DNA uptake, nuclear localization, and subsequent integration is a low probability event.
Another barrier from what I understood working with transgenics is that Plasmid DNA is a foreign DNA morphology outside of our mitochondria. It is the shape of bacterial DNA and initiates a host response to destroy it. That could be old/incorrect understanding from myself though.
Another thing which bothered me was there was no discernible increase in growth hormone. Activation of GHRH should lead to increase in growth hormone? Perhaps Somatostatin activity is regulating away the increase.
Anyways, I’m skeptical of successful DNA integration and therefore the beneficial claims. The subject isn’t living in a bubble, there will be cofounders and lifestyle changes over 5+ years.
Re:Gene Therapy Reverses Biological Aging by Six Years
by dannykwells on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @01:00AM
(#31578290)
Notable that last author is George Church, famed Harvard genomicist turned biohacker. While he may not be the subject of this paper, the smart money is that he's doing this too.
Re:Gene Therapy Reverses Biological Aging by Six Years
by refurb on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @05:50AM
(#31579817)
It's electroporation. You use electrical currents to create temporary pores for the DNA sequence to enter the cell. Otherwise you need some mechanism to get the DNA in.
But anyways N = 1, so no control.
And why not just take injections of growth hormone?
Also, there's the drive for homeostasis. In my own experiments with dietary supplements, I get a short term boost due to the supplement, but the body gradually re-configures itself accordingly, so there's no long term benefit. e.g., caffeine[1]
[0] Growth Hormone's Links to Cancer https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30500870/
[1] Chronic Caffeine Alters the Density of Adenosine, Adrenergic, Cholinergic, GABA, and Serotonin Receptors and Calcium Channels in Mouse Brain https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3437321/
EDIT: Author has a wikipedia article and a website. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Hanley_(microbiologist) https://bf-sci.com/
This reminds me of an interesting book on the history of self-experimentation in medicine called "Who Goes First":
https://www.amazon.com/Who-Goes-First-Lawrence-Altman/dp/052...
> Some very cool things happened. He recovered from injuries faster, had a greater appetite for exercise, slept better, had higher testosterone, some arthritis symptoms cleared, cholesterol improved, heart rate and blood pressure down, and eyesight improved.
Original paper
https://www.gwern.net/docs/longevity/senolytic/2021-hanley.p...
Successful electroporation of large DNA fragments is difficult (31aa here = 93bp). Widespread DNA uptake, nuclear localization, and subsequent integration is a low probability event.
Another barrier from what I understood working with transgenics is that Plasmid DNA is a foreign DNA morphology outside of our mitochondria. It is the shape of bacterial DNA and initiates a host response to destroy it. That could be old/incorrect understanding from myself though.
Another thing which bothered me was there was no discernible increase in growth hormone. Activation of GHRH should lead to increase in growth hormone? Perhaps Somatostatin activity is regulating away the increase.
Anyways, I’m skeptical of successful DNA integration and therefore the beneficial claims. The subject isn’t living in a bubble, there will be cofounders and lifestyle changes over 5+ years.
Not sure I like the "he said it was traumatic" part though.
But anyways N = 1, so no control.
And why not just take injections of growth hormone?