I attended DoNotAge's conference to hear from some of the scientists either using the company's products in their studies or whose research is part-funded by DoNotAge grants.
Here's some super-brief highlights from the day.
Vera Gorbunova - Professor of Biology, University of Rochester
- SIRT6 more active in long-lived animals
- Centenarians have a higher prevalence of a SIRT6 allele
- Fucoidan is a SIRT6 activator – comes from brown seaweed in Asian soups, but not all seaweed the same
Andrei Seluanov - Professor of Biology
- Inflammatory response changes with age
- Protein coding genes make up < 1% of the genome
- 33% are LINEs/SINEs (retrotransposons) - aka jumping genes
- Would be interested to see what happens if could block LINE1 expression
- SIRT6Activator shown to help maintain transposable-element silencing
Søren Wilton Kudahl-Laursen - PhD Student, Aarhus University
- Spermidine improves muscle stem cell proliferation
- Spermidine levels and stem cell division both reduce with age
Nicolás Cherñavsky - President, Rejuvenation Science Institute
- Couldn’t reproduce results of Harold Katcher’s rat study using young pig blood vesicles
- But now clarified procedure with Katcher and studies in mice and rats to start imminently
- Hoping to the test safety with CIEnP
Joanna Ward - PhD student, University of Lincoln
- Inflammaging is a key driver in ASCVD (Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease)
- Studying NLRP3
- funded by DoNotAge through the British Society for Research on Ageing
Sergej Ostojic - Professor of Nutrition, Texas Tech University
- Recently joined DoNotAge’s advisory board
- Creatine is more than a sports supplement
- May influence telomeres
Ciara Juan - Ulster University
- Acute high intensity exercises increases SIRT1
- Exercise genes generally don’t overlap with ageing genes
- Quercetin lowers DNA damage post exercise
Constanza Cortes - Asst Prof of Gerontology, USC
- Exerkines = exercise induced secreted factors
- Looking at “exercise in a pill” peptide PSAP/PS18 – has muscle and brain benefits
Lindsay Bottoms - Prof of Exercise and Health Sciences, University of Hertfordshire + Jonathan Sinclair - health sciences researcher University Of Lancaster
- 20-day trial with quercetin reduced blood pressure by 7 mmHg in healthy participants
- Plan to test in people with prehypertension/stage 1 hypertension
David Weinkove – Chair of British Society for Research on Ageing (BSRA)
- Organisations still siloed by therapeutic area
- Rate of ageing accelerates with time
- Challenges of clinical trials include large numbers and several years to run
Rebecca Sumnet - King’s College London
- CDK4/6 suppresses inflammation during cell division
- Loss of CDK4/6 drives inflammaging
