Tag Archives: Research

Business, Health, Science, Technology

Reversing Aging in Primates

Leave a comment

Researchers have reversed some signs of aging in mice. But it had never been done in primates — until now.

Get the blog before anyone else…subscribe!


In what appears to be a major scientific breakthrough, Life Biosciences presented results showing the reversal of damage to the eye in non-human primates. From Life Bio’s press release:

Life Bio’s lead platform reprograms the epigenome of older animals to resemble that of younger animals via expression of three Yamanaka factors, Oct4, Sox2, and Klf4, collectively known as OSK. The approach partially reprograms cells to resemble a more youthful state while retaining their original cellular identity. Previous data from Life Bio and academic researchers, which were also presented at ARVO 2023, have shown that treatment with OSK reverses retinal aging and restores vision in old mice in a mouse model of glaucoma. Now, with the data presented today at ARVO, the company has demonstrated restoration of visual function and increased nerve axon survival in [a non-human primate] model that mimics human NAION deficits in retinal ganglion cells.

The researchers intentionally damaged the eyes of primates with lasers. Gruesome, I know.

Then, they gave a series of injections that used Yamanaka factors to reprogram the cells, reversing the damage.

Similar eye problems can occur in humans, often associated with age. If researchers can reverse them in non-human primates, perhaps humans are next.

Professor David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School co-founded Life Bio. Sinclair’s lab did something similar in mice, published in Nature in 2020.

The recent Life Bio results are a corporate press release, not a peer reviewed study. But given this team’s track record, I’d bet the publication is coming any day now.

Consider the path of this research. First it’s in a test tube, then a mouse, then a monkey.
We’re getting closer and closer to humans.

Of course, this result is only about eyes. But if a few injections can fix that, what else can they fix?

Moreover, we’re seeing rapid progress on two fronts: genetics and AI. Where might this lead?

Perhaps in the near future, humans will live to be 250 years old. Throughout our lifetimes, we’ll be 100X more capable, thanks to our AI assistants.

And when medicine can no longer keep us going, we upload our consciousness to our preferred cloud provider and, in a sense, live forever.

That’s a future I look forward to.

What do you think is the future of longevity? Leave a comment and let us know!

If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more like this!

More on tech:

Reversing the Aging Process in Mouse Eyes… and Maybe Someday, Us?

Let’s Double the Human Population

Meet My Latest Investment: TANGObuilder

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

Fundrise

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

Misfits Market

I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

Photo: “Close-Up of the Human Eye – Primer plano del ojo humano” by Hugo Quintero is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Advertisement
Business, Science, Technology

ChatGPT for Medicine

2 Comments

What if you could ask the best scientists on earth any question you want, any time? New chatbots are making that a reality.

Get the blog before anyone else…subscribe!

Consensus searches 200 million scholarly publications to answer questions on medicine, science, and even economics. Let’s give it a try!

I love going outside in the morning with my coffee. I get a little sun, which I vaguely suspect is good for me, and look at the sky.

On a day like today with a calendar full of meetings, is this still worth doing? Let’s find out what the science says about the benefits of sunlight:

Instantly, Consensus pulls up an answer to my question. It explains how morning sunlight can help circadian rhythms.

It also cites a specific source, and notes the quality of the journal. This result comes from a top publication.

So cool! Let’s compare that to Google Scholar:

Google Scholar just gives me the traditional page of links. I get weird, context-less snippets of text that only kinda sorta answer my question.

Better than nothing, but nowhere near as useful as Consensus. Now let’s try ChatGPT.

ChatGPT’s answer is pretty good and well-organized. But since it has no citations, we have no idea if the information is reliable.

ChatGPT simply isn’t designed to answer scientific questions.

It was trained on data including books and Reddit posts. But as far as we know, it hasn’t been trained on scientific papers.

Consensus isn’t the only chatbot for science. Microsoft recently released BioGPT, a chatbot trained on biomedical literature.

Will these bots replace doctors? I don’t think so.

Instead, doctors, scientists, and curious laymen will use these tools to make research easier. With better access to the latest data, they can make better decisions.

After all, nail guns didn’t replace carpenters.

I’m very bullish on AI chatbots trained on niche data sets. That data could be scientific papers, court cases, or computer code, just to name a few.

I’m also excited about data brokers. Someone has to collect all this data and get it to the people who need it.

If you’re working on such a company, I want to hear from you!

In just a few weeks, we’ve gone from general purpose chatbots to a profusion of tools for science, medicine, and more. We are living through a Cambrian explosion of technology.

I’m here for it!

How do you think AI will change science? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

More on tech:

GPT-Powered Search with Perplexity AI

Google is Losing the AI Race

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Get the blog before anyone else…subscribe!

If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Reddit/etc. This helps more people find the blog! 

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

Fundrise

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!

Misfits Market

I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!

I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order. 

Business, Science, Technology

Can A Scientific Dream Team End Aging?

Leave a comment

Never miss a post…subscribe!

No one wants to get old. But how can we stop and even reverse aging?

Perhaps a Dream Team of the world’s greatest scientists. And a whole lot of money.

Well, that just became a reality.

For those of us who follow venture capital, the news hit like a bomb. Previously unknown Altos Labs burst onto the scene with a $3 billion seed round, likely the largest early stage fundraise in history.

To put that in perspective, a typical seed round is more like $1-3 million.

Altos will be putting that money in the hands of some of the world’s top scientists.

Noted antiaging researchers like Izpisúa Belmonte and Alejandro Ocampo are on board. Nobel Laureates Shinya Yamanaka and Jennifer Doudna have also joined as advisers.

Altos has promised salaries over $1 million, generous research budgets, and autonomy. Plus, no more constant grant writing.

So can aging be reversed? New findings suggest it may be possible.

Just last September, researchers succeeded in reversing aging in mouse hearts using Shinya Yamanaka’s Yamanaka Factors:

…after two and a half decades of fitful starts and abandoned leads, Braun and a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute showed that they could reprogram heart cells in mice and get the animals to regenerate cardiac tissue after a heart attack. The breakthrough, published in Science, adds new evidence that it will eventually be possible to help patients recover muscle lost in heart attacks and gives another boon to anti-aging researchers who want to one day apply these rejuvenation techniques across much of the body.

Heart cells are some of the hardest to reprogram. If scientists can do this, what else can they accomplish?

David Sinclair at Harvard reversed aging in mouse eyes the year before. The pace of these breakthroughs seems to be increasing.

Any investor in startups always asks the founder “why now?” Why is now the right time to raise this money and build this business?

Altos has a very compelling “why now.”

The foundation for reversing aging has been laid by Yamanaka and others. Scientists worldwide are building on it rapidly, coming up with cure after cure for previously untreatable diseases.

I’m itching to see what Altos can accomplish. Best of luck to their incredible team!

Never miss a post…subscribe!

More on tech:

Reversing the Aging Process in Mouse Eyes… and Maybe Someday, Us?

3D Printing a Human Ear

The Lost Planet of Vulcan

Photo: “Shinya Yamanaka” by Rubenstein is licensed under CC BY 2.0

If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Facebook/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog! 

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

Amazon Business American Express Card

You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

Best of all: No fee!

Fundrise

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been great so far.

More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. 

Misfits Market

My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me.

Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor.

I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy!

I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order. 

Business, Health, NYC Area, Science, Technology

3D Printing a Human Ear

3 Comments

What would it be like to not have ears?

Unfortunately, for patients with microtia, this is no hypothetical. Microtia, or lack of a fully developed ear, is a congenital condition affecting about 1 in every 6-8,000 people.

Spectrum of microtia severity

Some patients have a malformed outer ear. Others have almost no ear tissue at all.

The only treatment is taking cartilage from the rib and fashioning a new ear. This requires multiple painful surgeries and tends to produce an unsatisfying outcome.

But now, an incredible NYC startup called 3D Bio can use the patient’s own ear tissue to 3D print a new ear! The patient’s sample is expanded in a cell culture and printed.

The ear can be attached in a simple outpatient procedure.

This treatment is now in early clinical trials. If it works, it could change medicine forever.

What if we could print new hearts, lungs, or livers? Imagine making a new, functional eye for a blind person.

Such technology could alleviate enormous suffering and greatly expand human life expectancy. And I’m extremely excited about it.

Best of luck to the incredible team at 3D Bio!

More on tech:

How Tech Could Stop Wildfires

Why I Just Invested in Kippo, Where Gamers Find Love

Male Contraception With an Ultrasound Device?

If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/Facebook/etc. using the buttons at the bottom of the page. This helps more people find the blog! 

Save Money on Stuff I Use:

Amazon Business American Express Card

You already shop on Amazon. Why not save $100?

If you’re approved for this card, you get a $100 Amazon gift card. You also get up to 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, 2% on restaurants/gas stations/cell phone bills, and 1% everywhere else.

Best of all: No fee!

Fundrise

This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 and returns have been good so far. More on Fundrise in this post.

If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

Misfits Market

My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order. 

Politics, Science

We Need Science Funding More Than Road Repairs

Leave a comment

As the Biden administration pushes for a $2 trillion infrastructure bill, I dug into some numbers on federal research funding today. Most basic scientific research is funded by the federal government, including the critical advances in mRNA technologies that laid the groundwork for COVID vaccines. But this funding has fallen by more than 1/3 since the 1970’s, measured as a percentage of GDP:

In absolute dollar terms, funding has increased, but far below the rate one would predict given our burgeoning economy. Meanwhile, the infrastructure bill contemplates $110 billion in funding for road repair. This despite the US having some of the best roads in the world (slightly better than those of Switzerland) and among the world’s lowest commute times. Even in the New York area, which many single out for having poor road infrastructure, I see mostly smooth pavement wherever I go.

Science funding will never be as visible as road repair. You don’t see men in orange jackets out there with big trucks. But without basic research, we will find ourselves falling behind competitors like China and left without the tools we need to meet future challenges. What if we had faced the COVID pandemic without the scientific groundwork laid by massive research funding in decades past?

For more on science and policy, check out these posts:

If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/LinkedIn/email using the buttons below. This helps more people find the blog! And please leave a comment at the bottom of the page letting me know what you think and what other information you’re interested in!

Check out the Stuff I Use page for some great deals on products and services I use to improve my health and productivity. They just might help you too! 

Photo: “Joe Biden” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Science

The Lost Planet of Vulcan

1 Comment

For nearly two hundred years, Newton’s laws of motion worked pretty well. Then, a French scientist named Urbain Le Verrier came along and messed it all up.

He calculated Mercury’s orbit using Newton’s laws and waited until it orbited the sun again in 1848, awaiting confirmation of his calculations. Mercury didn’t behave as expected. Its orbit was off by a fraction of a degree, enough to perturb exacting astronomers. Le Verrier went in search of what could’ve caused his calculations to go awry, and seized upon a dramatic possibility.

What about an unknown planet? If a small planet existed between the sun and Mercury, it would explain the deviation in his calculations. Le Verrier called the unknown planet Vulcan, and set about trying to find it.

Only Le Verrier never could find it, and neither could the many other astronomers who looked.

The mystery was finally solved decades later by Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. It showed that Newton’s laws were wrong, and the mass of objects warped space in a way that brought objects together, rather than an object itself attracting other objects. It also perfectly explained the shape of Mercury’s orbit without needing to postulate a planet no one could find.

Einstein’s theory remains unchallenged to this day, and even NASA telescopes can’t find Vulcan. It seems to have existed only in our imaginations.

I found out about Vulcan today in an excellent class I’m taking. It’s called Puzzles, Problems and Paradoxes and you can sign up here. It’s online every Wednesday at 11:10am Central through UT-Austin.

For more on science, check out these posts:

If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/LinkedIn/email using the buttons below. This helps more people find the blog! And please leave a comment at the bottom of the page letting me know what you think and what other information you’re interested in!

Check out the Stuff I Use page for some great deals on products and services I use to improve my health and productivity. They just might help you too! 

Photo: “False Color View of Mercury” by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Books, Business, Science, Technology

Amazing Drugs Are Going from the University to the Graveyard, While Patients Pay the Price

Leave a comment

Was the cure for cancer invented in a university, only to be shelved for a lack of funding?

University labs are creating incredible drugs on a regular basis. Unfortunately, most will never get to the patients that need them so desperately. This is the conclusion of an intriguing book I just read, Preserving the Promise: Improving the Culture of Biotech Investment, by Scott Desain and Scott Fishman.

The problem is that universities don’t have the massive funds it takes to bring a drug candidate through clinical trials to FDA approval. What about Big Pharma? Well, they’ve been cutting their R&D budgets drastically for years.

This leaves early stage biotech investors to fund much of the commercialization of new drugs, and there simply aren’t enough of them to fund all the good candidates. Indeed, the number of investors specializing in this area is shrinking. This doesn’t surprise me given that most early-stage investors focus on software startups and have a software background themselves.

This does leave the few angel investors who specialize in biotech in an enviable position though: more great companies out there than there are angels to fund them means big slices of great companies for less money, and thus higher returns. This is an area that I may be branching out into in the future. Being even a tiny part of creating a new lifesaving drug or medical device would be incredible.

University policies also hinder the effective commercialization of research, the book notes. Technology Transfer Offices own the patent, but sometimes are hesitant to license it unless they can get lots of revenue for it right away, which is hard for a fledgling company to provide. In other cases, they bury the patent, thinking it unpromising. And university conflict of interest policies can often stop the inventor from continuing to work on the research with company funds. This separates the technology from the person who is best positioned to advance it.

In all, this seems like a neglected area with a lot of problems. That we rely on it for virtually all new drugs is scary. But investors like myself should eye the area with interest, especially given rich valuations in software startups.

For more posts on biotech, check these out:

If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/LinkedIn/email using the buttons below. This helps more people find the blog! And please leave a comment at the bottom of the page letting me know what you think and what other information you’re interested in!

Check out the Stuff I Use page for some great deals on products and services I use to improve my health and productivity. They just might help you too! 

Photo: The co-founders of BioNTech, a biotech success story. “Forschungszentrum der Biotech-Unternehmen BioNTech AG und Ganymed Pharmaceuticals AG” by MWKEL-RLP is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

COVID

What if Your Mask Could Test You for COVID?

Leave a comment

Harvard researchers have invented a mask that can test the wearer for COVID:

Researchers at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have figured out how to integrate a freeze-dried diagnostic Covid-19 test into a face mask. The test reacts with exhaled particles and gives a diagnosis in 90 minutes or less.

The tests and a tiny blister pack of water can be mounted on any mask. After the mask has been worn for at least 30 minutes, a person punctures the blister pack to release the water needed to rehydrate and run the reactions. The test result is indicated by one or two lines, similar to a pregnancy test

The masks will be affordable and could be useful for a lot more than COVID:

The Wyss team…expects the product to cost about $5. The technology can be targeted to identify other viruses and variants as well.

Any such masks would be subject to FDA approval. Another team at University of California, San Diego is working on a sticker that could be stuck to any mask to test the wearer. Those stickers could cost mere cents.

Incredible ingenuity!

For more on COVID, check out these posts:

If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/LinkedIn/email using the buttons below. This helps more people find the blog! And please leave a comment at the bottom of the page letting me know what you think and what other information you’re interested in!

Check out the Stuff I Use page for some great deals on products and services I use to improve my health and productivity. They just might help you too! 

Photo: “Fit testing the N95 Mask” by AlamosaCountyPublicHealth is licensed under CC BY 2.0

COVID

For the Vaccinated, Masks May Be Over

Leave a comment

If you’ve been vaccinated for COVID, can you finally take off the mask? Early data from Israel says yes:

Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE said on Wednesday that real-world data from Israel suggests that their COVID-19 vaccine is 94% effective in preventing asymptomatic infections, meaning the vaccine could significantly reduce transmission.

If you don’t even have an asymptomatic infection, you shouldn’t be able to transmit the disease to others. That said, this data is preliminary and is not yet peer reviewed.

The problem with real world application of this knowledge is that anyone can say they’re vaccinated. At a grocery store, for example, it would be hard to check everyone given constraints on time and manpower. So, I expect to see masks continue in public places until case rates are very low and everyone who wants a vaccine has had a chance.

That said, this data can inform our actions in private settings. I look forward to being able to wear one less frequently!

For more posts on COVID, check these out:

If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/LinkedIn/email using the buttons below. This helps more people find the blog! And please leave a comment at the bottom of the page letting me know what you think and what other information you’re interested in!

Check out the Stuff I Use page for some great deals on products and services I use to improve my health and productivity. They just might help you too! 

Photo:

COVID

Has Merck Found the Cure for COVID?

1 Comment

Merck has come out with great results from a new drug for COVID:

Over the weekend, the Big Pharma and its biotech partner Ridgeback announced their drug, molnupiravir, hit one of its secondary objectives from a new trial, namely to reduce time to negativity of infectious SARS-CoV-2 virus isolation from swabs in patients with symptomatic COVID-19.

The data show that, at Day 5, there was a reduction in positive viral culture in subjects who received molnupiravir (all doses) compared to placebo: 0% (0/47) for molnupiravir and 24% (6/25) for placebo.

These findings are preliminary, and more data will come out soon:

This is just a peek, with primary endpoints and more secondaries “to be presented at an upcoming medical meeting,” which will show a much clearer picture of how well this drug may be working.

We should know a lot more within the next few weeks:

Data from the phase 2/3 pivotal studies of the med are expected this quarter.

This drug could be great for people who are hesitant to get a vaccine, who haven’t been able to get one yet, or for whom the vaccine did not prevent infection (rare but possible). Good news!

For more on COVID drugs and vaccines, check out these posts:

If you found this post interesting, please share it on Twitter/LinkedIn/email using the buttons below. This helps more people find the blog! And please leave a comment at the bottom of the page letting me know what you think and what other information you’re interested in!

Check out the Stuff I Use page for some great deals on products and services I use to improve my health and productivity. They just might help you too! 

Photo: Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier, “File:Kenneth C. Frazier.jpg” by Merck (www. Merck.com) is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0