From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sun Mar 09 2003 - 10:12:52 MST
On Sat, 8 Mar 2003, Ramez Naam wrote:
> The LEF is not, to my knowledge, funding or conducting any serious
> anti-aging research. They seem to focus their efforts on selling
> products of questionable value rather than attempting to develop truly
> effective interventions against aging.
Sorry Ramez, but Saul Kent the head of the LEF has been funding aging
research for some time. I believe he funded the studies by Weindruch
and Prola in the late 1990's. (They used a slightly more advanced set
of methods than we used at Aeiveos Sciences Group in the mid-1990's
but the got the same results with regard to genes that were expressed
differently with age.)
Saul is, I believe, also funding Greg Fahy's work on how to vitrify
organs and bodies at 21st Century Medicine. This makes sense to Saul
as he is quite a bit older than you and somewhat older than I, so
if the the real prospects for life span extension don't happen (stem
cells, drugs, organ replacement), then he is, I think, ultimately go
the cryonics route -- so its in his best interest to support that.
As far as "products of questionable value", I'll cite two things.
I can't believe that there isn't a reasonable amount of genetic
variance in your ability to absorb vitamins and minerals (hemochromatosis
and iron absorption for example). The bacteria in your gut also
produce some vitamins -- so whatever strains you received as child
may determine the quantity of vitamins available to you.
Some of the newer vitamins may be very important. Lipoic acid
may serve as an anti-oxidant in your mitochondrial membranes.
For a long time it was thought that coenzyme-Q served that
function. I actually suspect it is some balance between
the two that controls the amount of oxidative damage to your
mitochondria but we just don't know yet.
So I don't view the "questionable value" statement as a fair charge
unless you mean it in the sense that some people may benefit but
others may not.
> 3) Venture Capital firms (ARCH and Oxford Biosciences are funding
> Elixir / Centagenix)
One thing to remember in all of this is that it can take 6-10
years to get a drug approved. So even if we had one today it
would be a while before we could start using it.
On the other hand, organ transplants or your own stem cell
transplants do not require significant approvals. Gene therapies
and implanted devices go through a completely different approval
process (from that of the standard FDA drug approval) as well.
Those two are generally faster than drug approval processes.
One final thing -- I believe that George Roth who has done some
of the research on 2-deoxy-D-glucose and has told me that it
has a very small effective dosing range (too large and it shortens
the lifespan or kills the animals). I doubt very much the FDA
would ever approve it because the chances are too high that
people would OD on it. George has indicated they (his new
company) are working on some safer alternatives.
Robert
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