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Japanese scientists develop vaccine to eliminate cells behind aging

japantimes.co.jp

361–370 of 382 posts

Re: Japanese scientists develop vaccine to eliminate cells behind aging

#361
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> The team, including Juntendo University professor Toru Minamino, confirmed that mice administered with the vaccine showed decreases in the zombie cells, medically known as senescent cells, and in areas affected by arterial stiffening. By now this has become a trope. "Researchers develop new treatment for {UNTREATED_DISEASE}" ... in mice. Mouse models of human disease are very limited in their predictive ability. Th…

I am curious, why are they still using mice and not tiny monkeys? If they are using some animals, why use random mice and not a primate? Any specific reason other than tradition?

dwonvoting for curiosity is dangerous. If one finds this comment distasteful, it is much more valuable for future readers to explain why, rather than downvote and keep scrolling.

Re: Japanese scientists develop vaccine to eliminate cells behind aging

#362

1. Removing senescent cells extends life by 30-40% with huge quality of life improvements in the last 25% of the life (relative to control), in mice. This isn't an elimination of all aging, but quite a valuable thing regardless. Eventually, other causes of aging would kick in and still cause death, without a single senescent cell in your body (e.g. DNA methylation). 2. I believe all governments should create Warpspee…

> Imagine the massive GDP creation from making every 65+ year old feel 40 again. Come on. It's like more than half a century ago some economists predict because of the improvement of technology and the overall production, most people only need to work 4 hours per day. aaand now we have a lot of people working 12 hours a day over the wire already. GDP is the millstone that when it's bigger it grinds more soul - becaus…

Go be cynical in the corner. Maybe your life hasn’t panned out all that well but stop injecting your pessimism into everything so the rest of us can have nice things.

Re: Japanese scientists develop vaccine to eliminate cells behind aging

#363
post #3

What does HN think of the actual science behind this?

Biochemical cascades in just one cell are very complex, and involve very large molecules. They are triggered by changes in solutions of these very large molecules, heat, and immuno cells. Tissue consists of billions of cells. These are "just" chemical reactions which we still haven't come close to getting right, such as the right dose of blood thinners to prevent clots from afib while not causing brain bleeds, or the right dose of statins that reverse artery plaques while not destroying your liver or the right dose of beta blockers that lower blood pressure without diluting your kidneys.

Gene space is extremely large, close to a cosmic scale. At first genes were only thought to play a role in cell division. Then came gene expression and transcription inside and outside the cell, such as protein receptors and secretion. It is very likely genetic mutations do not rely on "just" chemistry and take into account quantum effects. Despite mapping the billions of genes required and structuring them all the right way, you still get unexpected runaway mutations, because genetic molecule outsides do not represent the insides, it's impossible to determine, and impossible to configure.

Genetic molecules may not exhibit quantum behavior. Likely they do regards to genetic mutations. But neurons certainly do, in regards to their chemical and electrical synapses. I have heart disease. 10 months out of the year I'm barely consciousness. However my family members say I'm still in there somewhere. Compare this to my heart disease is cured, but family members fail to recognize me anymore, adamantly agree across the board I'm not me and now won't have anything to do with me. With mice, you can kill them by the thousands until you get one that glows in the dark or has a human ear growing out it's back. You're left with an incredibly large set of genetic and neural data you will never fully understand, never know its complete, and never know if it has been recorded correctly as that one mouse's body decomposes, and then dump it all in someone else's lap and ask for more money and more privileges to do this to everyone in the world.

Science is still very incomplete and what it needs is often directly opposed by the legitimate needs of people, such as not being horribly poisoned. It's still very much trial and error: "Hey, this guy got by with it. Let's try it on someone who's dying. What have we got to loose"? And also opportunity, as in "the Earth will experience an interference pattern of gravity waves as two neutron stars collide in front of a series of black holes acting as a divider. Get the data." Science still involves much hope, as in, even when you lack opportunity, rules of decency still apply.

Re: Japanese scientists develop vaccine to eliminate cells behind aging

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that it’s neither, rather I believe that the issue is how society disproportionately worships youth.

"society disproportionately worships youth." Does it really? The derision of millenials seems never ending, along with 'kids these days' and 'back in my days'.

There is an endless amount of hate for millennials unfortunately. However, just because an older generation is hating on millennials doesn’t mean that society as a whole doesn’t place a greater value on youth. While this example is anecdotal it kind of drives home some of the problems I feel that we have in society.

“Soya told the TV programme Getsuyou Kara Yofukashi (Sitting Up Late From Monday) that he had wanted to increase his presence on social media and believed people would prefer to see a "younger beautiful woman" rather than an old "uncle".”

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56447357

Re: Japanese scientists develop vaccine to eliminate cells behind aging

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine the massive GDP creation from making every 65+ year old feel 40 again. Come on. It's like more than half a century ago some economists predict because of the improvement of technology and the overall production, most people only need to work 4 hours per day. aaand now we have a lot of people working 12 hours a day over the wire already. GDP is the millstone that when it's bigger it grinds more soul - becaus…

Agreed. Imagine the unemployment if all the retirees want to come back to work to pay for their extended-life vaccines. And what for? If I retire, I want to enjoy it… the last thing I want is to go back to work

Ok, but say the vaccine makes your 65 year old body feel like your 40 year old body, and you would only have to work for a few years to pay for it, say its 3 years salary a dose, and then you would get to be retired again as 68 with a 43 year old body to actually go and enjoy life with.

That would be worthwhile, right?

Re: Japanese scientists develop vaccine to eliminate cells behind aging

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't there be 1:1 replacement of pretty much everything in the human body? Organs, bad/old cells for good/new ones...etc? Nanobots at some point may be able to essentially destroy bad/old cells, and maybe feed/nourish good cells we want to keep, and when cells can't divide anymore, could those be replaced with ones that could ? I think back to the movie Bicentennial man, where he made completely real working huma…

Think of telomeres like a counter at the DNA level. Each time the cell reproduces, it loses a counter. Eventually it runs out of counters and dies. To extend life you have to add telomeres. And you have to do it in an extremely careful way that still manages to control cancer. In a sci-fi hypothetical where nanobytes can do arbitrary behaviors, sure, maybe they could intelligently do that. But that's an extremely com…

Telomeres are just the cell's odometer. Sure, rolling it back is good assuming that it extends the lifespan of the cell, but it still has the dents and dings it's picked up along the way from radiation & pollution, free radicals and oxidation.

This seems like part of the puzzle. First repair the damage, then extend the time span, and the more you do this the more opportunities you have to find an optimal solution.

I think the only thing that will actually work is for entirely new bodies to be built and for our minds to be copied over.

It's not immortality but that is probably as close as we will get, and once we can do that then extending our current body's lifespan will be exponentially easier.

Re: Japanese scientists develop vaccine to eliminate cells behind aging

#367
post #96
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Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if it does NOT work on mice, it's highly unlikely to work on humans? In this case, it might be good predictor of failure, which can save a lot of money. Just speculating... Also, if something really bad goes on mice, we can avoid having that happening to humans. Which I would also value a lot. I mean, it seems to me experimenting on mice might be worth it.

> I guess if it does NOT work on mice, it's highly unlikely to work on humans? There is virtually no relationship whatsoever between what works in mice and humans. Such headlines are completely ridiculous by now: the track record of applicability is a train wreck.

No, this is wrong. The point is to figure out what chemicals react with living creatures in what way. We're not creating super-mice, we're not making the rats of NIMH, we're blindly fumbling about for one of the septillions of light switches we haven't flipped yet to see what it does.

Figuring these things out is hard.

Humans are good at doing things they've done before, or imitating actions they've seen or heard before, but learning something entirely new is very very difficult. We have more scientists alive and working on problems now than ever before in human history and still the mill of innovation turns slowly.

Re: Japanese scientists develop vaccine to eliminate cells behind aging

#368
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wtf is this deathcult bullshit. Maybe in 2A Jesusland death is the only option, but in other parts of the world there are taxes and proportional representation and euthanasia. Yes, there are problems, but saying that death (and more specifically aging with all of its shitty slow painful consequences) is great (okay, you said necessary), because it somehow "solves" other problems is a logical fallacy. Plus, "actually"…

I think parent comment is going along the lines "Altered Carbon" tv series ( and novels ) thread. For instance, if eternal life could be bought, the first one to buy it could be the richest man in the world. Parent is not happy with the idea of an inmortal ruler. In the mean time, I would like to stay younger for longer. And older people are still afraid of death, even if they are not healthy.

More like, if eternal life can be bought, the first one to sell it would be the richest man in the world.

Re: Japanese scientists develop vaccine to eliminate cells behind aging

#369

Sign me up for this the second it is available. As an aside, to spite anti vaxxers I’m on a mission to get every vaccine I can. I want my bloodstream to be like the Library at Alexandria before it burned down.

Please don't post generic flamebait to HN, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Japanese scientists develop vaccine to eliminate cells behind aging

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Happiness is a direct co-relation to GDP. The growth of a civilization is directly as a result of GDP. That’s actually not correct. By that argument the happiest country should be the United States as it has the largest GDP. However the United States ranks #19 on the World Happiness Report: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-...

I should have been more specific: GDP per capita is one of the most important part of a person's happiness. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-vs-happiness Chart above clearly shows that mostly increase in GDP results in higher life satisfaction.

> Chart above clearly shows that mostly increase in GDP results in higher life satisfaction.

That chart clearly shows a handful of countries happier than the US with less GDP per capita…

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