GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: First anti-ageing drugs ready for trial

domingo, 10 de septiembre de 2017

First anti-ageing drugs ready for trial

First anti-ageing drugs ready for trial

Saturday, September 9, 2017

Bioedge

First anti-ageing drugs ready for trial

by Xavier Symons | 9 Sep 2017 | 1 comment

Scientists may soon trial a new class of drugs that specifically aim to delay or treat ageing.

Writing in the Journal of American Geriatrics this week, doctors from the Mayo Clinic and Scripps Research Institute outline a set of new clinical trial paradigms that could be used to test the efficacy and safety of “Senolytics”, a new class of drugs that target mechanisms in the ageing process.

Senolytics target a process known as “cell senescence”, in which moribund cells begin to accumulate in different parts of the body and (in some cases) disrupt the functioning of healthy cells. Senescence is associated with failing heart health, osteoporosis, general run-of-the-mill frailty, and even cancer.

Senolytic drugs trigger a specific gene that leads cells to die a normal death and prevents them from interfering with other cell functions.

“This is one of the most exciting fields in all of medicine or science at the moment,” said Dr. James Kirkland, director of the Kogod Center on Aging at the Mayo Clinic and lead author of the new paper.

The researchers argue that the new drugs “could transform geriatric medicine by enabling prevention or treatment of multiple diseases and functional deficits in parallel, instead of one at a time”.

“I think senolytic drugs have a great future. If it is proven that it can reduce senescent cells and rejuvenate tissues or organs, it may be one of our potential best treatments for age-related diseases,” said Dr. Kang Zhang, founding director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the new paper.

It still remains to be shown, however, whether Senolytics can have the same effects in
humans as the have had in mice. “We will have to wait for clinical trials to
see whether this would work in humans”, Zhang said.

Saturday, September 9, 2017

Planned Parenthood is an organisation which inspires both love and loathing. One of its admirers is the Lasker Foundation, which has just presented it with the Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award for services to reproductive health.

Since many Laskers have gone on to win Nobels, PP is suddenly on the starting blocks for a Nobel Peace Prize. If it were only for its success in promoting contraception and abortion, it might be too controversial even for the Norwegian Nobel Committee. However, as a one-fingered salute to President Donald Trump, who has promised to defund PP, it could prove nearly irresistible. Read all about it below.

On a completely different topic, if you happen to live in Melbourne and are free on Thursday evening, there will be a launch of my book, The Great Human Dignity Heist, in Carlton. The details are on our Facebook page. It would be great to meet lots of BioEdge readers there.

Cheers,