A number of groups are working on gene therapies for aging and age-related disease based on manipulation of telomere length. Here is some insight into what that work looks like: ''Degeneration of the intervertebral disc is an age-related condition in which cells responsible for the maintenance and health of the disc deteriorate with age. ...

The NYAS looks at efforts to better understand our cells - this is key to the most important potential advances in medicine foreseen for the decades ahead, such as extending the healthy human life span. ''Thinking of the cell as a factory and biologists as engineers, [a] geneticist might unscrew every pipe inside the factory, one at a time for ...

The research noted by Newswise here does not strike me as the future of longevity science: ''Aspirin didn't pan out. Neither did two other potential anti-aging agents. But a synthetic derivative of a pungent desert shrub is now a front-runner in ongoing animal experiments to find out if certain chemicals, known to inhibit inflammation, cancer and ...

Picking their test cases carefully, researchers are making progress towards a technology base for repairing nerves and brain cells: ''Rats paralyzed due to loss of blood flow to the spine returned to near normal ambulatory function six weeks after receiving grafts of human spinal stem cells (hSSCs) ... We demonstrated that when damage has occurred ...

Continued signs of progress in regenerative science from EurekAlert!: ''so-called satellite cells in muscle actually include a mix of cells already committed to their muscular fate and others that behave like more versatile stem cells. The cells had widely been considered by scientists as a homogeneous population of dedicated muscle progenitors. ...

Why do the regenerative capacities of stem cells diminish with age, and what can be done about it? This paper looks at some of the specific mechanisms as they work to suppress young transplanted cells: ''aged differentiated [stem cell] niches dominantly inhibit [certain important gene expression] in activated satellite cells, and reduce ...

''According to the disposable soma theory, a cost for reproduction could exist in human beings and other species and, thus, longevity could decrease when women have a higher number of children. The purpose of this article is to review the evidence in populations living or not living under natural fertility conditions, i.e. when fertility is near ...

As noted at Ouroboros, there's still plenty to debate in calorie restriction science. Well-funded companies are developing therapies and human studies have been taking place for years, but discussions continue on the basic research in lesser species: ''In the last decade, research into the molecular determinants of aging has progressed rapidly and ...

(From EurekAlert!). Adding insult to injury: as if the destruction of your immune system over the years was not enough, cytomegalovirus also causes further direct harm to your body: ''Atherosclerosis is the main cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. ... Recently inflammation and infectious agents have been shown to play an important role in ...

Work on urinary incontinence is demonstrating that reconditioning and repairing even more subtle damage in muscle function is within the present bounds of regenerative medicine. Via Medical News Today: ''Previous studies in animal models [demonstrated] that injecting stem cells into the urethral muscles increases leak point pressure, leading to ...