Daily Archives: July 19, 2022

image:Copenhagen to Host Gathering of Top Aging Researchers in Biopharmaceutical Industry view more

Credit: insilico

July 18, 2022: From Aug. 29-Sept. 2, 2022, the 9th annual Aging Research and Drug Discovery (ARDD) conference will be held at the University of Copenhagen and virtually and is expected to exceed the number of 2021 delegates with a year-over-year growth of on-site delegates exceeding 300%. During the pandemic, the conference remained open and attracted thousands of participants both on-site and online.

In addition to leading academic and industry speakers, the conference attracts prominent startups, venture capitalists, and editors of major industry journals, including Nature Aging and other Nature journals, Lancet Healthy Longevity, Frontiers, Aging, eLife, and others.

Since its inception, ARDD has prioritized academic excellence, credibility, and value for the biopharmaceutical industry as the main virtues for both the speakers and the delegates, says Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, co-chair of the 9th ARDD and founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven end-to-end drug discovery company. This conference was designed to create the worlds first platform for the pharmaceutical industry to actively engage in and incorporate the latest discoveries in credible aging research into every aspect of their internal R&D strategy. I am very happy that the 9th ARDD in Copenhagen has taken these already high standards even higher and the conference has scaled to become the largest global event of this kind.

The quest to combat aging is gaining momentum with many new technologies including aging clocks, senolytics, AI-discovered and AI-designed antifibrotics, and other geroprotectors being adopted by academic researchers, startups, and pharmaceutical companies. Despite the general slowdown in the biotechnology industry, the subsector focusing on longevity biotechnology is growing exponentially with significant new funding commitments from venture capitalists, the pharmaceutical industry, new private foundations, and government institutions.

Insilico was one of the first companies to recognize this trend. In 2014, the same year the company was founded, Dr. Zhavoronkov brought together a large group of aging researchers and pharmaceutical company executives at the Aging Forum as part of the Miptec/BaselLife conference in Basel, Switzerland. In 2019, Professor Morten Scheibye-Knudsen, MD, PhD, the head of the Biology of Aging laboratory at the University of Copenhagen, joined the ARDD as executive chair and brought the conference from Switzerland to Copenhagen.

The nonprofit conference is managed by the University of Copenhagen with Insilico Medicine as co-organizer and sponsor. This year, Boston Consulting Group will join the conference as a Knowledge Partner with BCG Managing Director and Senior Partner Michael Ringel, JD, PhD, participating as a speaker.

Other 2022 ARDD speakers include: Mehmood Khan, MD, CEO of Hevolution Foundation; Andrea B. Maier, MD, Oon Chiew Seng Professor in Medicine, Healthy Ageing and Dementia Research, and Co-Director of the Centre for Healthy Longevity; Vadim Gladyshev, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; Vishwa Deep Dixit, DVM, PhD, Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Pathology and Professor of Immunobiology and Director of the Yale Center for Research on Aging (Y-Age); Evelyne Bischof, MD, Associate Professor at Shanghai University of Medicine and Health Sciences; and Joan Mannick, MD, co-founder and CEO of Tornado Therapeutics, among many others.

Additional sponsors of the event include: Rubedo Life Sciences, Gordion, Cambrian, Rejuveron, Bioage, Gameto, Molecule, VitaDao, Foxo Technologies Inc., Longe VC, TruDiagnostic, Apollo Health Ventures, Oisin Biotechnologies, Rejuvenate Biomed, GlycanAge, Deep Longevity, Frontiers in Aging, and Longevity Center.

Despite the pandemic and the shocking conflict on the European continent, the ARDD 2022 conference will be held in person at the University of Copenhagen, said Dr. Scheibye-Knudsen. We are extremely excited about the program and the possibility of meeting friends and colleagues outside of Zoom. This year, we are maintaining our focus on young scientists who will be the future of our field. We have a large number of speaker slots for these rising stars."

Highlights of this years conference include an Emerging Tech Workshop that will explore the growth of scientific collaboration in blockchain, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Through the Student Ambassador Program, teenage researchers with an interest in aging and drug discovery are paired with experts and receive mentorship and insight as well as conference registration.

In March, Aging published a paper showing how Insilico Medicine used its drug discovery platform, PandaOmics, to identify 145 aging-related therapeutic targets across various age-related diseases like Alzheimers, Parkinsons, and osteoarthritis in under two months. These were further narrowed down into nine highly promising dual aging-and-disease targets. By training deep neural networks on human omics data, the company was able to generate massive quantities of synthetic data with age as a generation condition and use these DNNs to better understand human disease and aging biology. Insilico now has the first AI-discovered and AI-designed drug in Phase 1 trials for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

The ARDD conference is designed to highlight these sorts of breakthroughs and foster new collaboration among aging researchers to drive discoveries forward.

This years discussion topics include: translating geroscience into the clinic; longevity medicine therapeutics; longevity medicine diagnostics and interventions; tissue immunology and repair; and the biochemistry uniting infectious disease and aging, among many others.

Aging research is growing faster than ever on both academia and industry fronts, said Daniela Bakula, PhD, University of Copenhagen. The ARDD meeting unites experts from different fields and backgrounds, sharing with us their latest groundbreaking research and developments.

Details and registration: http://www.agingpharma.org/

For further information, images or interviews, please contact: ardd@insilico.com

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70+ leaders in aging and longevity to present at the 9th ARDD Conference - EurekAlert

The research team also discovered that protective phenotypes, like the hard shells of most turtle species, might delay the aging process and, in some circumstances, even stop biological aging.

Jonathan the Seychelles giant tortoise, who is 190 years old, made headlines recently for being the oldest living land animal in the world. Although there is anecdotal evidence that certain species of turtles and other ectotherms, or cold-blooded creatures, live a long life, this evidence is spottyand mostly focuses on animals kept in zoos or a small number of individuals surviving in the wild. The largest study on aging and lifespan to date, conducted by an international team of 114 scientists and directed by Penn State and Northeastern Illinois University, has recently been published. It contains data gathered in the wild from 107 populations of 77 different species of reptiles and amphibians.

A photo of a painted turtle (Chrysemys picta), a widespread North American species of freshwater turtle. Credit: Beth A. Reinke, Northeastern Illinois University

The researchers discovered several things, including for the first time, that salamanders, crocodilians, and turtles had extremely slow aging rates and prolonged lifespans for their sizes. They recently published their results in the journal Science. The research team also discovered that protective phenotypes, such as the hard shells of the majority of turtle species, lead to slower aging and, in certain circumstances, even to negligible aging, or the absence of biological aging.

Anecdotal evidence exists that some reptiles and amphibians age slowly and have long lifespans, but until now no one has actually studied this on a large scale across numerous species in the wild, said David Miller, senior author and associate professor of wildlife population ecology, Penn State. If we can understand what allows some animals to age more slowly, we can better understand aging in humans, and we can also inform conservation strategies for reptiles and amphibians, many of which are threatened or endangered.

In their study, the researchers used mark-recapture data, in which animals are taken, tagged, released back into the wild, and then watched, in conjunction with comparative phylogenetic approaches, which allow forinvestigation of organisms evolution. Their purpose was to compare ectotherm aging and lifespan in the wild to endotherms (warm-blooded animals) and investigate earlier assumptions about aging, such as manner of body temperature control and the presence or absence of protective physical features.

The face of a tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus). Credit: Sarah Lamar

Miller explained that the thermoregulatory mode hypothesis suggests that ectotherms because they require external temperatures to regulate their body temperatures and, therefore, often have lower metabolisms age more slowly than endotherms, which internally generate their own heat and have higher metabolisms.

People tend to think, for example, that mice age quickly because they have high metabolisms, whereas turtles age slowly because they have low metabolisms, said Miller.

The teams findings, however, reveal that ectotherms aging rates and lifespans range both well above and below the known aging rates for similar-sized endotherms, suggesting that the way an animal regulates its temperature cold-blooded versus warm-blooded is not necessarily indicative of its aging rate or lifespan.

We didnt find support for the idea that a lower metabolic rate means ectotherms are aging slower, said Miller. That relationship was only true for turtles, which suggests that turtles are unique among ectotherms.

The protective phenotypes hypothesis suggests that animals with physical or chemical traits that confer protection such as armor, spines, shells, or venom have slower aging and greater longevity. The team documented that these protective traits do, indeed, enable animals to age more slowly and, in the case of physical protection, live much longer for their size than those without protective phenotypes.

It could be that their altered morphology with hard shells provides protection and has contributed to the evolution of their life histories, including negligible aging or lack of demographic aging and exceptional longevity, said Anne Bronikowski, co-senior author and professor of integrative biology, Michigan State.

Beth Reinke, first author and assistant professor of biology, at Northeastern Illinois University, further explained, These various protective mechanisms can reduce animals mortality rates because theyre not getting eaten by other animals. Thus, theyre more likely to live longer, and that exerts pressure to age more slowly. We found the biggest support for the protective phenotype hypothesis in turtles. Again, this demonstrates that turtles, as a group, are unique.

Interestingly, the team observed negligible aging in at least one species in each of the ectotherm groups, including frogs and toads, crocodilians, and turtles.

An Iberian tree frog (Hyla molleri). Credit: Iigo Martnez-Solano

It sounds dramatic to say that they dont age at all, but basically their likelihood of dying does not change with age once theyre past reproduction, said Reinke.

Miller added, Negligible aging means that if an animals chance of dying in a year is 1% at age 10, if it is alive at 100 years, its chance of dying is still 1%. By contrast, in adult females in the U.S., the risk of dying in a year is about 1 in 2,500 at age 10 and 1 in 24 at age 80. When a species exhibits negligible senescence (deterioration), aging just doesnt happen.

Reinke noted that the teams novel study was only possible because of the contributions of a large number of collaborators from across the world studying a wide variety of species.

Being able to bring these authors together who have all done years and years of work studying their individual species is what made it possible for us to get these more reliable estimates of aging rate and longevity that are based on population data instead of just individual animals, she said.

Bronikowski added, Understanding the comparative landscape of aging across animals can reveal flexible traits that may prove worthy targets for biomedical study related to human aging.

Reference: Diverse aging rates in ectothermic tetrapods provide insights for the evolution of aging and longevity by Beth A. Reinke, Hugo Cayuela, Fredric J. Janzen, Jean-Franois Lematre, Jean-Michel Gaillard, A. Michelle Lawing, John B. Iverson, Ditte G. Christiansen, Iigo Martnez-Solano, Gregorio Snchez-Montes, Jorge Gutirrez-Rodrguez, Francis L. Rose, Nicola Nelson, Susan Keall, Alain J. Crivelli, Theodoros Nazirides, Annegret Grimm-Seyfarth, Klaus Henle, Emiliano Mori, Gatan Guiller, Rebecca Homan, Anthony Olivier, Erin Muths, Blake R. Hossack, Xavier Bonnet, David S. Pilliod, Marieke Lettink, Tony Whitaker, Benedikt R. Schmidt, Michael G. Gardner, Marc Cheylan, Franoise Poitevin, Ana Golubovi, Ljiljana Tomovi, Dragan Arsovski, Richard A. Griffiths, Jan W. Arntzen, Jean-Pierre Baron, Jean-Franois Le Galliard, Thomas Tully, Luca Luiselli, Massimo Capula, Lorenzo Rugiero, Rebecca McCaffery, Lisa A. Eby, Venetia Briggs-Gonzalez, Frank Mazzotti, David Pearson, Brad A. Lambert, David M. Green, Nathalie Jreidini, Claudio Angelini, Graham Pyke, Jean-Marc Thirion, Pierre Joly, Jean-Paul Lna, Anton D. Tucker, Col Limpus, Pauline Priol, Aurlien Besnard, Pauline Bernard, Kristin Stanford, Richard King, Justin Garwood, Jaime Bosch, Franco L. Souza, Jaime Bertoluci, Shirley Famelli, Kurt Grossenbacher, Omar Lenzi, Kathleen Matthews, Sylvain Boitaud, Deanna H. Olson, Tim S. Jessop, Graeme R. Gillespie, Jean Clobert, Murielle Richard, Andrs Valenzuela-Snchez, Gary M. Fellers, Patrick M. Kleeman, Brian J. Halstead, Evan H. Campbell Grant, Phillip G. Byrne, Thierry Frtey, Bernard Le Garff, Pauline Levionnois, John C. Maerz, Julian Pichenot, Kurtulu Olgun, Nazan zm, Aziz Avc, Claude Miaud, Johan Elmberg, Gregory P. Brown, Richard Shine, Nathan F. Bendik, Lisa ODonnell, Courtney L. Davis, Michael J. Lannoo, Rochelle M. Stiles, Robert M. Cox, Aaron M. Reedy, Daniel A. Warner, Eric Bonnaire, Kristine Grayson, Roberto Ramos-Targarona, Eyup Baskale, David Muoz, John Measey, F. Andre de Villiers, Will Selman, Victor Ronget, Anne M. Bronikowski and David A. W. Miller, 23 June 2022, Science.DOI: 10.1126/science.abm0151

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

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Secrets of Longevity Revealed: Scientists Find Species That Essentially Do Not Age - SciTechDaily

image:ISM Annual Meeting view more

Credit: International Society of Microbiota

The International Society of Microbiota Annual Meeting will be held on October 19-21 in Paris, Sorbonne University, and online. The ISM will gather leaders and microbiota actors to discuss the recent advances, innovations and therapeutical strategies. Targeting Microbiota 2022 will put together many complementary talks and topics, controversies and clinical advances from oral microbiota, to gut microbiota as well as vaginal microbiota.

Among the hot topics which will be discussed:

During these sessions, high-level speakers will cover many hot topics:

May the Microbiota of the Long-Lived Naked Mole-Rat Affect Human Health?

The naked mole-rat is a subterranean mouse-sized African mammal that shows astonishingly few age-related degenerative changes and seems to not be affected by cancer. These features make this wild rodent an excellent model to study the biology of healthy aging and longevity. Gerd Birkenmeier, University of Leipzig, Germany, and his team characterized for the first time the intestinal microbial ecosystem of the naked mole-rat in comparison to humans.

Interestingly, some compositional gut microbiota peculiarities were also shared with human gut microbial ecosystems of centenarians and Hadza hunter-gatherers, considered as models of a healthy gut microbiome and of a homeostatic and highly adaptive gut microbiota-host relationship, respectively. In addition, we found an enrichment of short-chain fatty acids and carbohydrate degradation products in naked mole-rat compared to human samples. The team has hope in using the FMT technique from the naked mole-rat to extend the lifespan of humans.

Gene Editing & Microbiome Therapy

Gene editing holds a promising future in microbiome therapy and exploring the complex interplay between members of the microbiome and our bodies. In this presentation, Nahla Mansour, National Research Center, Egypt, will highlight the re-emerging of gene editing tools and multiple strategies in microbiome therapy past, present, and future. She will describe the genetically engineered probiotic strains that have been constructed by her group, as well as their new project using CRISPR-Cas tools.

Probiotics and FMT as Add-on Therapies for Depression

Depression is a highly prevalent and burdensome psychiatric disorder. Even though antidepressants and further therapeutic approaches are widely applied, up to 30% of treatment-resistant patients experience residual symptoms when receiving optimized treatments. Therefore, the development of novel and more efficient treatment approaches is urgently needed.

In this talk, Andr Schmidt, University of Basel, Switzerland, presents data from a randomized controlled trial exploring clinical and biological effects along the MGB axis of probiotic supplementation in patients with depression. He further shows data from two depressed patients receiving fecal microbiota transplantation. These findings will be discussed in the view of current research and potential suggestions for future studies will be proposed aiming at developing microbial interventions for depression care.

Targeting Microbiota to Increase Cancer Immunotherapy Efficacy

Bertrand Routy, University of Montreal Hospital, Canada, explains that immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) has revolutionized the treatment for several cancers, including the most common lung cancer type, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, only a minority of patients experience a long-lasting response and resistance to ICI treatment is common.

Recent efforts to increase the benefits of ICI to a greater majority of patients have involved strategies that target the gut microbiome to enhance the number of immune cells and their activity within the tumors, which translates into better outcome. Shifting the microbiome toward a more diverse and beneficial bacterial composition has also shown potential as a therapeutic approach to circumvent ICI resistance and enhance the immune T cell activity that promotes an ICI response.

Agenda, speakers, abstract submission and attendees

Submit your abstract before October 10.

More about the talks.

Access to all companies and academics who will attend.

More information about the registration process.

For more information about the ISM Annual Meeting & Conference, visit the ISM conference site or follow our social media: Facebook and LinkedIn.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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Targeting Microbiota 2022, 9th World Congress, will be held in Sorbonne University, Paris, France, this October - EurekAlert

Why is exercise important? On the face of it, this may seem like a fairly simple question schooling systems across the world tell us exercise is a great way to stay fit and healthy. But what are the actual physiological benefits of raising your heart rate, and why are they so important to the human function?

Firstly, its important to understand what exercise is. For many, the phrase will trigger mental images of a session on the one of the best treadmills (opens in new tab), a HIIT bike workout (opens in new tab), or a trip to the gym, and this isnt far wrong. A 1985 Public Health Report (opens in new tab) seeking to pin down the term settled on a definition of, planned, structured, and repetitive bodily movement done to improve or maintain one or more components of physical fitness.

So, whether youre tracking your sets and reps while weight training (opens in new tab) for hypertrophy (opens in new tab) with the best adjustable dumbbells (opens in new tab), or setting out on a 10K with the aim of burning calories, youre taking part in exercise.

Now, on to the main event. Why is exercise so important?

This list is almost endless, Liam Walton, validation lead at sports engineering company INCUS Performance, told Live Science. However, with qualifications in Sports Biomechanics, Applied Sport and Exercise Science, as well as years working in the fitness industry, he is better placed than most to provide an answer.

Below, he explains some of the key reasons why exercise is so important and beneficial to human function, including the positive impact participation can have on positive longevity, proprioception and the reduced risk of lifestyle-related diseases.

One of the most important benefits of exercise is reducing the risk of developing lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes or heart disease, Walton says.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States, with one person dying every 36 seconds from cardiovascular disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (opens in new tab).

Walton continues: Daily exercise has been scientifically proven (in a 2019 study published in Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity (opens in new tab)) to reduce the risk of heart disease, with 30 minutes of moderate exercise completed five times a week being enough to make a difference.

Hearing that exercise can be beneficial to heart health may be nothing new to you. But why exactly does it have such a positive impact?

The heart is a muscle, and like all muscles it needs regular stimulation to stay strong and healthy, Walton says. Without regular exercise, fatty material builds up in the arteries which increases your risk of suffering from a heart attack.

A 2018 study published in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine (opens in new tab) stated that endurance training is associated with elevated levels of circulating high density lipoprotein (HDL) and, to a lesser extent, a reduction in triglyceride levels - both changes that can reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.

It later adds: Physical activity can ameliorate a variety of cardiovascular disease risk factors such as dyslipidemia (the imbalance of lipids) or hypertension (high blood pressure).

In essence, what we mean by the term positive longevity is exercising in the present to ensure you remain healthy and functional in the future.

It may be difficult for younger people to imagine being elderly and a lot of people just workout for aesthetics, but exercise should be thought of as a long-term investment, he says. Being healthy and active now will prevent conditions such as osteoporosis (a health condition that weakens the bones, making them more likely to break) later in life, which can have a huge impact on mobility and quality of life when were older.

Practicing positive longevity involves looking after your organs, muscles and joints. And what is one of the key ways of achieving this? You guessed it: exercise.

You should think of your body like a car - it needs constant maintenance to keep running well, Walton says. For our bones and joints, resistance training could increase bone density (as suggested in this study published in the Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise) meaning you are less likely to break or fracture bones as you get older.

According to the World Health Organisation (opens in new tab), falls are the second leading cause of unintentional injury deaths worldwide. By doing regular exercise and keeping your bones and muscles strong as well as improving balance and coordination you will reduce your risk of falls later in life.

A factor that is often overlooked when considering the benefits of exercise, Walton describes proprioception as the awareness you have of your body in a space.

It relates to coordination, he says. Someone with good proprioception is less likely to injure themselves through small accidents such as tripping down a curb and twisting an ankle, or cutting a finger in the kitchen.

Regular exercise can really improve your proprioception and coordination, meaning if you are a clumsy person, you can fix that.

Arguably the best-documented impact of exercise is its potential to affect body composition, which comprises factors such as body fat percentage and muscle mass. Whether youre hitting the gym to pack on slabs of muscle or slipping into the saddle of one of the best exercise bikes (opens in new tab) in an attempt to lose weight, many people are motivated to work out by the possibility of making changes to their frame.

After reviewing existing literature on the topic, a 2019 systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Journal of Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome (opens in new tab) stated: The effect of exercise on obesity is larger in outward appearance (BMI and waist circumference) than in practical factors (weight and body fat percentage).

However, exercise can still have a positive impact in preventing or reversing symptoms of obesity, with the studys authors concluding: We suggest that individuals with obesity should exercise consistently to achieve significant improvements in their health.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) warns that being overweight or obese can have a serious impact on health.

It continues: Carrying extra fat leads to serious health consequences such as cardiovascular disease (mainly heart disease and stroke), type 2 diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders like osteoarthritis, and some cancers (endometrial, breast and colon). These conditions cause premature death and substantial disability.

What is not widely known is that the risk of health problems starts when someone is only very slightly overweight, and that the likelihood of problems increases as someone becomes more and more overweight. Many of these conditions cause long-term suffering for individuals and families.

The WHO says becoming overweight or obese is largely preventable if individuals are able to achieve an energy balance between calories consumed on one hand, and calories used on the other hand.

The organization says: To increase calories used, people can boost their levels of physical activity to at least 30 minutes of regular, moderate-intensity activity on most days.

This, combined with heightened levels of non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) (opens in new tab) and an appropriate diet, can help you achieve a calorie maintenance or calorie deficit (opens in new tab), preventing or reversing symptoms of overweight and obesity.

This is a highly individualized question with answers that will vary from person to person. However, Walton does have advice for anyone looking to improve their health by incorporating a sustainable fitness routine into their weekly schedule.

Official physical activity recommendations (opens in new tab) suggest that 150 minutes of moderate exercise

per week is enough to stay healthy, he says. However, its important to note that an overall sedentary lifestyle with a one-hour visit to the gym each day is not enough to combat the negative effects of said lifestyle. Instead, its best to make long-term changes to make your lifestyle more wholly active.

This could include walking to work instead of driving, if this is possible. If not, try parking further away and walking the last 10 minutes. Or, if you use public transport, get off a few stops early and walk the rest of the way.

Try to include a walk or even a run on your lunch break and travel under your own power (walk or cycle) as much as possible. Small changes really add up and are the best way to prevent the negative effects of an inactive lifestyle.

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Why is exercise important, according to the science? - Livescience.com

It may be a surprising fact that many older men lose the Y chromosome in their white blood cells when they hit a certain age.

Now, new research finds that this genetic change can cause serious heart problems and increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

Known as mLOY, or mosaic Loss Of Y, this genetic change affects at least 20 percent of 60-year-old men and 40 percent of 70-year-old men, according to researchers at the University of Virginia and Uppsala University in Sweden.

The Y is lost during cell division and is more common in tissues and organs with high cell division rates, such as the blood, Lars Forsberg, Ph.D., a study co-author and an associate professor at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology at Uppsala University, told Healthline. Replicated risk factors are age, smoking, and genetic predisposition.

The new study, led by Forsberg and Kenneth Walsh, Ph.D., a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, establishes a causal link between chromosome loss and the development of fibrosis in the heart, impaired heart function, and death from cardiovascular diseases in men.

Researchers used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to remove the Y chromosome from white blood cells in lab mice. They found that mLOY caused direct damage to the animals internal organs and that mice with mLOY died younger than mice without mLOY.

Examination of mice with mLOY showed an increased scarring of the heart, known as fibrosis. We see that mLOY causes the fibrosis which leads to a decline in heart function, said Forsberg.

The researchers reported that mLOY in a certain type of white blood cell in the heart muscle, called cardiac macrophages, stimulated a known signaling pathway that leads to increased fibrosis.

When the researchers blocked this pathway, known as heart trigger high transforming growth factor 1 (TGF-1), they said the pathological changes in the heart caused by mLOY could be reversed.

An epidemiological study in humans also showed that mLOY is a significant risk factor for death from cardiovascular disease in men.

For that portion of the study, Forsberg, Walsh and colleagues looked at genetic and cardiovascular data on 500,000 individuals ages 40 to 70 in the UK Biobank.

The researchers reported that individuals with mLOY at the start of the study had about a 30% higher risk of dying from heart disease during the 11-year follow-up period than those who did not have mLOY.

This observation is in line with the results from the mouse model and suggests that mLOY has a direct physiological effect also in humans, said Forsberg.

The type of heart disease associated with mLOY is called non-ischemic heart failure.

This form is poorly understood relative to the classic ischemic heart failure, [which] results from blockage of a major artery that supplies blood to the heart muscle, Forsberg said.

He added that there are very few treatment options available for non-ischemic heart failure.

We could look at it as identifying what we might otherwise just call age-related degeneration, Dr. Rigved Tadwalkar, a cardiologist at Providence Saint Johns Health Center in California, told Healthline. It gives us a target to try to mitigate these effects of aging.

Forsberg said routine testing for the loss of the Y chromosome in blood cells could help prevent cardiovascular disease.

mLOY testing of aging males would identify the men [who] would likely benefit from medical checkups and preventive treatments, Forsberg said. Loss of the Y chromosome can be relatively easy to measure. If validated by further research, the loss of Y can be used as a prognostic assay or it potentially can be used to guide therapies.

For example, men with mLOY in blood could be directed to undergo an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) analysis to determine whether he has a buildup of connective tissue/fibrosis in his heart and other organs, he said. If that is found to be the case, he could be put on anti-fibrosis medications.

An FDA-approved antifibrosis medication exists for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and this drug is currently being explored for its utility in conditions that involve cardiac and kidney fibrosis, Forsberg added. In addition, there is a lot of interest in developing new fibrosis medications by pharmaceutical companies. It is possible that men with loss of the Y chromosome would have a superior response to these medications.

Past studies also have suggested that mLOY is linked to excessive fibrosis in the kidneys and lungs. Researchers also have begun laying the groundwork for creating a genetic screening test to assess mLOY risk.

Tadwalkar said that mLOY is certainly not talked about in day-to-day clinical practice among cardiologists.

Although therapies to address mLOY are currently limited, he said, a cost-effective screening test would at least help get the condition on clinicians radar.

It could also provide an opportunity to assess patients for other cardiovascular risk factors that can be addressed.

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Men's Loss of Y Chromosome and Heart Disease Risk - Healthline

The transportation sector, powered by the internal combustion engine (ICE) accounts for 27 per cent of global CO2 emissions.

ICE is a generic term used to describe several types of engines, all variations on a theme reciprocating, rotary, turbine, two stroke and four stroke, burning gasoline, diesel, biofuels or kerosene. Amazingly, with all of our ingenuity, the ICE was the best we could come up with, a noisy, inefficient and polluting engine, a major contributor to climate change and air pollution, and a serious detriment to our health, and that of the planet. Powering not only transportation, ICEs have motorized all manner of industrial, commercial and recreational equipment, from chainsaws to personal watercraft, and generate not only greenhouse gases but soot and nitrogen and sulphur oxides, responsible for serious air pollution and smog. The addition of tetraethyl lead to gasoline further contributed to human health issues and increases in lead pollution.

Frustratingly, NAFTA, Chapter 11, in protecting profits over people and the environment, allowed Ethyl Corporation to sue the Canadian government when it banned MMT, another gasoline additive and neurotoxin, once again demonstrating the power of the corporation over government, the environment and human health. Although catalytic converters, computerized engine management, and the elimination of lead from fuels have reduced some emissions, ICEs remain a major contributor of greenhouse gases.

There are many reasons for the longevity of the ICE, not the least of which is its support by the petroleum and vehicle manufacturing industries. It is confounding that consumers continue to buy ever larger and thirstier vehicles. Manufacturers, supported by oil companies, are more than happy to sell these gas guzzlers because they are so profitable, while the vehicle manufacturing lobby has successfully pushed back against more stringent fuel consumption standards. Those who take public transportation, drive a fuel efficient or electric vehicle are subsidizing these highway leviathans. Manufacturers and auto journalists talk about horsepower, torque and other metrics of power and speed, but it isnt bigger, more powerful and polluting vehicles that we need, as should be obvious from the carnage on our streets and our rapidly changing climate.

The cleanest engine is an electric one. Although ICE infrastructure is well entrenched, as electric vehicles make inroads it appears that the era of the ICE may be coming to a close.

Hybrid, plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicles will replace ICEs as electrical grids are upgraded and we move away from fossil fuels to wholly renewable sources, assuming the necessary electrical and battery charging infrastructures are in place. Battery development is evolving, and range anxiety and charging times should be resolved. Infrastructure, safety and energy density issues appear to rule out hydrogen as a viable source of fuel in an ICE or a fuel cell. How the electricity is produced and distributed is a major issue. Although nuclear, hydro, wind, solar or other non-fossil-fuel sources produce clean greenhouse gas free electricity, they come with their own significant environmental and carbon footprints.

The life cycle of any vehicle, however powered, must be factored in to its carbon footprint. It is an oxymoron to describe an electric vehicle as zero emissions since it doesnt take into account the energy consumed and emissions released from extraction of raw materials, the manufacturing process, and disposition of the vehicle when it reaches the end of its life. Nor does it consider if the process is linear or circular, with recovery of materials to be reused/upcycled. Battery recycling is critical as raw materials such as lithium and other rare earth metals are sourced from a relatively few countries and are subject to geopolitical forces.

In the end, with a net greenhouse gas benefit of going electric, the future of transportation is electrifying.

Wayne Poole lives in Dundas.

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Opinion | The end of the internal combustion engine era is in sight - Hamilton Spectator

Its no secret that technology has changed the way we learn and work. We are now in the age of visual information where graphical content plays a role in every part of most peoples lives. Considering 65 percent of the population are visual learners, graphics are key to engaging employees in training and development strategies.

Finding solutions to engage and optimize the screen-based learning experience is a vital concern. Simply put, companies need cost-effective, agile solutions that allow them to implement scenario-based learning modules with little effort.

The good news is that the technology is here. Once viewed as nothing more than a tool for entertainment, animation can be extremely effective to engage and educate the employees of todays businesses.

Animated visuals help summarize content into smaller, easier-to-process segments of information, offering more comprehensibility than text or audio-based explanations.

Keep reading to discover how you can leverage the power of animation to help your employees learn faster and work smarter.

At the top of this list is its ability to create original brand-compliant content within budget. Lets face it: Creating original content is expensive. With animation software, theres no need to hire production crews that bill tons of hours, hire actors, find locations, rent cameras and lighting equipment, capture footage, pay for editing, and worry about distribution or other complications.

These capabilities, used in conjunction with interactive content authoring platforms, also allow animators to immerse learners in scenario-based learning simulations that make training more fun and engaging.

Who knows how we will be using the animated content were creating today. But as animators continue to implement new tactics and push the boundaries of whats possible, we will be sure to see the animation, gamification, and learning AI all play a vital role for talent and development (T&D).

Videos can be used to introduce new concepts, explain difficult topics, or detail step-by-step instructions to employeesno matter where they are. Companies can also manage employees, by providing a storable database of videos that provide clear visual instruction.

This reinforcement helps to ensure employees are working towards the same goal and have access to the training they need to complete a task.

Animate your next T&D video with Vyond!

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Animation Increasingly Part of Successful T&D Strategies - ATD