/ News
Fountain of youth uncovered in mammary glands of mice
Professor Rama Khokha and Dr. Hartland Jackson (Courtesy of University Health Network).
The Fountain of Youth has been discovered and it’s not in Florida as Ponce de Leon claimed. Instead, it was found in the mammary glands of genetically modified mice.
A research team led by Professor Rama Khokha has found that when two factors that control tissue development are removed, you can avoid the impact of aging.
Think of tissue as a building that is constantly under renovation. The contractors would be “metalloproteinases,” which are constantly working to demolish and reconstruct the tissue. The architects in this case, who are trying to reign in and direct the contractors, are known as “tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases” — or TIMPs. When the architect and the contractors don’t communicate well, a building can fall down. In the case of tissue, the result can be cancer.
To understand how metalloproteinases and TIMPs interact, medical researchers breed mice that have one or more of the four different types of TIMPs removed. Khokha’s team examined the different combinations and found that when TIMP1 and TIMP3 were removed, breast tissue remained youthful in aged mice. The results are presented in Nature Cell Biology.
In the normal course of aging, your tissue losses its ability to develop and repair as fast as it did when you were young. That’s because stem cells, which are abundant in your youth, decline with the passing of time. The U of T team found that with the TIMP1 and TIMP3 architects missing, the pool of stem cells expanded and remained functional throughout the lifetime of these mice.
“Normally you would see these pools of stem cells, which reach their peak at six months in the mice, start to decline. As a result, the mammary glands start to degenerate, which increases the risk of breast cancer occurring,” explains Khokha. “However, we found that in these particular mice, the stem cells remained consistently high when we measured them at every stage of life.”
The team also found that despite large number of stem cells, there was no increased risk of cancer.
“It’s generally assumed that the presence of a large number of stem cells can lead to an increased cancer risk,” says Khokha. “However, we found these mice had no greater predisposition to cancer.”
The next step in this research is to understand why this is happening. Khokha is also working with her colleagues at Princess Margaret to see how altered tissue remodeling might prevent cancer development or lead to a new therapeutic treatment for patients.
Khokha is a Professor in the departments of Medical Biophysics and Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, as well as a Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Her work is supported by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation and the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute.
She was drawn to this research by the complexity of breast tissue.
“It’s a fundamental tissue that is constantly reorganizing. It develops at puberty. It goes through cycles of change in the adult female. New structures appear and regress,” she explains. “It is therefore a good system to explore in order to understand tissue maintenance and epithelial cell turnover - the cells that underlie carcinomas, the most frequent type of cancer.”
She worked closely with the paper’s lead author, Dr. Hartland Jackson, who earned his PhD under her supervision. He is now completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Molecular Life Sciences.
“He’s continuing his work in breast cancer and learning some really interesting techniques that, I hope, he’ll bring back here,” says Khokha, who beams with pride at her former student’s success.
Source: http://medicine.utoronto.ca/news/breast-cancer-research-uncovers-fountain-youth
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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