The Tithonus Error is the widespread and mistaken belief that extending the human life span will result in us being aged and decrepit for longer. This is not the case, however: engineered longevity can only be accomplished by repairing or reducing cellular and biochemical damage – which means you will be younger for longer. At In Search of Enlightenment, you’ll find an examination of the roots of the Tithonus Error: “There is an irrational public predisposition to regard research on specific late-life diseases as marvelous but to regard research on aging, and thus all late-life diseases together, as a public menace bound to produce a world filled with nonproductive, chronically disabled, unhappy senior citizens consuming more resources than they produce. … I am working on a new paper [that] examines how misperceptions about the present and future state of global health are themselves major obstacles to tackling aging. Because [imagined simulations of the future] are based on memories, medical research that proposes to eliminate a disease is much more likely to invoke hedonic experiences in our simulations then is a medical intervention that retards aging. … our inability to make accurate, sensible simulations of what a future of retarding human aging would entail (for both the developed and developing world) is itself one of the greatest obstacles to prioritizing aging research. And this problem needs to be redressed.”

View the Article Under Discussion: http://colinfarrelly.blogspot.com/2010/04/prospection-errors-are-obstacles-to.html

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith

From the University of Bristol: “Synthetic biology is about improving our ability to engineer biology, and to engineer biology you have to understand the underlying chemistry. … We look at natural molecules and ask, ‘How does nature do this?’ And then we take those key features and build them into synthetic molecules to mimic the natural ones. … Specifically, Woolfson is trying to capture features of the materials that hold cells together and which provide the environment to turn collections of cells into tissues such as skin, liver and networks of nerves. This ‘glue’ is called the extracellular matrix (ECM). However, the ECM is made up of large, complicated molecules with lots of different chemistries, so Woolfson began to investigate whether it would be possible to build something similar to ECM, but out of much simpler and more chemically accessible materials. That was 10 years ago. Today he has developed nano-sized proteins that have been designed to ’self assemble’ into long, spaghetti-like strings, which then become entangled to form a gel. … The result is a hydrogel (a gel in which the liquid constituent is water) made up of these tiny, spaghetti-like strings of proteins which acts as a scaffold to support cell growth in much the same way as the ECM does.”

View the Article Under Discussion: http://bristol.ac.uk/news/2010/6928.html

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith

Plans by  FDA to Adopt stricter standards for Bioequivalence, Bioavailability for generic drugs could sound trouble for Indian Generic Manufactures. Already most of the smaller companies are finding it difficult to get FDA approval letters. QSR Draft Guidance An industry working group has urged the FDA to consider adopting its guidance to outline quality system requirements (QSR) for bioequivalence and bioavailability testing during drug clinical trials.

There was a recent report in NY times that mentioned about several thousand patients receiving nitroglycerin tablets that were not approved by FDA http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/business/27nitro.html

FDA recently evaluated 2070 human studies conducted between 1996 and 2007. These studies compared the absorption of brand name and generic drugs into a person’s body. These studies were submitted to FDA to support approval of generics. The average difference in absorption into the body between the generic and the brand name was only 2.3%. Some generics were absorbed slightly more, some slightly less. This amount of difference would be expected and acceptable, whether for one batch of brand name drug tested against another batch of the same brand, or for a generic tested against a brand name. In fact, there have been studies in which branded drugs were compared with themselves, as well as with a generic. As a rule, the difference for the generic-to-brand comparison was about the same as the brandto- brand comparison” (www.fda.gov/ Drugs/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ BuyingUsingMedicineSafely/Under standingGenericDrugs/ucm167991. htm)

Fore more updates attend the event below

Attend the http://www.informaglobalevents.com/event/beba

Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith

The Tithonus Error is the widespread and mistaken belief that extending the human life span will result in us being aged and decrepit for longer. This is not the case, however: engineered longevity can only be accomplished by repairing or reducing cellular and biochemical damage - which means you will be younger for longer. At In Search of Enlightenment, you'll find an examination of the roots of the Tithonus Error: "There is an irrational public predisposition to regard research on specific late-life diseases as marvelous but to regard research on aging, and thus all late-life diseases together, as a public menace bound to produce a world filled with nonproductive, chronically disabled, unhappy senior citizens consuming more resources than they produce. ... I am working on a new paper [that] examines how misperceptions about the present and future state of global health are themselves major obstacles to tackling aging. Because [imagined simulations of the future] are based on memories, medical research that proposes to eliminate a disease is much more likely to invoke hedonic experiences in our simulations then is a medical intervention that retards aging. ... our inability to make accurate, sensible simulations of what a future of retarding human aging would entail (for both the developed and developing world) is itself one of the greatest obstacles to prioritizing aging research. And this problem needs to be redressed."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://colinfarrelly.blogspot.com/2010/04/prospection-errors-are-obstacles-to.html

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

Recommendation and review posted by Fredricko

From the University of Bristol: "Synthetic biology is about improving our ability to engineer biology, and to engineer biology you have to understand the underlying chemistry. ... We look at natural molecules and ask, 'How does nature do this?' And then we take those key features and build them into synthetic molecules to mimic the natural ones. ... Specifically, Woolfson is trying to capture features of the materials that hold cells together and which provide the environment to turn collections of cells into tissues such as skin, liver and networks of nerves. This 'glue' is called the extracellular matrix (ECM). However, the ECM is made up of large, complicated molecules with lots of different chemistries, so Woolfson began to investigate whether it would be possible to build something similar to ECM, but out of much simpler and more chemically accessible materials. That was 10 years ago. Today he has developed nano-sized proteins that have been designed to 'self assemble' into long, spaghetti-like strings, which then become entangled to form a gel. ... The result is a hydrogel (a gel in which the liquid constituent is water) made up of these tiny, spaghetti-like strings of proteins which acts as a scaffold to support cell growth in much the same way as the ECM does."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://bristol.ac.uk/news/2010/6928.html

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

Recommendation and review posted by Fredricko