Will We Cure Aging in My Lifetime?
People have always sought eternal life and everlasting youth. Recent technological breakthroughs, and our growing understanding of ageing, have given strength to the idea that a cure for human ageing can eventually be developed. Hundreds of genes are now known to regulate ageing in model organisms and can increase longevity by up to 10 fold and retard the process of ageing as a whole in animals. In addition, a large number of potential longevity-extending drugs already exist. Studies of species with exceptional longevity or disease resistance, like naked mole rats that are resistant to cancer or bowhead whales
that live over 200 years, may also help treat and prevent human diseases. Here, I will discuss recent advances in longevity science and human applications on the horizon. The scientific prospects of eradicating human ageing within the foreseeable future will also be discussed.
Low-Dose Pharmacological Interventions to Facilitate Healthy Aging – Reduction of Cancer Risk
In this talk I present and discuss several low dose pharmacological interventions which have been shown to have strong anti-cancer properties, as well as some other benefits such as reduction of chronic inflammation. I will review the mechanisms and anti-cancer benefits of low-dose therapy of the pharmaceuticals metformin, naltrexone, aspirin, and for women, tamoxifen (breast cancer). I will also discuss benefits of targeting and inducing apoptosis (killing) to remove a percentage of senescent cells using rapamycin, and neutraceuticals fisetin, and quercitin, with or without dasatinab.
NAD+ Restoration and Senolytic Therapy
Ben Best has subjected himself to two age reversal therapies: (1) senolytic therapy (therapy to eliminate senescent cells using dasatinib and quercetin) and (2) NAD+ infusions (to restore NAD+ to youthful levels). He has also attended several conferences dealing with these subjects as well as studied and written about them, the results of which he will provide in his presentation.
A History of Cryonics in New York
From the earliest days of cryonics there were enthusiasts in the New York area. Their decision to form their own local organization led to the coining of “cryonics” for the company name: “Cryonics Society of New York”, while “cryonics” soon became known more generally for the practice of cryopreserving people for possible later revival. My talk will cover some highlights of early cryonics history in the New York area and culminate with showing a film made in 1968 for a cryonics conference in March that year.
An Introduction to Brain Preservation Optimization
Vitrification has the advantage that it does not need different cryoprotectant protocols for different cell- and tissue types. Vitrification of the brain does presents two distinct challenges: low tolerance to ischemia and poor blood-brain barrier permeability of cryoprotectants. In this presentation I will review the history of brain cryopreservation, the status of brain cryopreservation research, and future directions.
Revival of "Straight Frozen" Patients
Freezing of the brain without cryoprotectant (a "straight freeze") is considered the worst cryopreservation scenario but there is a paucity of ultrastructural evidence how the straight frozen brain actually looks like. Aschwin de Wolf will review electron micrographs of the straight frozen brain (under a variety of conditions) and will discuss how "medical cryobots" will prepare the brain for molecular repair and infer the original non-frozen state from the damaged state.
Alcor Meta-Analysis
Several attempts have been made to create quantitative case outcome methodologies in cryonics. Advanced Neural Biosciences has embarked on a comprehensive meta-analysis of all Alcor patient cases, an endeavor whose goal is to develop, experimentally validate, and refine a quantitative cryopreservation evaluation methodology. Michael will be presenting some preliminary statistics gathered during Phase 1 of the study so far.
Functional evaluation of brain preservation protocols
Currently, reversible vitrification of whole brains is limited by neurotoxicity of the very concentrated vitrification solutions involved. Here, an automated assay is described which has proven to quantify synaptic connections in live-cell neuronal networks by a high-content confocal imaging method. Since it is known that synaptodentritic damage, especially the decrease in number of synaptic connections, correlates with cognitive decline the assay could be used to evaluate brain preservation protocols.
Computational Biology Methods for Tissue Cryopreservation
In contrast to most other biomedical fields, tissue cryopreservation has remained relatively untouched by computational techniques. State-of the-art cryopreservation still predominantly relies on trial-and-error and large numbers of experiments for the determination of protocol parameters. Roman Bauer will review milestones in computational and mathematical work towards better cryopreservation protocols, and will discuss how he sees future automated cryopreservation technologies maximize post-thaw tissue quality.
Professionalization and Scaling of Medical Biostasis
With only a few thousand members world-wide, medical biostasis has stayed a very small field, albeit being around for decades. In Europe the topic has been even more niche. The EBF (European Biostasis Foundation) based in Switzerland, has recently set out to fundamentally change this situation with four main areas of activity - sign up / stand-by, storage, research and long-term asset management. Emil Kendziorra will present the core activities to professionalize medical biostasis and scale the field.
Hidden Motives Help Explain
Why Cryonics Isn’t Popular
The usual pro-cryonics argument frames it as medicine, to be evaluated in terms of its technical ability to prolong life. However, though they are unaware of it, for most people medicine is more about showing that they care than about prolonging life. Robin Hanson reviews the evidence that many big areas of life are driven by hidden motives quite different from what people usually say, and then tries to apply this insight to help us understand why so few people actually choose cryonics.
