Healthspan Compass
From the Editor
Eve Herold
Editor-in-Chief
Increasing the healthspan is no simple matter; it depends on an entire constellation of approaches, from medical interventions to diet and lifestyle, education, economics and social support. Much of it boils down to changing human behavior—a wild card if there ever was one. But a widespread change in human behavior is not impossible. Witness the stop-smoking movement of the 1980s, which no doubt is having a profound effect on the healthspan and longevity of millions of people. As usual, this month’s Compass covers some of the noteworthy developments in healthspan, including the latest on space science and stem cells, the AI-driven research lab of the future and how to address labor shortages due to the Baby Boom “great retirement.” Also, read about inklings of a seismic shift in longevity research, gut bacteria and brain aging, neuroasthetics and, get this, a simple cheek swab to determine biological age and predict mortality.
News Flash from Low-Earth Orbit
One of the challenges of bringing cell-based cures to the market is the need to produce a very large number of the desired cell types—to take today’s technology and scale up to methods that produce large banks of cells. Now we’re a step closer to that goal. NASA-funded research conducted on an Axios Space mission to the International Space Station offers a major breakthrough on growing three-dimensional cells and structures from induced pluripotent stem cells. The amazing thing about the three-dimensional cells grown after genetically altering stem cells is that they self-organized into the structures, something that doesn’t happen in labs on earth. Pinar Mesci, Axiom’s director of Regenerative Medicine and Disease Modeling, said that the breakthrough not only allows more useful cellular disease modeling, it’s a major step toward the manufacture of new cells in large quantities. One question does spring to mind, though. How will the 3-D structures behave once they enter terrestrial gravity? Not clear, but stay tuned for future reports on the astonishing benefits of research on stem cells in space!
We’ve Seen the Future and It’s AI-Aided Research
AI continues to dazzle us, radically compressing the time frames of research and, in some instances, exceeding humans in things like disease diagnosis. It’s bound to permeate new methods and procedures in the research labs of the future. But like a precocious teenager, AI for real-world use in the lab is going through an awkward stage, with some kinks to be worked out before it lives up to its vaunting promise. These issues were elucidated in a report on the Lab of the Future Survey conducted online by the Pistoia Alliance and Open Pharma Research among 200 participants in the global R&D community across the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific countries. Make no mistake, the use of AI is steadily increasing in labs (there was a 14% increase in its use in the last year), but survey participants cited some of the barriers to adopting and maximizing it in research. These include challenges like a lack of metadata standardization and low-quality and poorly curated datasets for training AI. But most of the challenges are likely to be overcome as new, more quality datasets evolve and scientists gain experience in working with the technology. There’s no doubt that AI will play an ever-growing role as a powerful, revolutionary new tool in biomedical research.
Could There Be a Seismic Shift Afoot in Longevity Research?
Maximum life expectancy and average life expectancy are not the same thing. While average life expectancy is often cited as the more critical issue, since it affects the largest number of people, maximum life expectancy refers to the upper limit of how long humans could potentially live, currently estimated at 122.45 years. The idea that there is a maximum lifespan, and exactly what it is given strides in the science of longevity, is not without debate among gerontologists and biomedical researchers. But a review of the scientific literature shows that there’s a real buzz developing around a new focus on healthspan rather than maximum life expectancy. It’s no coincidence that polls suggest that most people are more interested in aging well and having a vigorous, healthy life until the end than living longer with chronic illnesses and disabilities. A controversial new paper in Nature Aging by influential gerontologist S. Jay Olshansky and others, which made a splash in the media, declares that humans are unlikely to increase their age-limit in this century, and that a more important focus should be on increasing the healthspan. While we applaud the focus on healthspan, the paper overlooks the potentials of leading-edge scientific discoveries and interventions discovered by longevity research. One question is whether interventions used to extend the healthspan could also increase longevity, considering that most people die of the age-related diseases being targeted for new treatments and interventions. William Mair, a professor of molecular metabolism at Harvard, provides more insight into the issue of healthspan-vs.-lifespan in an interview for the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health website.
Labor Shortage in the 21st Century—Could Increasing the Healthspan Erase it?
Employers are bracing themselves for a “silver tsunami” over the next decade as 76 million Baby Boomers are expected to retire, according to The Hill. The Covid pandemic heralded in a period of worker scarcity, which has improved slightly in the last year, but that light at the end of the tunnel could just be an oncoming train. Worker shortages are expected to not only persist, but to increase over the next decades because of the dual phenomenon of falling birth rates and aging populations, the new reality in many developed nations. Meanwhile, of major concern is that a proposed curtailment of immigration will hit the healthcare industry, which employs high numbers of immigrants, especially hard. In fact, all growth in labor force participation since 2019 is due to foreign-born workers entering the work force. Economists predict that these converging forces will likely lead to slower economic growth, unpopular changes to Social Security and Medicare in the U.S and the need for more people to care for chronically sick loved ones (a predicament that already causes a significant number of family caregivers to quit their jobs). Many more people will find it necessary to spend down their assets in order to qualify for Medicaid, which covers long-term care (Medicare doesn’t). Not ideal, to say the least, but all the doomsaying about future economic decline doesn’t have to come true if the healthspan can be extended and people are able to extend their working lives. While there are today record numbers of workers over the age of 60, The Washington Post reports that the worker shortage trend is being cushioned by people working longer. One doesn’t need to exercise blind optimism to infer that extended healthspans based on geroscience breakthroughs could help us reap the rewards of a longevity dividend and avoid some of the gloomiest economic predictions.
To Protect Brain Health, Mind Your Gut Bacteria
Let’s face it. A huge part of aging well is maintaining cognitive skills, and people dread dementia more than any other risk associated with age. But dementia is not a given as we get older. Science has nibbled around the edges of why some people develop dementia in their 60s while others make it well into their 90s still sharp as a tack. But there is no grand unifying theory that recognizes a dominant cause of AD and other dementias; amyloid beta plaques and neurofibrillary tangles often appear in brains dementia patients, but it’s not a slam dunk that these actually cause AD. There do appear to be several risk factors. One of the most interesting is the newly discovered role of gut bacteria in the development and progression of dementia. A new study published by Florida State University researcher Ravinder Nagpal and colleagues in the Journal of Infectious Diseases found a link between dementia and gut microbe imbalance. The problem affects older people the most because hospital-acquired infections and overexposure to antibiotics can unleash the bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae from the lining of the gut. These bacteria can get into the bloodstream and eventually make their way into the brain, where they cause inflammation and cognitive impairment. Bad news? Not necessarily—the last thing we need is bacteria eating our brains, but the discovery opens up new avenues for research and possible new ways to prevent and/or treat dementia.
Neuroaesthetics: Yeah, It’s a Thing, and Your Brain Loves it
If you love the arts—whether it’s painting and sculpture, music, film or dance, it is not just improving your quality of life. It could actually extend it. That’s the conclusion drawn by University College London researchers Daisy Fancourt and Andrew Steptoe in a groundbreaking paper published in the British Medical Journal. The arts are often considered mere embellishments, icing on the human experience, but new attention is being paid to their impact on health and longevity. The arts engage the brain’s pain and pleasure responses, building new neuronal networks and releasing feel-good hormones like dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. They dial down stress hormones, lift depression and profoundly affect our biological circuitry. Fancourt and Steptoe conducted a 14-year longitudinal study to measure the effect of habitually embracing aesthetic experiences among 6,710 adults aged over 50 on their longevity. The results are gobsmacking. Participants who embraced aesthetic experiences infrequently had a 14% reduced risk of dying, and those who engaged in artistic experiences frequently (everything from going to museums to attending concerts) reduced their risk of dying by 31%. This was true across gender, race, age and all other demographics. When the data is adjusted by age, older people reduced their risk of dying during the 14-year longitudinal study by 33%. According to the authors, a growing body of interdisciplinary research has posited that arts engagement “could support longevity by improving mental health, enhancing social capital, reducing loneliness, developing cognitive reserve, reducing risk-taking behaviors.” Now we know that they can actually improve health and extend life. Still to be deciphered: precisely how the mind-body connection translates aesthetic experiences into life- and health-extending biological changes. But stay tuned; neuroaesthetics is a nascent field that only started to examine the issue of how artistic experiences re-wire the brain and body.
A Cheek Swab Can Predict Your Odds of Dying in the Next 12 Months
How would you like to know your risk of dying in the next year? No? Not my idea of a good time either. In perhaps its most tongue-in-cheek title ever, Futurism reports that a “Fun New Cheek Swab Will Tell You When You’ll Die.” Studies on biological aging clocks abound, and many have emerged recently due to research in the longevity community. This latest one measures epigenetic status to predict mortality by swabbing the inside of the cheek and examining the cells obtained for DNA methylation. The study profiling CheekAge, led by Adiv A. Johnson at Tally Health, NY and published in Frontiers in Aging, examined the DNA in a group of individuals aged 69 to 101 and compared it to longitudinal data including health records and blood composition. The value of such tests is that they can alert doctors and patients to the need for potential interventions to slow down aging and take steps to improve health status—that is, once we figure out how to manipulate the epigenetic landscape. The test is not yet available to consumers, and the company is now looking at whether saliva samples could provide the same results. For the mortality-curious, this is the least invasive test yet to determine their probability of expiring in the near future.
UPCOMING EVENTS
On-demand Nov. 15 - Dec. 15, 2024
World Cord Blood Day 2024
OFFICIAL VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
DATE: November 15, 2024
on-demand through 12/15/24
ONLINE: Signup for the Official Virtual Conference
January 17, 2025
Stanford Applied Longevity Technology Symposium (SALTS)
PLACE: Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge
291 Campus Drive Stanford, CA 94305
Melissa King, COO of Healthspan Action Coalition will be attending.