General

For reasons yet to be determined, the composition of the skin microbiome changes with age. It is also unclear as to whether these changes contribute to skin aging in any meaningful way, or are instead a consequence of skin aging. Researchers here perform a proof of concept study to identify […]

A study using mice by scientists at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA reveals that cardiac muscle cells play a pivotal role in determining how the heart heals following a heart attack. The findings challenge a longstanding paradigm about heart repair […]

First generation stem cell therapies have been demonstrated to reduce chronic inflammation, but are unreliable when it comes to producing other benefits. Since very few transplanted cells survive, it was thought that benefits are produced via signaling that changes the behavior of native cells. This has led to work on […]

Infections with the novel coronavirus and vaccination lead to strong antibody responses against SARS-CoV-2. Immune responses to other human coronaviruses, which mostly only cause harmless colds, also provide some protection against SARS-CoV-2. This cross-reactive immune response is an important piece of the puzzle of how to achieve comprehensive coronavirus immunity, […]

Today's open access editorial discusses one quite specific consequence of the age-related disruption of energy metabolism in cells. Mitochondria, the power plants of the cell, falter with age throughout the body, for complex reasons still under exploration. The proximate causes involve too little production of molecular machinery needed for the […]

Exercise is beneficial at every age, but most people do not undertake enough physical activity. In a sedentary world, structured exercise programs look like a decent therapy, because that exercise corrects a harmful deficiency in the operation of metabolism. Thus the studies showing a reduction in mortality resulting from exercise […]

Tauopathies like Alzheimer's disease are characterized by the spread of tau aggregates through the brain. Tau is one of the few molecules in the body that can become altered in a way that encourages other copies of the same molecule to also alter, causing aggregates to form. These aggregates and […]

As you may know, I co-founded Repair Biotechnologies, a company presently focused on developing an approach to rapidly reverse the cholesterol content of atherosclerotic lesions, a goal that is impossible to achieve using the existing panoply of treatments for atherosclerosis. We use gene therapy techniques to provide cells with the […]