A Quote

A quote from my 2106 book Biologically Modified Justice (CUP, p. 3).  It is a sentiment that I feel even more strongly about since first writing it.  And sadly I also feel the challenges as an educator are even more Herculean now than they were just 7 short years ago.  

Cheers, 

Colin

Paradox of Academic Research

Academic research and writing is both an immense privilege and pleasure as well as a major cause of sleep deprivation, stress and anguish!  It is a process that can only be sustained for many decades by those who*: 

(1) truly have a burning passion for knowledge; 

(2) possess the thick skin needed to withstand constant criticisms and rejection; and 

(3) possess the intellectual humility to constantly re-consider how they could improve as a scholar and communicator.   

Cheers, 

Colin

* in addition to the obvious: those who have the time and means to spend many hours in contemplation each week.

Genes, Waist Fat and Diabetes Risk

Eurekalert has this interesting post on a study that found that waist fat may not increase the risk of diabetes if a person has genetics that protect them from the risks.  The study is here, and a sample from the news item:

...surprising new findings from the University of Virginia School of Medicine suggest that naturally occurring variations in our genes can lead some people to store fat at the waist but also protect them from diabetes. 

The unexpected discovery provides a more nuanced view of the role of obesity in diabetes and related health conditions. It also could pave the way for more personalized medicine – treatments tailored to the individual. For example, doctors might prioritize weight loss for patients whose genes put them at increased risk but place less emphasis on it for patients with protective gene variants, the researchers say.

Cheers, 

Colin 

New Paper on "Post-Protean" Public Health

My new Perspective submission to the journal Aging and Disease (journal of the International Society on Aging and Disease) has been accepted for publication.  The abstract:

Despite unprecedented investments in public health and biomedical research, improvements in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy have stagnated in the United States.  Part of the reason for this development can be traced back to the influence of “Protean” over “Post-Protean” public health, the names that can be given to two contrasting visions of public health advanced in the early twentieth century.  Protean public health prescribes “waging a war” against disease, and was successful in reducing the early-life mortality risks from infectious disease.  But Protean public health has proven less effective in improving the quality of life of older persons.  Post-Protean public health prioritizes the experimental method and research into the indirect methods of improving health.  It articulated a vision of public heath that was given a more concrete specification by Alex Comfort in what is now referred to as the Geroscience Hypothesis.  To improve the health prospects of aging populations the dominance of Protean public health must be relaxed, to enable the benefits of Post-Protean public health to be realized. Doing so means shifting public health’s aspirations towards increasing the healthspan vs “saving lives” by extending the duration of time older persons can survive by managing the multi-morbidities of late life.

Cheers, 

Colin

UPDATE:  the article is now available online.

Metformin Study

If solid evidence that metformin- a drug that has been tested for safety for over 60 years (in treating diabetes) and is low cost- promotes healthy aging in humans emerges, it will be a real game changer in public health for today's aging populations.  EurekAlert has the scoop on this study.  An excerpt from the news item:

Metformin is a highly affordable medicine with a known safety profile and has long been on the WHO Model Lists of Essential Medicines. This drug-target Mendelian randomisation provides genetic evidence that encourages further exploration of this safe and affordable medication to be repurposed for the promotion of healthy ageing. ‘Increasing evidence suggests metformin may also exert its effect via glycaemic-independent pathways. Better understanding of mechanisms of metformin action using big data approaches and different omics is warranted and improve evaluation of its repositioning potential,’ said Dr Luo Shan, Research Assistant Professor, School of Public Health, HKUMed.

The findings may foreshadow results from the TAME (Targeting Ageing with Metformin) trial, the first-ever anti-ageing study approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to evaluate the role of metformin in longevity, which is in its preparatory stage. ‘Our work has demonstrated the utility of using large-scale epidemiologic studies and genomic data in evaluating drug reposition opportunities. Genetic validation studies, such as this study, shall help improve the success rate of subsequent clinical trials,’ said Dr Ryan Au Yeung Shiu-lun, Assistant Professor, School of Public Health, HKUMed.

Cheers, 

Colin 

Genetics of asymptomatic COVID?

 

Nature news has the scoop here.

Cheers, 

Colin

Sabbatical in Ankara

 

Last month I returned from a 6 month sabbatical in the Philosophy Department at Bilkent University.  

It was an amazing trip.  Türkiye is a beautiful country. The food was amazing and the people were so hospitable and friendly.  I taught an undergraduate/graduate course on my regular "Science and Justice" seminar.  

Tragically the earthquakes occurred 2 weeks after arriving, and all the Universities in the country went to online (zoom) instruction for 2 months.  My youngest son accompanied me on this sabbatical, and he attended an international school to do his semester of high school.  

Together we lived in a 2 bedroom apartment on campus.  This was the view from our apartment in the mornings:

My son had a daily bus ride to and from school, while the gym and department was only a 15 mins walk away for me.

We were also a 15 mins walk away from the Bilkent Centre, which was very handy for going out for dinner, buying things for our apartment etc.  And below was one of our fav places to walk on campus:

 

I was able to get a lot of research done, completing a draft of a new textbook and writing and publishing a few papers. 

It is nice to be back home, and my son and I will always have a soft spot in our hearts for the people, culture and food of Türkiye.  

Cheers,

Colin

Aspartame hazard report

"The media is completely hopeless when it comes to conveying information about science and public health", episode #3,415.

The WHO released this report on aspartame, and concluded:

The committee therefore reaffirmed that it is safe for a person to consume within this limit per day. For example, with a can of diet soft drink containing 200 or 300 mg of aspartame, an adult weighing 70kg would need to consume more than 9–14 cans per day to exceed the acceptable daily intake, assuming no other intake from other food sources.

As a general rule of thumb it is probably not advisable for a person to consume more than 10 cans of anything (or to read media headlines).

A sample of the media headlines on the report include:

Aspartame may cause cancer, says WHO. So is it time to call it quits?

The WHO says aspartame could cause cancer. Should you ditch diet soda?

Which foods contain aspartame? The artificial sweetener is now considered a 'possible carcinogen'

 I long for the day when a scientific study quantifies the risk of harm from media headlines (not doubt there are such studies).  Would be curious to see what the media headlines on such a study would be!

UPDATE:  Naturenews has a news item on the report here, and this excerpt is very telling:

"The new classification “shouldn’t really be taken as a direct statement that indicates that there is a known cancer hazard from consuming aspartame”, said Mary Schubauer-Berigan, acting head of the IARC Monographs programme, at the press conference. “This is really more of a call to the research community to try to better clarify and understand the carcinogenic hazard that may or may not be posed by aspartame consumption.”

Other substances classed as ‘possibly carcinogenic’ include extracts of aloe vera, traditional Asian pickled vegetables, some vehicle fuels and some chemicals used in dry cleaning, carpentry and printing. The IARC has also classified red meat as ‘probably carcinogenic’ and processed meat as ‘carcinogenic’."

The public messaging of cancer epidemiology typically confuses more than it enlightens.  And this story is a great example of that.  Basically the message conveyed is that something new was classified as a “possible” cancer hazard so researchers will do more research.  This basically means, “Hey cancer researchers, we have classified new possible cancer hazards so you can get more research funding to study these hazards given that the existing research did not find the evidence needed to actually justify classifying the substance as an actual cancer hazard”.  It is basically a way of leveraging public perception/angst about cancer risks to get more research funding to do the research to determine if in fact there is a cancer risk worth worrying about in the first place.  Given there are over 200 types of cancers, and a near infinite list of possible environmental hazards, this is money well that could never be filled.

Cheers, 

Colin

 

Million-Molecule Challenge to Accelerate Aging Research

A fascinating article in Geroscience on how AI is being utilized to accelerate 21st century preventative medicine with the million-molecule challenge.

ABSTRACT: Targeting aging is the future of twenty-first century preventative medicine. Small molecule interventions that promote healthy longevity are known, but few are well-developed and discovery of novel, robust interventions has stagnated. To accelerate longevity intervention discovery and development, high-throughput systems are needed that can perform unbiased drug screening and directly measure lifespan and healthspan metrics in whole animals. C. elegans is a powerful model system for this type of drug discovery. Combined with automated data capture and analysis technologies, truly high-throughput longevity drug discovery is possible. In this perspective, we propose the “million-molecule challenge”, an effort to quantitatively assess 1,000,000 interventions for longevity within five years. The WormBot-AI, our best-in-class robotics and AI data analysis platform, provides a tool to achieve the million-molecule challenge for pennies per animal tested.

Cheers,

Colin

What is a longevity biotechnology company?

Nature Biotechnology has this interesting Correspondence on defining a longevity biotechnology company.  An excerpt:

Basic research on the biology of aging has resulted in the discovery of more than 75 interventions that extend lifespan in rodents and many more that extend lifespan in Drosophila and Caenorhabditis elegans. The progression of this work to human trials was historically delayed by the misconception that interventions originally identified to extend rodent lifespan lacked a feasible translation strategy or were unattractive investment opportunities for investors and pharmaceutical companies. In the last 5 years, however, efforts to move those interventions into human experimentation have come to fruition. The biotechnology companies developing such treatments have created a new field of biopharmaceutical development: longevity biotechnology. Because longevity biotechnology represents a paradigm shift in therapeutic approach and faces unique challenges from the standpoint of clinical development, path to approval and patient population, it makes sense to define this rapidly advancing field and articulate standards that identify its bona fide constituents.

....The efficacy of a new intervention can only be rigorously demonstrated by a sufficiently powered clinical trial. Today, there are products on the market that claim to boost longevity but lack robust scientific evidence in humans to support these claims. Academic scientists, drug developers and entrepreneurs developing new drugs arising from aging research need to direct their efforts toward elucidating the mechanisms of action of potential interventions and conducting human trials. Similarly, investors, regulators, members of the media and others require a framework to evaluate the claims made by translational longevity biotechnology projects and their potential to demonstrate effectiveness of an intervention in humans.

....To fully realize the benefits of preventive medicines, the regulatory pathway will need to allow the testing of gerotherapeutics in younger individuals in relatively good health. Incorporating biomarkers of aging as surrogate endpoints in clinical trials, potentially including the use of algorithms trained on multi-omics data, will be crucial to advancing the field12. Until surrogate endpoints are validated by clinical data, composite outcome-based endpoints, as seen in the TAME trial blueprint — such as reducing the incidence or prevalence of multiple age-associated diseases — will remain best practice.

Cheers, 

Colin

Exercise and the Brain (?)

Science has this interesting news story on exercise and the brain.  Getting definitive scientific evidence on something as basic as the impact of physical exercise on the human brain is rife with uncertainty, nuance and disagreement.  It requires decades of methodical research before any clear consensus emerge could emerge, if ever.  A sample from the story:

“ … new research reveals a more complex picture. One recent review of the literature suggests the studies tying exercise to brain health may have important limitations, including small sample sizes. Other studies suggest there is no one-size-fits-all approach to exercising as a way to boost cognition or prevent age-related cognitive decline. Still others indicate exercise may actually be harmful in people with certain medical conditions.”

Cheers, 

Colin