Scientist Wins the First Methuselah Foundation..

Fountain of Youth Discovered? Ask the Mouse!!

Scientist Wins the First Methuselah Foundation Rejuvenation "M Prize" for Reversing Aging in Middle-Aged Mice Using Techniques Applicable to Human Beings

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Chairman of The Methuselah Foundation (www.Mprize.org), awarded the first ever Methuselah Mouse Rejuvenation Prize to Dr. Stephen Spindler, who lead the first experiment to achieve rejuvenation in middle-aged mice, making them biologically younger while extending their lifespans..

More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6566696/

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Stephen R. Spindler
Professor of Biochemistry

Focus of My Research:
The rate of animal aging is strongly influenced by diet. The more calories consumed, the faster it ages. Well-fed animals not only age faster, they have higher mortality from cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. And the reverse is true, the fewer calories eaten (provided malnutrition is avoided) the slower an animal ages, the lower the death rate from cancer, and the lower the rate of heart disease and diabetes. This dietary regimen of under nutrition without malnutrition is called caloric restriction. The positive relationship between caloric restriction, health and longevity has been found from mammals to insects to worms....

http://www.biochemis...y/spindler.html

Great PR.

It would be of value to have the following information also available:

1. What the actual intervention was.
2. At what mouse age it was applied.
3. The lifespan extension that was achieved.
4. How it relates to human interventions.

From Stephen Spindler's web page:

1. The intervention was caloric restriction (CR).
2. It was applied to older animals.
3. Lifespan is suggested to be extended by 6 months.
4. It is never too late to get the benefits of CR. Need to identify pharmaceuticals that induce similar gene expression to CR.

Whilst we already knew how CR increases lifespan across a broad range of model organisms this study focused on older animals and looked at gene expression patterns in aging-vulnerable tissues such as heart and liver.

An excellent response by Aubrey:

While many people and organizations have already begun to openly question the ethics of such research, Dr. de Grey said, "Increased life spans in humans will result in increased knowledge to solve many of the problems we face." He also states that by making people younger it would "make them more productive for longer lives," which would help "alleviate the funding crisis faced by the Social Security Administration" in the United States.

Yeah, I think this is incredible PR and from my perspective at least, the article was extremely positive toward the idea of life extension. I even agreed with its style as it abided by what Laz would call KISS (a polite version of which would be: Keep it short and sweet.)

So does anyone think there will be any donations forthcoming as a result of this article?

There should certainly be an increase of hits as a result, which is why the site should have been upgraded to accommodate and inspire the mainstream community.

As examples of the site presentation I am talking about check out the Xprize site

http://www.xprize.org/

and the Koshland Science Museum site

http://www.koshlands...itdna/index.jsp

as examples of engaging and educational sites.

I still can't find Stephen Spindler on the www.mprize.org site. The competing investigators page does not list him:

http://www.methusela...competitors.php

I still do not understand why he has won and what record his mice have beaten according to the reversal prize rules:

http://www.methusela...g/structure.php

But since the news story says he has won the "Rejuvenation Prize", I am at a complete loss since the first time it has been mentioned was in the news section of www.mprize.org:

http://www.methusela...g/newsflash.asp

So is there now an additional prize to the Reversal and Postponement prizes?

The rejuvenation prize is the reversal prize renamed.

Spindler, like Bartke for the postponement prize, is the inaugural winner. His research is setting the bar and this announcement was the formal opening of the competition for the 'reversal/rejuvenation' prize. The registered competitors will need to exceed his accomplishment to be the next winner. He is not a competitor for the Rejuvenation Prize at this time.

Betterhumans has some good coverage that puts things into place somewhat.

http://www.betterhum...ID=2004-11-23-3

I gathered as much (about the renaming), but some clarification and website updating at mprize .org would be nice.

Who is the webmaster?

Aubrey will be providing updated material for the site in the near future.