[DIYbio] Major Mouse Testing Program: crowdfunding senolytic drug tests

The DIYbio community should pay attention to the various efforts to crowdfund things that are within the capacity of people here to organize, especially when in collaboration with established labs. It would be great to build more of those bridges.

The Major Mouse Testing Program is an example of a group of advocates coming together, pulling in similarly minded researchers, and building a volunteer organization to address what they see as a gap in the community: too little robust animal testing of interventions to treat the causes of aging. The costs for doing this job well can be crushed down in this day and age through the use of reliable overseas labs, especially with the relationships some of the community have cultivated with the life science establishment in Eastern Europe and Russia. They've done a great job of creating the relationships over the last six months, and now they are raising funds. I pitched in, because I think that this is an important effort, not just for the immediate work, but for the potential that organizations like this represent for growing research and development beyond the ivory tower:

https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/the-major-mouse-testing-program/

"According to modern science aging is the accumulation of damage that the body cannot completely eliminate, due to the imperfections of its protection and repair systems. The good news is that the processes that constitute aging are amenable to medical intervention. We can slow down or even reverse some aspects of aging through the application of different therapies, which prevent or block some of these processes. One of these processes of aging is cell senescence. Senescent cells normally self destruct via a process called apoptosis, but unfortunately not all of them do. These "death resistant" senescent cells accumulate in the body with age and secrete toxic signals. This causes inflammation and damage to organs and tissues, increasing risks for cancer and other diseases of old age. This is why these cells are often called "good citizens but bad neighbors". They remain partially functional, but their presence does more harm than good. A new class of drugs known as senolytics have recently demonstrated the ability to remove senescent cells to improve health. However, the potential of senolytics to increase health and lifespan beyond current maximums remains unknown. This is what we at Major Mouse Testing Program want to investigate - with your help!

"In our study we have opted to treat already naturally aged mice. These mice will be 16-18 months old (equivalent to a human of approximately 60 years old). This has two advantages: we speed up research, and also demonstrate the feasibility of translating senolytics to already middle aged or older humans. So far senolytics have only been shown to reduce the number of senescent somatic cells, but what effect do they have on stem cells? This has not been closely studied, and is a question we intend to fully answer in addition to the implications this presents for lifespan. It is entirely possible that senolytics taken alone may not extend maximum lifespan, but rather healthspan. Even if this is the case, it is no reason to be discouraged. What we learn in this first phase, paves the way for our next step - combining senolytics with stem cell therapy to encourage tissue regeneration. As part of our commitment to the sharing of scientific research the team plans to publish the results of our research as open access. We believe that knowledge should be shared and this is the level of our contribution to sharing and growing as a community together."

Reason