Wednesday Apr 24, 2013

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I love living in The Bay.

Tonight: Went to a salon put on by the Health Extension Community. The first speaker was a guy who built a stem cell lab in his garage from lab equipment bought cheap from bankrupt startups, and funded by reselling the high tech tools they didn't need themselves but that they got offered during those shopping/vulturing trips. The second speaker was a professor who studies the population of stem cells in the brain, and how they're influenced by the FOXO gene, which has been tied to longevity.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
The first guy was pretty funny and inspiring. The conclusion of his story was that, after bootstrapping his lab for a few years, he met the right investor and promptly was given 2 million dollars to ramp up their research for real. A few years later, the money ran out and they couldn't get investors for the long slog that comes between "We've proven this works in the lab!" to "We have a marketable product!". Turns out the average time it takes a medical breakthrough to go from "It works!" to "It's certified for sale by the FDA!" is 18 years. Patents only last 20 years. This is one of the many variables in why your prescriptions are so expensive. It's not only that the research to invent them are incredibly expensive and prone to failure. It's that the companies only have 2 years to make their investment back, on average, once all the work is done.

The second speaker's conclusions: Yes, FOXO gene variations also effect the population of stem cells in the brain, but it's not quite as simple as FOXO varient = more stem cells. Folks with the FOXO longevity mutation have the same number of stem cells in their brains as folks without. However, in the course of aging, these stem cells lose their ability to make all the kinds of brain cells they used to. The older we get, the more our neural stem cells lose the ability to make all three kinds of brain cells, and become only able to make a single kind: astrocytes. You need the other two, also. Test subjects with the FOXO longevity varient kept the ability to make all three kinds of brain cells for longer, in more of their neural stem cell population.



The free discussion after the talks was better yet. I volunteered to donate skin to a longevity study. (They needed volunteers of Askenazi ancestry. That's dad's side of the family.) I'd love to contribute to a study on aging: That's a scar I'd bear proudly.

After that I ended up in a conversation with one of the heads of the Space Sciences Institute. Nerd fanboy moment: That's organization was headed by Freeman Dyson up until a few years back. I said I was working on a space colonization themed game, and if it got good enough to be worth showing off, I wanted introductions to scientists to fact-check my work. She was enthusiastic right back at me.

In short, it was awesome.

VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
coyotemike:
I've heard of that. I wonder if he's updated to tell them to print the rejection letters off, first, since 99.9% is email tongue

Thanks smile
ateh:
As someone who grew up Not Mormon in the heart of Mormonland, I disagree completely. But things are so different everywhere outside of Mormonland, and I would do well to keep that in mind.

Sounds like you have been having a right good geeky time. Cheers!

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