Lipofuscin is indigestible garbage that accumulates in the autophagic vesicles and cytosol of post-mitotic cells with age. Drs. Brunk and Terman postulated that lipofuscin accumulation is the main or at least a major driving factor in aging. They even posited that the evolution of memory is the reason why we get lipofuscin at all, as stable synaptic connections must be maintained over time, meaning that the somas of neurons must also remain in the same locale. In other words, they cannot dilute out their garbage over time through cell division. Mechanistically, their position certainly makes sense given that rendering a large percentage of a post-mitotic cell’s lysosomes useless must almost certainly negatively affect that cell and the surrounding microenvironment. Here, I explore the possibility that the accumulation of lipofuscin may to some extent exacerbate every other kind of age-related damage. I do not think that lipofuscin removal will reverse/prevent all forms of aging, just the major component facing us currently. In this piece, I will review what is known about lipofuscin accumulation from evolutionary and mechanistic standpoints and discuss a method of removing it from single cells in vitro.

Most existing cancer therapies negatively affect normal tissue as well as cancerous tissue. A potentially effective strategy for treating cancer that precludes off-target damage and could be an option for most patients would involve targeting one or more mutations that are ubiquitous in the given patient’s tumor(s). To effect this strategy, one would employ multi-region sequencing of a patient’s primary tumor and metastases to seek out mutations that are shared between all or at least most regions. Once the target or targets are known, one would ideally rapidly generate a molecular switch for at least one of said ubiquitous mutations that can distinguish the mutated DNA, RNA, or protein from the wild-type version and subsequently trigger a therapeutic response. I propose that the therapeutic response involve the replication of an oncolytic virus or intracellular bacterium, as any mutation can theoretically be detected by a vector that enters the cell - and automatic propagation could be very helpful. Moreover, the mutation “signal” can be easily enhanced through transcriptional and translational (if the target is an intracellular protein) enhancement. Importantly, RNA may make the best target for the molecular switches in terms of amplification of the signal and ease of targeting.

Aging kills 100,000 people a day - more than any other cause of death combined. The exact causes of aging have been much discussed, but the most pressing issue with regard to aging appears to me to be lipofuscin accumulation. That is, the accumulation of indigestible cellular garbage that needs to be removed from our cells, then the body. In this piece, I will explain why I think “getting rid of the garbage” should be at least one of our main goals with regard to longevity research for now.

Recently, two pig-to-human kidney transplants and a pig-to-human heart transplant were completed. The kidney trials involved a patient who was deceased and a patient who was brain dead. They seemed to indicate that pig kidneys can be at least somewhat functional in humans. However, patients still have to be under severe immunosuppression - and the first patient to receive a porcine heart passed away after two months. It is difficult to know exactly which proteins we need to overexpress or underexpress/knockout in a porcine organ to negate the human recipient’s immunological response to it. And testing different porcine organ genetic modifications in baboons can cost around $500,000 per transplant. But there might be a way to decrease immunogenicity where we don’t have to worry so much about modifying the animal’s organs genetically. First, however, we would have to prevent complement factor-mediated lysis of the porcine vascular endothelial cells, which we have made much progress on with triple knockout animals. Then, we could modify the porcine organ so that the cells of said organ secrete a small molecule or peptide that acts as a chemorepellent for the host immune cells. The host immune cells can be modified via bone marrow transplant or vector delivery to express the chemorepulsion receptor.

Over the last several years, large-scale cancer genomics studies involving multi region, multi-sample sequencing indicate that most or at least many cancer patients may have one or more “clonal" mutations in their tumors. Clonal mutations are those that are present in all of a patient’s cancer cells. They can be identified via multiregion, multisample biopsies - or circulating tumor cells/cell-free DNA. Achilles Therapeutics is currently the only company targeting patient-specific, clonal mutations. They have opted to utilize an immunotherapy approach. However, I recently devised another approach for exploiting clonal mutations called “Oncolytic Vector Replication Contingent on Omnipresent Mutation Engagement” (OVERCOME). It is based on the identification of patient-specific, clonal mutations and targeting them using a bioengineered facultative intracellular bacterium. It would be initially non-replicating, but transiently regain the ability to replicate (and also transiently become hyper-virulent) upon mutation detection via molecular switches.