markkat

The cell populations are actually quite similar; there are both mesenchymal and hematopoietic stem cells in cord blood and bone marrow. In many ways, our service is 'cord blood banking for adults'. However, unlike a cord blood bank, we are developing potential rejuvenative therapies using these cells.

Currently, we only perform collections in the US. We do have clients from other countries that have banked with us. Our biorepository is in MA. Once you've banked with us, we can arrange to have your cells sent anywhere, however.

There are mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in dental pulp. I have not studied them myself; however, they are reportedly similar to bone marrow MSCs. We bank all the nucleated cells in the bone marrow for two reasons: 1) there are high numbers of MSCs and hematopoietic stem cells (which build blood and immune cells), as well as endothelial progenitor cells (which build vasculature) and others such as marrow stromal cells, pericytes, etc, and 2) most trials employ bone marrow-derived MSCs. The significantly higher numbers are an advantage from an expansion standpoint, and the diversity of cells for applications. Still, having your young biology from your teeth (as long as the cryopreservation is done properly) is an asset, IMO.

Not something we provide! :)

Thanks! Here's a small collection of research:

https://foreverlabs.com/blogs/research

Also, here are some recent clinical trials using autologous bone marrow for treatment of heart disease or stroke:

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01716481 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02438306 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01569178 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01652209

Also, searching https://clinicaltrials.gov for 'autologous mesenchymal' will produce many results to peruse.

We currently have enough clients that the annual storage fees paid in more than cover the costs of our repository. We are actively pursuing two options to address this possibility: 1) The cell banking service is a separate entity, and all of us who have banked continue to pay into that entity keeping it funded, even if Forever Labs were to dissolve, and 2) An insurance policy covers long-term storage if Forever Labs dissolves.

All of our cells are banked, as are my wife's and family members. We are addressing this.

That said, your cells remain your own. At any time, we will ship them to another biorepository for $300.

The decline in functionality begins to be detectable between 20-40, and accelerates with age. This study has a number of measures regarding bone mesenchymal stem cells (which are included in what we collect and store):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18248663

Ideally, we all store at 18. However, my mother just stored at 70. Her mother lived to 93, and two of her aunts over 100. She decided that in 10 years, she might be glad she did. My own cells are 40. I am 42.

We store the cells in three larger aliquots and six smaller ones. Most clinical applications employ prior expansion of the cells before administration. As an example, this trial using them to aid in kidney transplantation uses 1-2M mesenchymal stem cells per kg of body weight: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02057965 that would be between 80-160M cells for most patients. For MSCs, one can get those numbers from one of our smallest aliquots.

Stem cell expansion continues to improve, and with it, we can get more cells from fewer without adversely affecting them in the process. As expanded cells can be cryopreserved just as freshly collected ones, it is possible that the cells we collect can be expanded to vast numbers, and then stored for many future applications.

As an example, with just one of our small aliquots, I was able to generate more MSCs in culture than I have in my body.

(Mark from FL)

>Banking cells for the purpose of use later in regenerative medicine is supremely pointless. It is a hedge against technological development in cell reprogramming and repair

Obviously, I disagree that the hedge is pointless. I do agree that rejuvenation tech will improve, I am working on some, actually. However, IMO a youthful reservoir of multipotent cells represents an early onramp for many of these applications.

There are vast unknowns in cellular biology, and I never need go back more than a few months to find some largely unknown but recently discovered machinery: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28798046 Some have been known for a time, and yet remain poorly understood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_(organelle) Sometimes, just when we think we have a handle on something, we find that the reality is more complicated: http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v14/n6/full/nmeth.4293.h...

Not to mention the abysmal state of reproducibility in biomedical research: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778

Don't get me wrong, I am not a pessimist. We are making, and will continue to make, great strides. However, biology intervention in humans is very difficult. Even something as basic as male pattern baldness continues to confound us. Just because we have the tools in the lab, doesn't mean that we can practically apply them. However, we will be able to work upon cells ex vivo much sooner than we can in vivo... ;)

Hey, Mark from FL, here.

For bone marrow mononuclear cells or mesenchymal stem cells, the closest are phase III, such as for heart attack https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01569178 and stroke https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01716481, but there are over 500 trails using the cells for a number of age-related disease.

Many early phases have been completed and moved forward to later phases, but this takes time before approval for many good reasons. The explosion in trials does relate to their therapeutic potential, which we began demonstrating in the lab 15 years ago.

TBH, one issue is that these trials use fairly disparate cell expansion techniques, and some do not expand at all. These techniques have advanced quite a bit in just the last several years. This has lead to disparate results from seemingly similar trials. Much progress has been made on these fronts, however. It's how it works. It takes time.

Umbilical cord blood isn't baloney. However, the FDA approved uses are limited. There are, however, many trials using them for treatment of age-related disease.

Great additions! Gustaf is very insightful.

From what I understand, Ambrosia is transfusing plasma, not whole blood.

There are a number of studies, going back many years, suggesting that young blood has a rejuvenating effect in older animals.

I have been using bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to develop therapies for stroke and other forms of neural injury for more than a decade. What is particularly striking, is the effect of age upon these cells is quite obvious, both in vitro and therapeutically. In our own work, we found that when we treated stroked older animals with syngeneic MSCs from younger mice, they recovered much better than if they were treated with aged-matched MSCs.

What is even more interesting IMO, is that a couple of groups have reported that transplantation of young-to-old bone marrow, or just young-to-old MSCs significantly extends lifespan in mice. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23967009 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22355586

Based on the value of preserving your own autologous bone marrow stem cells, and their potential to be used in self young-to-old rejuvenating transplantation, I co-founded https://foreverlabs.com. In short, we cryopreserve your own bone marrow stem cells, to be used later in life. It's much like cord blood stem cell storage, but for adults.

The blood is born out of the bone marrow. Furthermore, the bone marrow cells (including MSCs) produce many soluble factors (proteins, cytokins, microvesicles, non-coding RNAs, etc.) that can significantly alter the blood profile. Thus, there is reason to believe that the parabiosis or the 'young blood effect' could be conferred by rejuvenating the bone marrow niche. Indeed, we this might be happening in the studies cited above.

We just launched our own version of a young-to-old bone marrow stem cell transplantation study in mice. It is our goal to better understand and optimize the young-to-old bone marrow transplantation effect, and to eventually offer the ability for our clients to donate their own younger bone marrow to their older selves (in addition to providing a store of young cells for other potential therapies).

There is much work to be done, but IMO there is real opportunity for a health-maintenance approach to medicine, and this is one of them. Disease treatment will not long remain as the most rational or economical approach to healthcare.

We at https://hubski.com use a very hacked version of news.arc. Going on seven years. We moved data to postgres though.

The app is top notch, but it does not scale very nicely. Too much to hold in memory.

That's fascinating. I started a company that cryopreserves adult stem cells. Would you mind sharing what kinds of datasets you are mining? Here or email (in my bio).

What worries me most, and why I stopped Soylent, is that the quality is not in their hands, but in the hands of their suppliers. Do they test everything that they receive to confirm that it is what the supplier says it is?

Agreement by that definition is not a necessary condition, only a possible scenario. Majority hashpower is the built in way of handling disputes.

It's not an attack if the majority of miners decide to use a specific implementation. That's how bitcoin works.

IMO they will both continue to grow. Bitcoin simply cannot do what Ethereum can, and as a result, Ethereum will continue to be used.

What is your IF schedule?

>Is that something you can request from your physician?

In MI, NC, and CA atm. Full disclosure, I co-founded the company: https://www.foreverlabs.co/.

>Is it the same process as donating marrow?

Like an aspiration, but less. 60cc are taken from your pelvis on your lower back under local anesthetic. It takes a few minutes.

>How much does it cost?

$3500 + $250/yr

>Is there science on this technique?

Yes. There has been an explosion in clinical trials using the MSCs (and HSCs to a lesser extent) for treatments of ailments ranging from osteoarthritis to heart disease. Personally, I've been developing therapies bone mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for stroke, brain injury, and other neuropathologies for 15 years. You cells diminish in number and quality with age, so it makes sense to store young ones for treatment later.

But, beyond that, there is evidence that young-to-old transplantation increase lifespan: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23967009

We are currently doing our own young-to-old preclinical work in mice, with the aim to do the first autologous young-to-old human trials.

This is a personal anecdote, but I went through about 10 years where I was getting colds and flu-like symptoms several times each year. I did a 72hr fast almost three years ago now, and have only been stay-home sick once since, which happened just a few weeks ago. Friends and family have commented on my health, the difference was so noticeable. I am planning on doing it again soon.

Interestingly, I stored my bone marrow stem cells during this stretch of good health, which includes the long-term hematopoietic stem cells mentioned. I plan to transplant them to my older self later in life. I hope the benefits transfer as well. :)

Wow. No notice at all? That's terrible. I just transferred out my BTC. Deleting the app.

The article didn't mention tokenization of shares and token-based fund-raising. Presently, that is a far more disruptive and interesting use case for blockchains.

Yes, I started my own company. Doing something that I have wanted to for a while.

I've been in biomedical research for 15 years, and I am leaving the lab atm. Many of my peers are as well. It's not a viable or enjoyable career anymore. Funding is extremely political, and proposal reviews border on arbitrary. Typically, the funding has been decided by seniority and politics, and the review is justification.

I imagine that it will get better eventually, but I can't wait for that to come to pass, and I can't in good conscience advise others to do so.

Quite possibly. However, if I found myself in a similar situation years from now, I would try it again.

I did water, a zero-calorie powerade, and a few pinches of salt. Not having any calories is the goal.

Just a personal anecdote, but I was getting colds and flu-like symptoms several times per year for years. People I knew often commented on how often I was ill. I did a 3-day fast two years ago, and haven't had much more than a scratchy throat for about two days since. It could be coincidence, but other people have noticed and commented on my healthier state. I haven't significantly changed my behavior otherwise.

If you look at the OP's link:

http://fork.ethstats.net/

you can see that the miners have indeed enforced the hard fork chain.

Of course there is. However, as Bitcoin Classic may illustrate, it is possible to leave the core developers working on a defunct chain.

Core developers represent a double-edged sword. They are critical for getting the network adopted, and for adapting the network to new demands, but they can also be a risk due to their influence. By all accounts, the Ethereum core developers have been open and responsive. Not all Ethereum devs wanted this fork. I do think they could be faulted for not strongly advising Slock.it to cap The DAO. That may be one reason why they were amenable to a refund solution.

You definitely should consider the core devs when investing time and money in a blockchain. They have an inertia that influences the system.