Kestrell

Harvard Medical School scientists have successfully restored vision in mice by turning back the clock on aged eye cells in the retina to recapture youthful gene function.

The team’s work, described today (December 2, 2020) in Nature, represents the first demonstration that it may be possible to safely reprogram complex tissues, such as the nerve cells of the eye, to an earlier age.

In addition to resetting the cells’ aging clock, the researchers successfully reversed vision loss in animals with a condition mimicking human glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness around the world.

The achievement represents the first successful attempt to reverse glaucoma-induced vision loss, rather than merely stem its progression, the team said.

If replicated through further studies, the approach could pave the way for therapies to promote tissue repair across various organs and reverse aging and age-related diseases in humans.

“Our study demonstrates that it’s possible to safely reverse the age of complex tissues such as the retina and restore its youthful biological function,” said senior author David Sinclair, professor of genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School, co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at HMS and an expert on aging.

Sinclair and colleagues caution that the findings remain to be replicated in further studies, including in different animal models, before any human experiments. Nonetheless, they add, the results offer a proof of concept and a pathway to designing treatments for a range of age-related human diseases.

“If affirmed through further studies, these findings could be transformative for the care of age-related vision diseases like glaucoma and to the fields of biology and medical therapeutics for disease at large,” Sinclair said.

For their work, the team used an adeno-associated virus (AAV) as a vehicle to deliver into the retinas of mice three youth-restoring genes–Oct4, Sox2 and Klf4–that are normally switched on during embryonic development. The three genes, together with a fourth one, which was not used in this work, are collectively known as Yamanaka factors.

The treatment had multiple beneficial effects on the eye. First, it promoted nerve regeneration following optic-nerve injury in mice with damaged optic nerves. Second, it reversed vision loss in animals with a condition mimicking human glaucoma. And third, it reversed vision loss in aging animals without glaucoma.

The team’s approach is based on a new theory about why we age. Most cells in the body contain the same DNA molecules but have widely diverse functions. To achieve this degree of specialization, these cells must read only genes specific to their type. This regulatory function is the purview of the epigenome, a system of turning genes on and off in specific patterns without altering the basic underlying DNA sequence of the gene.

This theory postulates that changes to the epigenome over time cause cells to read the wrong genes and malfunction–giving rise to diseases of aging. One of the most important changes to the epigenome is DNA methylation, a process by which methyl groups are tacked onto DNA. Patterns of DNA methylation are laid down during embryonic development to produce the various cell types. Over time, youthful patterns of DNA methylation are lost, and genes inside cells that should be switched on get turned off and vice versa, resulting in impaired cellular function. Some of these DNA methylation changes are predictable and have been used to determine the biologic age of a cell or tissue.

Yet, whether DNA methylation drives age-related changes inside cells has remained unclear. In the current study, the researchers hypothesized that if DNA methylation does, indeed, control aging, then erasing some of its footprints might reverse the age of cells inside living organisms and restore them to their earlier, more youthful state.

continued at
https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-reverse-the-aging-clock-restore-age-related-vision-loss-through-epigenetic-reprogramming/

Kes: Ironically, I spent this morning talking to a healthcare consumer group about failures in healthcare, and one of the things I mentioned is that actually, yes, health insurance groups do consider smart home tech, including something as inexpensive as an Alexa, a luxury, and are always turning down requests for these technologies, although the companies themselves do not seem to employ assistive technology professionals who are qualified to conduct evaluations of consumers's needs and make appropriate recommendations.

How Smart Home Tech Is Making Tasks Easier, Improving Accessibility
November 17, 2020
https://www.boia.org/blog/how-smart-home-tech-is-making-tasks-easier-improving-accessibility

As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to grow, smart devices keep getting smarter. Consumers can now find affordably priced smart speakers, smart locks, video doorbells, and even smart window coverings — and for the
61 million American adults living with disabilities,
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html
smart home devices aren’t mere novelties. IoT tech has significantly improved accessibility by opening up new ways to interact with devices, often at a fraction of the cost of traditional assistive technologies.

And because smart home devices can be programmed to interact and change based on conditions, users have considerable control over the way that they function. Exploring a few real-world applications of smart home technology provides some insight into the way that real people live — and how new technologies can promote accessibility.

Some smart devices tend to follow the principles of accessibility by default
Smart gadgets cut down on labor and make many tasks easier, and because the devices don’t rely on a single set of controls, they can remove some challenges for people with disabilities. People with vision disabilities can use voice commands, while people with speech disabilities can input commands via smartphones, tablets, or other devices
(Google’s Assistant app,
https://www.androidcentral.com/google-assistant-finally-same-phones-and-google-home

...for instance, now provides the same functionality through text as the Google Home, the company’s voice assistant technology).

In the smart home ecosystem, people have options. Tasks can be automated, controlled remotely, or scheduled to the user’s preferences, which opens up thousands of possible accommodations.

That’s important because people don’t follow a script. For a smart home device to be truly "smart," it needs to be adaptive, capable of changing to meet the needs of the consumer. By virtue of their design, smart home devices fulfill many of the
goals of accessibility
https://www.boia.org/blog/what-are-the-four-major-categories-of-accessibility
— they’re operable, adaptive to different types of users, perceivable in their functions, and robust enough to adapt to future technologies.

from the same MIT newsletter as the previous post

3 who continue doing important work well past age 65

It’s been quite a year for Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. His leadership through the pandemic has made Fauci perhaps the nation’s most trusted voice on COVID-19. Time magazine included him on its list of 100 Most Influential People in 2020 and the National Academy of Sciences recently awarded Fauci its highest honor, the Gustav Lienhard Award.
Quite impressive for a man who’s just two months shy of his 80th birthday.
The physician and immunologist may seem like an anomaly, but in the world of science he isn’t. Many of the nation’s leading research laboratories and universities are teeming with scientists well past the age of 65 who continue to make enormous contributions to their fields of expertise.
https://www.nextavenue.org/why-science-labs-love-older-scientists/

Kes: Alexx forwarded this to me, and I really like the idea of architects and designers having the opportunity to walk in someone else's orthopedic shoes. I've had arthritis since I was a baby, but some days it is still kind of embarrassing to have to ask someone else to open my package of food, or that stupid plastic bubble stuff that everything gets packaged in nowadays. I seriously worry sometimes what elderly people who live alone eat. And you know what else sucks? Commercial scissors--it's only in recent years that I found the more expensive sewing scissors didn't hurt my hands.

Yes, we can make the design easier, so why not start now and get a jump on the rest of the revolution

from
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129307071&sc=fb&cc=fp

What Does It Feel Like To Be 75? Say Goodbye To Spry

by Jennifer Ludden

August 29, 2010

While reporting my recent series on Aging At Home, I came across a special
suit at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab. It's meant to
help 20-something engineers feel the aches and limitations of an average
75-year-old so they can design better products for them. Think of it as
working like those outfits Superheroes put on, only backward. Of course, I
couldn't resist.

Now, I'm 40-something - no spring chicken. But if the crosswalk light is
blinking, I can still dash across the street, no problem. Until, that is,
MIT researcher Rozanne Puleo starts strapping me into what she calls her
Age Gain Now Empathy System.

I pull a harness around my waist and Puleo starts attaching things to it.
First, stretchy rubber bands connect from my waist to the bottom of my
feet.

"It will limit your hip flexion," Puleo explains.

That means no more sprinting. More stretchy bands restrict my arm
movements. There are knee pads and Velcro wrist braces; rubber gloves to
lessen sensation in my fingers; yellow goggles to limit my depth
perception. Everything on the suit is carefully calibrated to mimic the
loss of function that happens as we age.

Finally, Puleo fits me into a hard hat and attaches yet more things to
that. And that's when this all starts to feel like a bad idea. It has
become work simply to stand up straight. And to walk? Puleo has me in
Crocs sandals, with bits of rubber foam taped to the bottom. I haven't
exactly lost my balance, but it feels like I easily could.

"The act of having to balance makes you more fatigued, makes you more
tired," she says.

MIT researchers say baby boomers, of course, aren't the first to get old.
But Joseph Coughlin, the head of the AgeLab, says they're the first to
say, "Wait a minute, there's gotta be a product, a service or something to
make this better, easier, more convenient."

And that's the AgeLab's mission.

Puleo has outfitted graduate students in her age suit and taken them
grocery shopping. Each had a list of typical items a senior might want.

"What we found," she says, "was a lot of the low-sugar, low-sodium items
were either at the top of the shelf or the bottom of the shelf - not in a
place where an older adult would have the easiest time locating."

Sure enough, when I step over to the AgeLab's mock grocery store, that box
of Ritz crackers sitting way up on the top shelf does not seem worth the
trouble.

Coughlin says he wants to spread this kind of "aha moment," not just to
grocery chains but also to product designers and city planners - "The
'aha' for the 30-year-old that says, 'Wow this box of cupcakes is hard to
open. Wow, getting out of this public transportation system is more
difficult than I thought.'"

Puleo wants those who try on her suit to feel more empathy for seniors. I,
for one, have come to appreciate that spring in my step while I still have
it.