Tuesday, September 29, 2009

AGE WELL

Quest for a Long Life Gains Scientific Respect

Published: September 28, 2009

BOSTON — Who would have thought it? The quest for eternal life, or at least prolonged youthfulness, has now migrated from the outer fringes of alternative medicine to the halls of Harvard Medical School.

Robert Spencer for The New York Times

AGE WELL David Sinclair, left, and Christoph Westphal, co-founders of Sitris Pharmaceuticals, in Dr. Sinclair’s laboratory in Cambrdge, Mass. The company develops drugs that mimic resveratrol, a chemical found in some red wines.

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At a conference on aging held here last week, the medical school’s dean, Jeffrey Flier, was to be seen greeting participants who ranged from members of the 120 club (they intend to live at least that long) to devotees of very low calorie diets.

The heavyweight at the conference was Sirtris Pharmaceuticals. The company is developing drugs that mimic resveratrol, a chemical found in some red wines. Resveratrol has been found to activate proteins called sirtuins, from which the company derives its name. Activation of sirtuins is thought to help the body ride out famines.

Mice and rats put on a diet with 30 percent fewer calories can live up to 40 percent longer. They seem to do so by avoiding the usual degenerative diseases of aging and so gain not just longer life but more time in good health.

Sirtris’s researchers think that drugs that activate sirtuins mimic this process, strengthening the body’s resistance to the diseases of aging. The company has developed thousands of small chemical compounds that are far more potent than resveratrol and so can be given in smaller doses.

In mice, sirtuin activators are effective against lung and colon cancer, melanoma, lymphoma, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease, said David Sinclair, a Harvard Medical School researcher and co-founder of Sirtris. The drugs reduce inflammation, and if they have the same effects in people, could help combat many diseases that have an inflammatory component, like irritable bowel syndrome and glaucoma.

Any sirtuin activator that averted all these diseases in people would be a rather remarkable drug. So there is considerable interest in how well Sirtris’s drug trials are going.

Sirtris’s senior director of corporate development, Brian Gallagher, said at the conference that four active clinical trials were under way.

SRT-501, the company’s special formulation of resveratrol, is being tested against two cancers, multiple myeloma and colon cancer that has spread to the liver. A chemical mimic of resveratrol, known as SRT-2104, is in a Phase 2 trial for Type 2 diabetes, and in a Phase 1 trial in elderly patients. (Phase 1 trials test for safety, Phase 2 for efficacy.)

Dr. Gallagher said that unpublished tests in mice showed that another chemical mimic, SRT-1720, increased both health and lifespan; after two years, twice as many mice taking the drug were alive compared with the undosed animals. Resveratrol itself has not been shown to increase lifespan in normal mice, although it does so in obese mice, laboratory roundworms and flies.

Sirtris has so far been doubly fortunate. No severe side effects have yet emerged from the clinical trials. The company has also been lucky in having apparently picked the right horse, or at least a good one, in a fast-developing field.

Besides the sirtuins, several other proteins are now known to influence longevity, energy use and the response to caloric restriction. These include the receptors for insulin and for another hormone called IGF-1, and a protein of increasing interest called TOR (“target of rapamycin”). Rapamycin is an antimicrobial that was recently found to extend lifespan significantly, even when given to mice at an advanced age. Since TOR is involved in the response to caloric restriction, rapamycin may extend life through this pathway.

Sirtuins may not be the most important genes for longevity, Dr. Sinclair conceded at the conference, because the pathways controlled by the sirtuins, TOR and the others “all talk to each other, often by feedback loops.”

Many theories of aging attribute senescence to the inexorable buildup of mutations in a person’s DNA. Dr. Sinclair said that in his view “aging can be reversed” because the DNA mutations did not directly cause aging. Rather, they induce the sirtuin molecules that help control the genome to divert to the site of damage. With the sirtuins absent from their usual post, genes are not regulated efficiently, and the cells’ performance degrades. Diversion of the sirtuins should be a reversible process, in Dr. Sinclair’s view, unlike DNA damage, which is not.

“In five or six or seven years,” said Christoph Westphal, Sirtris’s other co-founder, “there will be drugs that prolong longevity.”

But neither Dr. Sinclair nor Dr. Westphal was the most optimistic person at the conference. That status belonged to the English gerontologist Aubrey de Grey, who sports a beard so luxuriant that it is hard to see if he is wearing a tie. His goal is “negligible senescence.”

Some attendees were so convinced of the virtues of less food that they have begun severe diets of various kinds. Cynthia Kenyon, of the University of California, San Francisco, said she had gone on a low-carb diet in 2002 after finding that food with even 2 percent sugar reduced the lifespan of the laboratory roundworms she studies. “Basically I try to steer clear of desserts and starches, though I do eat chocolate,” she said.

Her willowy figure makes her look at least a decade younger than her age. But a practitioner of more severe caloric restriction who was at the conference looked gaunt and a little frail.

Sirtris’s quest for longevity drugs is founded on solid and promising research. But most drugs fail at some stage during trials. So there is no guarantee that any of Sirtris’s candidate compounds will work in people. The first result from a Phase 2 clinical trial is not expected until the end of next year at the earliest.

Meanwhile, it is a pleasant and not wholly unfounded thought that, just possibly, a single drug might combat every degenerative disease of Western civilization.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Being American — and Muslim

Shireen Khan rides a bus in New York City
Shireen Khan rides a bus in New York City.
Nicholas Hegel McClelland for TIME.com

It was evening rush hour in New York City. 42nd St. was packed, and I was hoping I would make the bus. His voice came out of
the crowd.

"Take that rag off!"

Huh?

In my four months of working in New York, that was a first. Actually,
that was a first in the seven years since I started wearing a
hijab. A lot of people turned to look at me as he shouted those
words. I don't know exactly what I was feeling — some mixture of
anger and embarrassment — but I knew I wanted to stop and explain to
this man the significance of what he dismissed as a "rag." He didn't
understand the one thing I cherished most, the thing that I took so much
care in making sure I did right — my religion.

It's second nature to me now, but in the beginning, learning how to
put on my hijab was a challenge. I taught myself how to tuck my
hair in neatly, where to fasten the safety pin, and what material would
best stay put. It is now the thing that people notice first when they
see me. As a 23-year-old Muslim woman, I can't imagine walking out of my
house without it.

The explanations for wearing the hijab often start with
modesty. But modesty, like religiosity, is relative. Who am I to say
that I am more modest than someone else just because I cover my hair? I cover because God commanded it in the Qur'an. Wearing
the hijab is first and foremost an act of worship and obedience;
after that, it serves to check my modesty.

Other values such as charity, tolerance and respect, are some of the
same ones that Muslims, American or not, are taught to uphold in their
daily lives. As an American-born Muslim, it's easy for me to follow
these values — just as easy as it is for my husband and his friends
to gather together to watch the Super Bowl: just sketch in some beards,
insert a prayer break and delete the alcohol. (The legal drinking age is
one American law that Muslims disregard completely — Islam prohibits
alcohol consumption, at any age.) Such strict rules, to some, are a sign
of extremism, and so are the beards — to some, our five daily prayers
are another.

When I was nine years old, my father took a job in Saudi Arabia and
moved our family from Virginia to Riyadh. In Saudi Arabia, there was
easy access to mosques — almost every street or neighborhood had one.
While out shopping, I didn't have to plan around prayer times: shops
closed at each prayer, and we would simply walk over to the closest
mosque, pray, then resume our shopping. It's different in America. When
I shop with a friend at a mall in New Jersey, we often find ourselves
looking for a place to pray. We prefer quiet, secluded areas, but
sometimes we have to resort to the fitting rooms. We carry outfits into
separate stalls and pretend to try them on. When I finish praying, I ask
my friend "Are you done?" Yes, she answers, but now she wants to try on
the clothes, and more often than not, we actually end up leaving the
store with a new pair of something.

Prayer is one of the five basic pillars of Islam. "Everyone prays,"
my husband says. People innately want to call out to God. We all do it,
in different ways. By missing my prayers, I would be shrugging off one
of the most important, yet basic, obligations of my faith — being
observant of it doesn't make me less "American."

So as I continued my walk to the Port Authority bus terminal that
day, it might have seemed like I didn't hear that man yell what he did.
But I did. I just chose to ignore it. I figured it wasn't the right time
to have a discussion, so I just let it pass. I have rarely been bothered
by anybody about my hijab. If anything, I often get complimented
on it. I may cover my hair for the sake of God, but I love getting it
cut and styled. I have a husband who can't understand how I spend so
much time at the mall; I have big dreams for work; I play sports; I love
to run. I cringe at the word extremist. And I thank God that I am both
Muslim and American at the same time.

Shireen Khan is a producer for Time.com

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Va. synagogue doubles as mosque during Ramadan

RESTON, Va. — On Friday afternoons, the people coming to pray at this building take off their shoes, unfurl rugs to kneel on and pray in Arabic. The ones that come Friday evenings put on yarmulkes, light candles and pray in Hebrew.

The building is a synagogue on a tree-lined street in suburban Virginia, but for the past few weeks — during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan — it has also been doubling daily as a mosque. Synagogue members suggested their building after hearing the Muslim congregation was looking to rent a place for overflow crowds.

"People look to the Jewish-Muslim relationship as conflict," said All Dulles Area Muslim Society Imam Mohamed Magid, saying it's usually disputes between the two groups in the Middle East that make news. "Here is a story that shatters the stereotype."

Magid, who grew up in Sudan, said he did not meet someone who was Jewish until after he had moved to the U.S. in his 20s, and he never imagined having such a close relationship with a rabbi. But he said the relationship with the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation has affected him and his members. Beyond being tolerant, the synagogue and its members have been welcoming.

He said one member of the mosque told him, "Next time I see a Jewish person I will not look at them the same."

Rabbi Robert Nosanchuk, who leads the Reform congregation of about 500 families, said the relationship works both ways.

"You really only get to know someone when you invite them into your home ... you learn to recognize their faces. You learn the names of their children," Nosanchuk said.

The actual prayers are held in the building's social hall, which is used by the synagogue for a range of activities from educational programs to dance classes and receptions.

Both the synagogue and the mosque have a history of sharing space with other religious groups. People coming to Friday night services at the synagogue sometimes park in an adjoining church's parking lot; on Sundays, sometimes churchgoers park behind the synagogue.

And the mosque has rented space from others since it was founded in 1983. Members have prayed in a recreation center, a high school, an office building and, for a long time, a church. As the mosque has grown, however, it has needed more space. In 2002 the community opened its own building in Sterling, Va. It holds 900 people for prayers, but the community has satellite locations to accommodate more people: a hotel, a banquet hall and even a second synagogue, Beth Chaverim Reform congregation, in Ashburn, Va.

The community began renting space at the two synagogues in 2008. They began holding daily prayers at the Ashburn synagogue and prayers on Friday afternoons, the week's main prayer service, at the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation.

This is the first year, however, they have rented space at the synagogue for the daily prayers for Ramadan, which began at the end of August. More than 100 people come to the daily services, which are held from 9 p.m. to 10:45 p.m. except for Friday, when the services are in the afternoon. The society pays the synagogue $300 a day.

The partnership isn't entirely new. The two communities have held occasional events together going back a decade: dialogues and community service. Still, some members of both communities were unsure of how things would work at first.

"When they rented the place, I was surprised, but then after that when I came here and saw how nicely everything is set up and how well done it is ... I am very happy with it," said mosque member Ambreen Ahmed.

Now, mosque members sometimes greet the rabbi with the Hebrew greeting "Shalom"; he'll answer back with the Arabic equivalent, "Salaam." Nosanchuk spoke at Friday afternoon prayers recently. The imam spoke at Friday evening Shabbat services.

Both groups say the relationship won't be over when Ramadan ends in North America over the weekend. The rabbi and imam are talking about possibly even making a joint trip to the Middle East, and Friday prayers will still be held at the synagogue.

Magid says some mosque members, in fact, have permanently moved from the mosque to the synagogue.

"Where have you been?" he asked one man who used to pray regularly at the mosque.

"You saw me in the synagogue," the man replied.

"All the time?" the imam asked.

"It's cozy, it's nice. Your parking lot is overcrowded ... and I like to be there," the man said.

The imam joked maybe the man should stay for the Sabbath service.

Said the imam: "That shows you how comfortable they have become."

Associated Press videographer Tracy Brown contributed to this report from Washington.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Refurbished Hubble Space Telescope returns new images

September 9, 2009 | 6 comments

 
Refurbished Hubble Space Telescope returns new images

CLICK TO ENLARGE + NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

The Butterfly nebula, formally designated NGC 6302, is a planetary nebula roughly 3,800 light-years from the sun. The term planetary nebula is something of a misnomer, which arises from the fact that they are often round and resemble planets in low-resolution observations. But in fact planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets—they are luminous clouds thrown off by dying stars.

The extended lobes of the Butterfly nebula are only a few thousand years old but were ejected with such high speed from their star that the nebula already spans more than two light-years.

This image of the nebula was released today in a suite of photographs from the newly revitalized Hubble Space Telescope. In a May space shuttle mission to Hubble, spacewalking astronauts completed a slew of repairs and upgrades to the 19-year-old observatory, including replacing the telescope's workhorse camera with an enhanced successor, the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). WFC3 captured this look at the Butterfly nebula in July.