João Pedro de Magalhães
@jpsenescence
Scientist planning to live forever (so far so good!), professor decoding the genome @unibirmingham, geek, entrepreneur, speaker, writer, keen footballer.
🚨New paper on theories of ageing I discuss the major mechanistic theories of ageing in light of recent findings as well as the fundamental nature of the ageing process. Theoretical work is more important than ever in biology, including in ageing. nature.com/articles/s4155…
Practitioner forecasts of technological progress in biostasis arxiv.org/abs/2507.17274…
Tributes being paid to Ozzy Osbourne here in Birmingham
MethAgingDB: a comprehensive DNA methylation database for aging biology nature.com/articles/s4159…
Keir Starmer has described the situation in Gaza as "intolerable on many levels", just not the one where Britain stops arming Israel
the longevity field is uniquely susceptible to damaging movements and narratives 'healthspan' was the worst of these in recent memory, but there is a new, perhaps even worse one on the rise - a form of AI zealotry which results in laziness and inaction due to an almost religious…
A multi-omics analysis of human fibroblasts overexpressing an Alu transposon reveals widespread disruptions in aging-associated pathways biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
Excitement around life-extension and reversing aging is not new. This book on how science has discovered the "true fountain of youth" was published nearly 28 years ago. It turns out telomerase hasn't really panned out as an anti-aging therapy.
Structure-based machine learning screening identifies natural product candidates as potential geroprotectors jcheminf.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…
A trade-off between body mass and cancer resistance in cetaceans is mediated by cell cycle-related gene evolution academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-ar…
An overview of contemporary theories of ageing nature.com/articles/s4155…
A wonderful review on the aging and cancer interface by Curtis J. Henry & James DeGregori. Although the most significant risk factor for cancer is old age, most studies on the causes and treatments of cancer are performed in young animals. nature.com/articles/s4156…
Fascinating work suggesting that turtles can get cancer but at very low rates. It also fits the longevity bottleneck hypothesis that mammals evolved under unique evolutionary pressures during the dinosaurs, leading to more pronounced ageing and greater cancer incidence.
Do turtles get cancer? academic.oup.com/bioscience/adv…
When I was a student, there an old professor in the department who would often attend seminars and sit in the front, but if he found the talk boring, he would take out a newspaper from his briefcase and read it until the speaker finished.
There is only so much we can achieve with longevity drugs. Aging is intrinsic to human biology, substantially changing its course will require changing our biology. We need better technologies to change human biology, to change our genes.
Are longevity drugs in mice reaching a ceiling? An analysis of life-extending effects from drugs/compounds in DrugAge per year reveals more studies in recent years but not greater longevity benefits. 1/3
Cancer progression through the lens of age-induced metabolic reprogramming nature.com/articles/s4156…