James W Larrick

Medical Implications of Basic Research in Aging Volume 2 provides an updated sampling through 2017 of the most important discoveries of the past several years relevant to aging research in the context of enhancing life- and healthspan. Have you ever wondered if there is anything that you can do to slow aging or prevent diseases associated with aging? Are you interested in enhancing your health based on the latest scientific discoveries? Are you a biohacker experimenting on your own body in an attempt to live longer? Assembled in this volume are a number of the commentaries that previously appeared in the scientific journal Rejuvenation Research. The presentations are clearly written and accessible to those with a general background in biology and medical science. An overview summarizes the articles for the educated layman. Thorough referencing provides an opportunity for further in-depth reading.

A review of therapeutic antibodies which have commercial potential. It discusses PCR cloning of Igs, immortalization by gene transfer, scale up production, infectious diseases, viruses, bacteria, parisites, inflammation/immunology, blood grouping, cells, cytokines, tumours and MDR.

"Cancer viruses" have played a paradoxical role in the history of cancer research. Discovered in 1911 by Peyton Rous (1) at the Rockefeller Institute, they were largely ignored for several decades. Witness his eventual recognition for a Nobel Prize, but not until 1966-setting an all time record for latency, and testimony to one more advantage of longevity. In the 1950s, another Rockefeller Nobelist, Wendell Stanley, spearheaded a campaign to focus attention on viruses as etiological agents in cancer, his plat­ form having been the chemical characterization of the tobacco mosaic virus as a pure protein-correction, ribonucleoprotein-in 1935 (2). This doctrine was a centerpiece of the U.S. National Cancer Crusade of 1971: if human cancers were caused by viruses, the central task was to isolate them and prepare vaccines for immunization. At that point, many observers felt that perhaps too much attention was being devoted to cancer viruses. It was problematic whether viruses played an etiological role in more than a handful of human cancers.