Next week, researchers from Stanford will publish the results of a study in mice in which intravenous Vitamin C is active against cancer. This new research is based off of a recognition that absorption of Vitamin C by the intestines is limited, and thus intravenous application is needed to get the dosage high enough to see an effect.

Researchers at the Salk Institute in San Diego have found two drugs that did wonders for the athletic endurance of “couch potato” mice. One drug, known as Aicar, increased the mice’s endurance on a treadmill by 44 percent after just four weeks of treatment. A second drug, GW1516, increased endurance by 75 percent, but had to be combined with exercise to have any effect.

The chemicals involved are already available, and athletes are already asking about whether they work on humans.

Dr. Richard N. Bergman, an expert on obesity and diabetes at the University of Southern California, worried that the drugs might prove to have serious side effects. However, he acknowledged that if they are safe, they could become widely used.

The drugs activate at least one of the chemical pathways triggered by resveratrol, a substance that also resulted in increased endurance in mice. Large doses of resveratrol can allow mice to run twice as far as usual on a treadmill before collapsing.

Inovio Biomedical Corporation (AMEX:INO), a leader in enabling the development of DNA vaccines using a proprietary electroporation-based DNA delivery platform, announced recently pre-clinical results from two proprietary plasmid DNA-based universal influenza vaccine candidates using the company’s proprietary electroporation delivery technology and, specifically, a new intradermal device. In this study, 100% of the immunized mice given a lethal challenge of highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza virus

Scientists have found that the compound resveratrol, found in red
wine and grape skins, slows age-related deterioration in mice on a
standard diet.

Resveratrol prevented age-related and obesity-related cardiovascular
functional decline in the mice. It also had a variety of positive
effects on other age-related problems in mice, such as:

• Treated mice tended to have better bone health, as measured by
  thickness, volume, mineral content and density, and bending stiffness
• At 30 months of age, resveratrol-treated mice were found to have reduced cataract formation
• Resveratrol enhanced balance and motor coordination in aged animals

However, while quality of life improved with resveratrol, the
compound did not significantly affect overall survival or maximum
lifespan for mice on a standard diet.

Researchers have shown that the unfolded protein response (UPR), a reaction to stress induced by sleep deprivation, is impaired in the brains of old mice. This suggests that inadequate sleep in the elderly could exacerbate an already-impaired protective response to protein misfolding that happens in aging cells.

Researchers found that the UPR was activated in 10-week old sleep-deprived mice, so that misfolded proteins did not accumulate in the endoplasmic reticulum of brain cells in the cerebral cortex. However, in two-year-old sleep-deprived mice, the UPR failed to do its job and misfolded proteins clogged the endoplasmic reticulum.

Old mice that were not stressed by sleep deprivation were shown to already have an impaired UPR.