Weekly reads: Altos Labs aging supplements pub, destructive NIH cuts, FDA warning, HSCs

When I think of so-called aging supplements, visions of snake oil dance in my head. Possible benefits of supplements more generally have mostly not held up to long-term research.

Supplements have risks too and so do purported longevity supplements.

These pills claiming to fight aging are more in the realm of stem cell supplements that supposedly boost one’s stem cells. Whatever that means.

A new paper from Altos Labs suggests two supplements and exercise might reverse biological aging. Let’s take a look at that and the week’s regenerative medicine news.

But first, I wanted to highlight the de-extinction polling I did last week. I am very surprised at how overwhelmingly negative people are about de-extinction efforts, even of dodos. I’m no fan of de-extinction work for a variety of reasons, but I thought maybe others would be less skeptical.

Extreme NIH cuts; will they be blocked?

I also want to note the drastic cuts to grant indirects announced by NIH late on Friday.

The sudden cuts are going to seriously damage biomedical research. Top schools may suddenly get tens or in some cases hundreds of millions less in support from NIH each year. I see no way for them to absorb that hit without massive disruption to research. Hundreds of thousands of jobs may disappear.

New medicines may never become realities.

These great research institutions in red states are slated to lose about $1B in NIH research dollars pic.twitter.com/MmhPhgBRlz

— Joseph Allen (@j_g_allen) February 8, 2025

This step along with devastating proposed cuts to NSF threaten to American science overall. This hurts everyone including red states. See the tweet above on how badly the NIH cuts will hurt red state universities.

Trying to increase research efficiency should be discussed. This is more like nuking research.

Universities and lawmakers are likely to push back on this, but how much can they really do? Lawsuits could take years.

Patient advocates and the public should not accept these cuts. Former NCI Director Ned Sharpless thinks the cuts probably will be blocked in the courts. I hope so.

Here in California, our great stem cell agency CIRM, which is independent of the federal government, has become even more important just in the last few weeks.

Aging supplements research from Altos Labs

Okay, back to longevity research. Here is a newsy overview of the new study: Omega-3 supplements slow biological ageing, Nature News. I’ve written before about the problems with claims about biological aging, particularly from those that hype supposed remedies. On the other hand, some people including researchers at Altos Lab, which gave us this new paper, have been more careful about their statements.

In the overview, Steve Horvath of Altos Labs seems enthusiastic about the new study and the supplements in question. Vitamin D and omega-3s:

“Clinician-scientist Heike Bischoff-Ferrari and geroscientist Steve Horvath take omega-3 and vitamin D supplements every day to prevent ageing-related health issues. “I do this every morning with my coffee,” says Horvath, who is based at biotechnology company Altos Labs in Cambridge, UK. “I practise what we publish.”

In Nature Aging today, the pair are co-authors on a study that showed that these supplements over a three-year period slowed biological ageing by three to four months, particularly when combined with exercise. Biological ageing is measured at a molecular level; people of the same chronological age can have faster or slower age-related decline depending on their health.”

About that report of a possible 3-4-month slowing of biological aging

I have doubts. I’m not even convinced in general that measurements of human biological age are accurate.

Here’s the source research paper from Nature Aging: Individual and additive effects of vitamin D, omega-3 and exercise on DNA methylation clocks of biological aging in older adults from the DO-HEALTH trial.

The finding on vitamin D and omega-3 is interesting. They could be onto something if the trends hold up. Historically, for almost every supplement initially thought to be promising, more data negated the original conclusion.

I do take a vitamin D supplement but does that do any good? I started taking it after my prostate cancer diagnosis in 2009. Exercise makes the most sense to me. Sleep too. Here’s my post on some potential natural stem cell boosts. Again, exercise is key and do your homework.

Another FDA warning letter: BioStem Life Sciences

There have been so many stem cell and other biologics FDA warning letters lately it’s hard to keep track of them.

Here’s the latest with an FDA warning to BioStem Life Sciences.

Just this week I’ve written about three other warnings in our arena including to Chara Biologics and Evolutionary Biologics as well as to INCELL Corporation. FDA warning letters can be somewhat gloomy, but on the other hand, for maybe a decade the FDA was issuing far too few given what was going on in the unproven stem cell and biologics clinic arena. They needed to step up and now they have.

The new warning is related to perinatal products, fitting with the overall trend.

More recommended stem cell & regenerative reads

Clonal dynamics after allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation, Nature. In many cases in the stem cell and regenerative medicine field, we don’t really know what happens to stem cells or other cells after transplantation. The use of donor cells allows for better tracking and study of transplanted cells.

Blast from the past

Tumorigenicity and Pluripotency teased apart? Not yet for Myc. This was almost 15 years ago. I’m still not sure we know if MYC does different things during reprogramming versus when it is causing cancer.