Is There a Degradation With Age?

My guest today is Dr. Collin Ewald who is a professor at the Health Sciences department at ETH Zurich. His lab focuses on understanding the extracellular matrix (ECM) and how it changes with age. Collin explains the role of the ECM in tissue repair, muscle strength, and overall longevity. In fact, Collin’s lab is also working on establishing the ECM as a biomarker for health and disease risk. So, studying the ECM can indeed tell us a lot about the aging process and ways to intervene.

Think of the ECM as the environment that surrounds the cell or the proteins secreted from the cell. It holds our organs and tissues in place. You’ve probably heard of collagen protein - it is largely found in the ECM.

Why is the ECM relevant for longevity research? Turns out, the ECM changes with age. In fact, each cell has a unique ECM and cancer cells can be detected by their ECM composition type! There is also a connection between the ECM and the muscle, and damage to collagen with age results in weakening of our muscles.

We discuss changes in collagen with age, how sugar impacts collagen, cancer cells & ECM, the overexpression of certain collagens with age, changes in collagen causing muscle impairment with age, and longevity interventions his lab is studying to repair the impairment damage.

(This podcast can be a little technical, especially in the beginning, so I’d recommend referring to the show notes for better understanding. The video version of the podcast also contains some explanations on the video slide itself.)

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DR. COLLIN EWALD LINKS: 

Lab Website: https://www.ewaldlab.com/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CollinEwald   

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TIMESTAMPS:

Episode Page: https://livelongerworld.substack.com/p/cewald 

YouTube: https://youtu.be/r1Y5wGSqKWA

DR. COLLIN EWALD RESEARCH: 

The Matrisome during Aging and Longevity: https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/504295 

Collagen overexpression increasing lifespan: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4352135/ 

Youthful and age‐related matreotypes predict drugs promoting longevity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8441316/ 

Doubling life near death: https://elifesciences.org/digests/71335/doubling-life-near-death

Thanks for watching & if you enjoy the episode, please like, comment, leave a review, subscribe & share!  Stay in good health - Aastha.