The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health (37 page)

© BRYCE DUFFY

Dr. David B. Agus
is a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Viterbi School of Engineering and heads USC’s Westside Cancer Center and the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine. He is one of the world’s leading cancer doctors and the cofounder of two pioneering personalized medicine companies, Navigenics and Applied Proteomics. Dr. Agus is an international leader in new technologies and approaches for personalized health care and a contributor to CBS News. His first two books,
The End of Illness
and
A Short Guide to a Long Life
, were both
New York Times
and international bestsellers, with
The End of Illness
hitting number one on the list.

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authors.simonandschuster.com/David-B-Agus

Also by David B. Agus, MD

The End of Illness

A Short Guide to a Long Life

T
he following is a list of citations organized by chapter. Included, where appropriate, are notes that you might find helpful in learning more about some of the ideas and concepts expressed in this book. This is by no means an exhaustive list, for each of these citations could be complemented with dozens if not hundreds of others. From a practical standpoint, I was limited on how many studies and references I could include. But this list will help you learn more and live up to the implied lessons and principles of
The Lucky Years
. These materials can also open other doors for further research and inquiry. If a reference that was mentioned in the book is not listed here, please refer to the website,
DavidAgus.com
, where a more comprehensive list is found.

1
. Clive M. McCay, Frank Pope, and Wanda Lunsford, “Experimental Prolongation of the Life Span,”
Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
32, no. 2 (1956): 91–101.

2
. Note: this research was presented at the 28th Graduate Fortnight on
Problems of Aging
on October 10, 1955, and subsequently published as a
Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
in 1956. (See above citation.)

3
. For a review of the history of parabiosis and its long list of references, see Megan Scudellari, “Ageing Research: Blood to Blood,”
Nature
517 (January 22, 2015): 426–29, doi:10.1038/517426a. For a layman’s read of the latest studies, check out Ian Sample, “Can We Reverse the Ageing Process by Putting Young Blood into Older People?,”
Guardian
(UK), August 4, 2015,
www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/04/can-we-reverse-ageing-process-young-blood-older-people
, accessed August 6, 2015. Also note that today these experiments are conducted carefully to reduce the animals’ discomfort and death as much as possible. The mice chosen to
become like Siamese twins are the same gender and roughly the same size. Two weeks before their union, they are socialized with each other, presumably to get to know each other and become comfortable in close proximity. The surgery itself is done in a warm, sterile environment with anesthesia and antibiotics to prevent infection. Once joined, the mice act normally: eating, drinking, and doing their usual things. Should they need to be separated, this can be accomplished easily. Although the procedure has been done on frogs, insects, and small freshwater invertebrates called hydra, it works best in rodents because they recover well from the surgery.

4
. Wanda Ruth Lunsford, “Parabiosis as a Method for Studying Factors Which Affect Aging in Rats” (master’s thesis, Cornell University, September 1960).

5
. F. C. Ludwig and R. M. Elashoff, “Mortality in Syngeneic Rat Parabionts of Different Chronological Age,”
Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences
34 (1972): 582–87.

6
. D. E. Wright et al., “Physiological Migration of Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells,”
Science
294 (2001): 1933–36.

7
. A. J. Wagers et al., “Little Evidence for Developmental Plasticity of Adult Hematopoietic Stem Cells,”
Science
297 (2002): 2256–59.

8
. S. A. Villeda et al., “Young Blood Reverses Age-Related Impairments in Cognitive Function and Synaptic Plasticity in Mice,”
Nature Medicine
20, no. 6 (June 2014): 659–63, doi:10.1038/nm.3569, Epub May 4, 2014.

9
. L. Katsimpardi et al., “Vascular and Neurogenic Rejuvenation of the Aging Mouse Brain by Young Systemic Factors,”
Science
344 (2014): 630–34.

10
. F. Demontis et al., “Intertissue Control of the Nucleolus Via a Myokine-Dependent Longevity Pathway,”
Cell Reports
7, no. 5 (June 12, 2014): 1481–94.

11
. C. Elabd et al., “Oxytocin Is an Age-Specific Circulating Hormone That Is Necessary for Muscle Maintenance and Regeneration,”
Nature Communications
5 (June 10, 2014): 4082.

12
. G. S. Baht et al., “Exposure to a Youthful Circulation Rejuvenates Bone Repair Through Modulation of β-catenin,”
Nature Communications
6 (May 2015): 7131, doi:10.1038/ncomms8131.

13
. Andy Grove,
Only the Paranoid Survive
(New York: Doubleday Business, 1996).

14
. H. L. Rehm et al., “ClinGen—the Clinical Genome Resource,”
New England Journal of Medicine
372, no. 23 (June 4, 2015): 2235–42, doi:10.1056/NEJMsr1406261, Epub May 27, 2015.

15
. H. L. Rehm et al., “ClinGen—the Clinical Genome Resource.”

16
. Christopher Weaver and Jeanne Whalen, “How Fake Cancer Drugs Entered U.S.,”
Wall Street Journal
, July 20, 2012,
www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303879604577410430607090226
, accessed August 5, 2015.

17
. 
I. Martincorena et al., “Tumor Evolution: High Burden and Pervasive Positive Selection of Somatic Mutations in Normal Human Skin,”
Science
348, no. 6237 (May 22, 2015): 880–86, doi:10.1126/science.aaa6806.

1
. R. J. Blendon, J. M. Benson, and J. O. Hero, “Public Trust in Physicians—U.S. Medicine in International Perspective,”
New England Journal of Medicine
371, no. 17 (October 23, 2014): 1570–72, doi:10.1056/NEJMp1407373.

2
. J. E. Oliver and T. Wood, “Medical Conspiracy Theories and Health Behaviors in the United States,”
JAMA Internal Medicine
174, no. 5 (May 2014): 817–18, doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.190.

3
. Associated Press, “How to Live Longer? Slow Eating!,”
Daytona Beach
(FL)
Morning Journal
, August 10, 1960, 1,
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1873&dat=19600809&id=IooeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=gcwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6452,1440754
, accessed August 6, 2015.

4
. E. S. Lander, “Brave New Genome,”
New England Journal of Medicine
373, no. 1 (July 2, 2015): 5–8, doi:10.1056/NEJMp1506446, Epub June 3, 2015.

5
. David Cyranoski and Sara Reardon, “Chinese Scientists Genetically Modify Human Embryos,”
Nature
News, April 22, 2015.

6
. Z. S. Morris, S. Wooding, and J. Grant, “The Answer Is 17 Years, What Is the Question: Understanding Time Lags in Translational Research,”
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine
104, no. 12 (December 2011): 510–20, doi:10.1258/jrsm.2011.110180.

7
. The photo of Dr. Coley is taken from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Coley#mediaviewer/File:William_Coley_1892.jpg
.

8
. E. F. McCarthy, “The Toxins of William B. Coley and the Treatment of Bone and Soft-Tissue Sarcomas,”
Iowa Orthopaedic Journal
26 (2006): 154–58.

9
. For more information about the Duke trials using the polio virus, go to the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center of Duke University Medical Center,
www.cancer.duke.edu/btc/modules/Research3/index.php?id=41
.

10
. D. T. Le et al., “PD-1 Blockade in Tumors with Mismatch-Repair Deficiency,”
New England Journal of Medicine
372, no. 26 (June 25, 2015): 2509–20, doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1500596, Epub May 30, 2015.

11
. P. J. Parekh, L. A. Balart, and D. A. Johnson, “The Influence of the Gut Microbiome on Obesity, Metabolic Syndrome and Gastrointestinal Disease,”
Clinical Translational Gastroenterology
6 (June 18, 2015): E91, doi:10.1038/ctg.2015.16.

12
. 
S. Gordon, “Élie Metchnikoff: Father of Natural Immunity,”
European Journal of Immunology
38, no. 12 (December 2008): 3257–64, doi:10.1002/eji.200838855,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eji.200838855/pdf
, accessed August 6, 2015.

1
. J. Quoidbach, D. T. Gilbert, and T. D. Wilson, “The End of History Illusion,”
Science
339, no. 6115 (January 4, 2013): 96–98, doi:10.1126/science.1229294.

2
. Ibid.

3
. J. Kirstein et al., “Proteotoxic Stress and Ageing Triggers the Loss of Redox Homeostasis Cross Cellular Compartments,”
EMBO Journal
(July 29, 2015), pii: e201591711 (Epub ahead of print).

4
. J. Labbadia and R. I. Morimoto, “Repression of the Heat Shock Response Is a Programmed Event at the Onset of Reproduction,”
Molecular Cell
(July 22, 2015), pii: S1097–2765(15)00499–2, doi:10.1016/j.molcel.2015.06.027 (Epub ahead of print).

5
. O. R. Jones et al., “Diversity of Ageing Across the Tree of Life,”
Nature
505, no. 7482 (January 9, 2014): 169–73, doi:10.1038/nature12789, Epub December 8, 2013. Also see “Surprising Diversity in Aging Revealed in Nature,” Phys.org, December 8, 2013,
http://phys.org/news/2013-12-diversity-aging-revealed-nature.html?
.

6
. D. W. Belsky et al., “Quantification of Biological Aging in Young Adults,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
112, no. 30 (July 28, 2015): E4104–10, doi:10.1073/pnas.1506264112, Epub July 6, 2015.

7
. Ariana Eunjung Cha, “Study of 1,000 38-Year-Olds Shows ‘Biological Age’ Ranges from 30 to 60,”
Washington Post
, July 7, 2015,
www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/07/07/study-of-1000-38-year-olds-shows-biological-age-ranges-from-30-to-60/?
.

8
. Belsky et al., “Quantification of Biological Aging in Young Adults.”

9
. For more about the heart age calculator, go to
www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/cardiovasculardisease/heartage.html
.

10
. For more information about Foundation Medicine’s services, go to
www.foundationmedicine.com
.

11
. Some have called immunotherapy the “fifth pillar” of cancer treatment after surgery, chemo, radiation, and drugs such as Gleevec and Herceptin that target cancer cells’ mutations.

12
. 
L. M. Abegglen et al., “Potential Mechanisms for Cancer Resistance in Elephants and Comparative Cellular Response to DNA Damage in Humans,”
JAMA.
Published online October 08, 2015. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.13134. Also see: Michael Sulak et al., “TP53 Copy Number Expansion Correlates with the Evolution of Increased Body Size and an Enhanced DNA Damage Response in Elephants,” Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory, bioRxiv, a prepublication posting, October 6, 2015,
http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/10/06/028522
.

13
. D. P. Lane, “Cancer. p53, Guardian of the Genome,” Nature 358, no. 6381 (July 2, 1992): 15–6.

14
. For a wonderful chronicle of Massagué Solé’s life and work, see Elizabeth Devita-Raeburn, “The Unintentional Scientist: Joan Massagué Was Having Too Much Fun to Notice He Was Building a Career—and Solving Problems of Cell Signaling and Cancer Metastasis,”
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Bulletin
, August 2008,
https://web.archive.org/web/20120905041353/http://www.hhmi.org/bulletin/aug2008/pdf/Scientist.pdf
, accessed August 7, 2015.

15
. J. L. Watkins et al., “Clinical Impact of Selective and Nonselective Beta-Blockers on Survival in Patients with Ovarian Cancer,”
Cancer
(August 24, 2015), doi: 10.1002/cncr.29392. Epub ahead of print.

16
. B. Dulken and A. Brunet, “Stem Cell Aging and Sex: Are We Missing Something?”
Cell Stem Cell
16, no. 6 (June 4, 2015): 588–90, doi:10.1016/j.stem.2015.05.006.

17
. C. Zhang et al., “Genetic Determinants of Telomere Length and Risk of Common Cancers: A Mendelian Randomization Study,”
Human Molecular Genetics
24, no. 18 (September 15, 2015): 5356-66, doi: 10.1093/hmg/ddv252. Epub 2015 Jul 2.

18
. “Antimicrobial Resistance: Tackling a Crisis for the Health and Wealth of Nations,” Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, chaired by Jim O’Neill, December 2014,
http://amr-review.org/sites/default/files/AMR%20Review%20Paper%20-%20Tackling%20a%20crisis%20for%20the%20health%20and%20wealth%20of%20nations_1.pdf
, accessed August 7, 2015.

19
. Kirandeep Bhullar et al., “Antibiotic Resistance Is Prevalent in an Isolated Cave Microbiome,”
PLOS ONE
7, no. 4 (2012): E34953, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034953.