602 replies to this topic

[Getm]

I would like to try Product B. I live in Europe and it seems it's sold only i U.S. and Canada. Anyone have an idea how to buy it in Europe ?

[mdlee19]

Hi Anthony. This from Sierra Science's website:
In September 2010, Sierra Sciences began screening natural products that are generally recognized as safe for human consumption ("GRAS"). Using the hTERT RT-PCR HTS assay, Sierra Sciences has screened 5,364 extracts of natural products and discovered 42 extracts that cause weak levels of telomerase induction. We have recently signed an agreement to start screening 1,000 more natural products per week.
These extracts are not as potent as our synthesized chemicals; the best one we have found to date rates a 1.2 on our Telomerase Induction Scale. However, GRAS extracts can be brought to market without FDA approval. There is currently only one telomerase activator on the market: TA-65, a nutraceutical distributed by TA Sciences.
TA-65 is the first natural product that has ever shown activity in the Telomerase Activity assay (TRAP assay). Until there is something much better, we highly recommend that everyone take TA-65. We do.

It appears that they have indeed tested TA65, giving it something below a 1.2 on the TRAP assay. This is significantly lower than the claim of 3.28 made by Dr. Andrews regarding the ingredients in Product B.

Edit: removed commercial link

Edited by niner, 07 September 2011 - 03:22 AM.

[mrkosh1]

I'm interested in the new extract they found that has a 3.6. This could be 20 times as potent as astragaloside or TA 65.

If they have isolated the compound in this extract that produces the telomerase induction, then it is possible the compound by itself could be much higher than the whole extract. If there is only a fraction of the telomerase inducing compound in the extract, then it is possible the compound itself could be 100 times more potent than the extract.

What if the compound by itself has a rating of 300?

It might induce more telomerase than a Hela cell.

[niner]

I'm interested in the new extract they found that has a 3.6. This could be 20 times as potent as astragaloside or TA 65.

If they have isolated the compound in this extract that produces the telomerase induction, then it is possible the compound by itself could be much higher than the whole extract. If there is only a fraction of the telomerase inducing compound in the extract, then it is possible the compound itself could be 100 times more potent than the extract.

What if the compound by itself has a rating of 300?

It might induce more telomerase than a Hela cell.

Generally speaking, drug discovery operations like to use pure compounds. It's unlikely that these extracts are highly impure mixtures. The compound that scored in the three's (I think it was 3.28) might be as little as three times the activity in the in vitro assay as TA65, or possibly more, but that's an in vitro assay. If the bioavailability of the new compound is poor, and that is usually the case with natural products, then TA65 might still beat it in humans and other animals. This stuff really needs more testing; you can't base a drug on a high-throughput in vitro assay result. At the very least it should be shown to have decent pharmacokinetics, but we'd really like to see some in vivo evidence that it increases telomerase activity.

[Louis]

Generally speaking, drug discovery operations like to use pure compounds. It's unlikely that these extracts are highly impure mixtures.

I disagree.

If you listen carefully to Bill Andrew's audio in the various Isagenix videos/recordings available on the internet, he explains that Sierra Sciences screened the botanicals from John Anderson at Isagenix in a *blinded* fashion. Andrews states that he insisted on being unaware of the names of the botanicals being tested -- to operate in as scientific a manner as possible. He also states that he was unaware of what botanicals went into product B (at least at the time of the recording). There's no way that Isagenix posesses the medicinal chemistry expertise necessary to highly fractionate and purify a botanical down to a single compound, like Geron did with Astragalus and TA-65. Sierra had a hit greater than 1% of HeLa in the first 15 compounds screened. Certainly the very first 15 screens would not be highly fractionated/purified, if they came directly from John Anderson. I think it's highly likely that this early verion of Product B is more or less whole botanicals -- and that further medicinal chemistry is planned to fractionate/purify in order to significantly improve the HeLa score in future versions, or to use as a molecular starting point for a synthetic drug. Sierra is currently operating with a skeleton staff of ~8 people, so this is most likely being postponed into the future in order to concentrate on screening as many botanicals as possible first.

Edited by Louis, 07 September 2011 - 04:50 AM.

[niner]

If you listen carefully to Bill Andrew's audio in the various Isagenix videos/recordings available on the internet, he explains that Sierra Sciences screened the botanicals from John Anderson at Isagenix in a *blinded* fashion. Andrews states that he insisted on being unaware of the names of the botanicals being tested -- to operate in as scientific a manner as possible. He also states that he was unaware of what botanicals went into product B (at least at the time of the recording). There's no way that Isagenix posesses the medicinal chemistry expertise necessary to highly fractionate and purify a botanical down to a single compound, like Geron did with Astragalus and TA-65. Sierra had a hit greater than 1% of HeLa in the first 15 compounds screened. Certainly the very first 15 screens would not be highly fractionated/purified, if they came directly from John Anderson. I think it's highly likely that this early verion of Product B is more or less whole botanicals -- and that further medicinal chemistry is planned to fractionate/purify in order to significantly improve the HeLa score in future versions, or to use as a molecular starting point for a synthetic drug. Sierra is currently operating with a skeleton staff of ~8 people, so this is most likely being postponed into the future in order to concentrate on screening as many botanicals as possible first.

I don't think Isagenix even possesses the expertise to extract the herbs. That is probably being done in China. They are probably buying relatively pure standardized extracts off of the open market. The first 15 compounds are no more or less likely to be pure than the last 15 compounds, if you ask me. Likewise, blinding of compounds is done in screening operations all the time. That has no bearing on their purity. It doesn't take much staff to screen a few thousand compounds, given that the screen is already set up. In a circumstance like that, you only need one low-level person to watch the robot. It's entirely possible that the compound or compounds actually responsible for the activity are present at a moderately low level, perhaps as low as 10%, but that just means that instead of taking 950 mg of mixed extracts, you would need 95 mg of pure compound that probably costs more than ten times as much. Purification is expensive and is only worth doing if the compounds that are removed are responsible for negative side effects, which is of course entirely possible. I just wouldn't expect a vastly more powerful telomerase-inducing effect to come from purification; instead I would expect a smaller, more expensive pill.

In due course, this product will be analyzed and tested by third parties, at which point we will either know what it is and how well it works, or the jig will be up.

[Louis]

I don't think Isagenix even possesses the expertise to extract the herbs. That is probably being done in China. They are probably buying relatively pure standardized extracts off of the open market. The first 15 compounds are no more or less likely to be pure than the last 15 compounds, if you ask me. Likewise, blinding of compounds is done in screening operations all the time. That has no bearing on their purity. It doesn't take much staff to screen a few thousand compounds, given that the screen is already set up. In a circumstance like that, you only need one low-level person to watch the robot. It's entirely possible that the compound or compounds actually responsible for the activity are present at a moderately low level, perhaps as low as 10%, but that just means that instead of taking 950 mg of mixed extracts, you would need 95 mg of pure compound that probably costs more than ten times as much. Purification is expensive and is only worth doing if the compounds that are removed are responsible for negative side effects, which is of course entirely possible. I just wouldn't expect a vastly more powerful telomerase-inducing effect to come from purification; instead I would expect a smaller, more expensive pill.

In due course, this product will be analyzed and tested by third parties, at which point we will either know what it is and how well it works, or the jig will be up.

Yes, I agree with what you're saying here. These are good points that you're making.

I agree that these are likely standard extract kits purchased from China or India. But I would argue that the standardization is likely at the level common in dietary herbal supplements, meaning in the end a mixture of different compounds in related families. By pure/fractionated I mean a single compound like cycloastragenol from astragalus or resveratrol from grape skins, as opposed to astragalus standardized for astragoloside content or grape skin extract standardized for polyphenol content. The latter two, I would call "more or less whole extracts".

In my opinion, the way that they're able to keep the price of product B so low is by avoiding purification and fractionation -- and instead relying on off-the-shelf standardized extracts. This also has the advantage of avoiding any unexpected side effects (which would absolutely kill the future of the product), since these standardized extracts are already being used safely in many different products on the market. The risk of a highly purified compund outweighs the benefit for a first product, if they already know that off-the-shelf extracts generate 1% to 3% of HeLa. Recall that TA Sciences required signing of wavers for the first users, because as Michael West has put it, such a high dose of the purified compound in TA-65 (whether it's cycloastragenol or not) has "no precedent in human nutrition". On the other hand, the off-the-shelf extracts have an enormous amount of precedent. Standardized extracts are also much easier to sell in countries with stronger regulations, like Canada. Isagenix aggressively targets Canada.

[DeadMeat]

Hi Anthony. This from Sierra Science's website:
In September 2010, Sierra Sciences began screening natural products that are generally recognized as safe for human consumption ("GRAS"). Using the hTERT RT-PCR HTS assay, Sierra Sciences has screened 5,364 extracts of natural products and discovered 42 extracts that cause weak levels of telomerase induction. We have recently signed an agreement to start screening 1,000 more natural products per week.
These extracts are not as potent as our synthesized chemicals; the best one we have found to date rates a 1.2 on our Telomerase Induction Scale. However, GRAS extracts can be brought to market without FDA approval. There is currently only one telomerase activator on the market: TA-65, a nutraceutical distributed by TA Sciences.
TA-65 is the first natural product that has ever shown activity in the Telomerase Activity assay (TRAP assay). Until there is something much better, we highly recommend that everyone take TA-65. We do.

It appears that they have indeed tested TA65, giving it something below a 1.2 on the TRAP assay. This is significantly lower than the claim of 3.28 made by Dr. Andrews regarding the ingredients in Product B.

Edit: removed commercial link

The TRAP assay they mention is not the same as Sierra Sciences assay. Sierra Sciences is not saying they tested it themselves with their own assay.
http://www.ncbi.nlm....les/PMC3045570/

Telomerase activity was measured in human neonatal keratinocytes (Cascade Biologics, Portland, OR) and in MRC5 fetal human fibroblasts (ATCC# CCL-171) pre-and posttreatment in culture with TA-65® using the telomere repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) assay, essentially as described elsewhere.39 In brief, telomerase activity was measured in actively growing cells incubated for 24–48 h with TA-65® in the vehicle (dimethylsulfoxide [DMSO] at 1% vol/vol [keratinocyte culture] or 0.5% [fibroblasts]) versus vehicle alone. Measurements were typically made at 5–10 population doublings (PD) (keratinocytes) or 30–40 PD (fibroblasts). Telomerase reaction products were resolved by electrophoresis on nondenaturing polyacrylamide gels and quantified by exposure to Phosphor Screens and imaging on PhosphoImager SL (Molecular Dynamics).

[niner]

Thanks, DeadMeat. My impression was that Bill Andrews was talking about a High Throughput assay, and the TRAP assay described in your post sounds distinctly low throughput. The HT assay must be something else.

[Louis]

It may simply be a confidentiality agreement between Sierra and TA that prevents Sierra from publicly stating that they tested TA-65. What they've done privately is a very different matter.

[Anthony_Loera]

The closest thing I can come up with is that we said that Product B contained the strongest natural ingredients that we've ever tested right after we said that we have never tested TA-65. Where the 1.5 and 30 numbers came from is beyond me. - Bill Andrews (Sierra Sciences)

Louis,
your confidentiality agreement opinion is interesting, however lying to the public about never testing TA-65 is not something I want to be caught doing, if I was Bill Andrews.

The issue with Sierra Sciences almost going down the tubes because of lack of funding requires Bill to be upfront and truthful in every way possible, if he wants to garner the support of future investors. Lying to folks, even perspective investors is not the best way of gaining trust.

At this point, I think Bill is doing a great job. I just hope Isagenix doesn't give him and his company a black eye with their marketing. If things go wrong with Isagenix, I can definitly see Bill's credibility go down quite a bit... and this could affect the future of his company.

That is why I hope he get's on top of this with Isagenix, and not let them use his own voice to suggest things about Product B, that may not be true at all.

On the otherhand, if our testing comes back showing telomerase activity for Product B... It will certainly be a boost for his company and Isagenix.

I am hoping for the best.

Cheers
A

Edited by Anthony_Loera, 08 September 2011 - 03:42 PM.

[sunshinefrost]

2 questions... why are Hela cells so important when talking about telomerase activation ? And why Am I not receiving the news posts on this topic anymore ?? thanks

[mpe]

Anthony,
Take a look at the You Tube video at the Fight Aging site, "Oligos Treating Telomeres".
I think you will find it very interesting, it's from SENS 5.

Mike

[chmstar]

2 questions... why are Hela cells so important when talking about telomerase activation ? And why Am I not receiving the news posts on this topic anymore ?? thanks

I also would like to know this. Especially considering that according to Dr. Andrews, HeLa cells have ~ 15 copies of telomerase. So is it even possible for normal cells to produce at the same level as HeLa, and normal cells don't divide that quickly so why would it be needed in the first place?

[Getm]

mpe I think this is more accurate because the audio in vids is very noisy :
https://sites.google...telomere-length
Anyone with good knowledge could you please explain what it is about ?

[Louis]

Honoring one's legal and ethical obligations to a confidentiality agreement hardly qualifies as lying. It's the honorable thing to do.

Bill Andrews and Sierra Sciences are a national treasure. They've been extremely generous in sharing information with the Life Extension community -- much more so that any biotech I've ever encountered. We all owe them an enormous debt of gratitude. We should be patient and respect their right to withold proprietary information, if it jeopardizes their business. It's in the best interest of humanity for Sierra Sciences to succeed as a business, and we should all do everything in our power to help them succeed.

In my opinion, Bill Andrews and Isagenix have been scrupulouly honest in every claim they've made about Product B. I see no reason to doubt their claims in the slightest. Sierra has a history of meticulously confirming the telomerase activity of their compounds with outside labs, and it's extremely likely that they've repeated this approach with Product B. They are also beginning a human clinical trial in collaboration with Maria Blasco, where they will measure the change in short telomere load in response to Product B -- along the lines of the human trial published on TA-65.

That being said, TA Sciences does state in their own product literature that Sierra Sciences has tested TA-65:
http://ww1.prweb.com... 10 15 2010.pdf
See the last page, quoted below.

"Bill Andrews and his lab at Sierra Sciences showed telomerase transiently activated by TA-65 in fetal lung fibroblasts.These findings confirm the claims that TA-65 transiently activates telomerase."

Some of this may also just be semantics. In saying that they didn't test TA-65, they may just be saying that the 2 testing methods between TA-65 and Product B were not an apples to apples comparison. It may just be a simple misunderstanding.

[Anthony_Loera]

Anthony,
Take a look at the You Tube video at the Fight Aging site, "Oligos Treating Telomeres".
I think you will find it very interesting, it's from SENS 5.

Mike

Thanks, found it.

I will be reviewing it today.

The video is here in case others want to review it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vw5QAmZsiE

A

Edit: fixed link.

Edited by niner, 18 September 2011 - 04:28 AM.

[niner]

mpe I think this is more accurate because the audio in vids is very noisy :
https://sites.google...telomere-length
Anyone with good knowledge could you please explain what it is about ?

Thanks for the transcript, Getm. Communication is apparently not Will's forte. I can barely figure out what is going on here. I think he is saying that if you treat cells with relatively short oligonucleotide sequences that are complementary to telomeric repeats, that endogenous polymerases will extend the telomeres without any need for telomerase. He seems to be doing experiments with skin cells in vitro, but seems to think that it would be perfectly safe for various 'organs'. Except when it's not... like if you extend them too far. I can only surmise that he's talking about injecting the oligos along with some carrier into individual organs. He keeps mentioning the price of the treatment, (which he spells with an 's') suggesting that he's thinking about marketing this scheme. Either that or he's just being practical. Hard to say but I lean toward the former.

Well, it's pretty brilliant at any rate. If it works in vitro, I could imagine it being used on a batch of autologous cells that were being grown up for re-injection. You could top off their telomeres as part of the process. I'd be pretty hesitant to let him start injecting me with oligos. This seems like an interesting idea that needs some development.

[Getm]

There is the 53 Y/O lady who posted her results using Product B during 3 months here:
http://naturalmenopausenow.com/
I don't see any changes in her appearance. Maybe you do ?

[niner]

There is the 53 Y/O lady who posted her results using Product B during 3 months here:
http://naturalmenopausenow.com/
I don't see any changes in her appearance. Maybe you do ?

It looks like she's had her highlights redone. Pretty impressive if Product B did that... There's also changes in lighting and angle. This woman sells Product B. I think she probably carefully selected the pictures to make herself look worse in the 'before' pic and/or better in the 'after' pic. If I just compare the pictures and discount the fact that the comparisons are utterly meaningless, then yeah, I think the 'after' pics are prettier. I think all this shows is that the miracle of Multi Level Marketing is the way in which it outsources deceit.

[Robert89]

I don't understand why they say, "Master Formulator John Anderson" ... as if it's a title of meaning?

And If he's such a master at formulating, why did he put into the product b forumulation some glaring mistakes? I spotted at least one example of such, where some of the elements have had documented adverse interactions with each other ... 10$ if anyone can stop more than one such example!

I think the 'master' got hold of whatever he could get his hands on and put the lot in to be on the safe side. Not sure if this strategy would work though - as his brochure states that they cannot make any claims on telomerase activation or telomere lengthening ... if that's the case, why did Sierra sciences makes such big claims? It seems that Sierra is broke and they'll say or do anything at this point to pay the rent.

[Robert89]

Okay, the conflict I found was Resveratrol activates SIRT, but Quercetin suppresses SIRT ...

Edited by Robert89, 09 October 2011 - 01:14 PM.

[Anthony_Loera]

Robert89, Resveratrol and other ingredients in product b inhibit telomerase. I won't have my initial findings for another week to see if product b activates telomerase in human cells.

A

[Anthony_Loera]

Louis, a confidentiality agreement does not give one a license to say the wrong thing as a "fact", so that the person who signed the agreement can be considered honorable concerning an agreement. A simple 'I have no comment' would suffice and cover all legal issues in my personal opinion.

Having said that, misunderstandings do occur, and calling the same thing different names also happens for marketing purposes to avoid specifics detailing company secrets. However I am stuck with the following fact and remain concerned:

========================================================
Bill Andrews told us:
Cycloastragenol did not activate telomerase. Ok, his actual words were "Cycloastragenol (also called TAT002) tests negative in our hTERT RT-PCR screen".

UCLA told us:
Cycloatragenol does activate telomerase, and published a peer reviewed study.

Geron told us:
Cycloastragenol and (a few others) do activate telomerase.
========================================================

At this point, who would you lean to for accurate data?

Bill who likely signed a confidentiality agreement, or UCLA that likely did not? Even if his methods changed, wouldn't he go back and test things again, after the UCLA study regarding cycloastragenol showed different results, to try and figure out why his lab equipment didn't catch it? I certainly would, and then figure out if we needed to retest all materials...

Look Louis...the guy is probably a saint, but I have seen confidentiality agreements presented to me when we were in dire straights... that I declined to sign because they hamstring you so much, you appear like the devil's puppet with all your strings tangled up in someone else's hands.

If he did sign one (I am not sure, but for arguments sake assume that he did...), then It was his own choice to sign such agreements in the first place, so don't blame the agreement my friend... that is an easy way to toss responsibility away. Now, I didn't think I needed to remind you of that, but there it is.

Cheers
A

Edited by Anthony_Loera, 11 October 2011 - 06:29 PM.

[Robert89]

Louis, a confidentiality agreement does not give one a license to say the wrong thing as a "fact", so that the person who signed the agreement can be considered honorable concerning an agreement. A simple 'I have no comment' would suffice and cover all legal issues in my personal opinion.

Having said that, misunderstandings do occur, and calling the same thing different names also happens for marketing purposes to avoid specifics detailing company secrets. However I am stuck with the following fact and remain concerned:

========================================================
Bill Andrews told us:
Cycloastragenol did not activate telomerase. Ok, his actual words were "Cycloastragenol (also called TAT002) tests negative in our hTERT RT-PCR screen".

UCLA told us:
Cycloatragenol does activate telomerase, and published a peer reviewed study.

Geron told us:
Cycloastragenol and (a few others) do activate telomerase.
========================================================

At this point, who would you lean to for accurate data?

Bill who likely signed a confidentiality agreement, or UCLA that likely did not? Even if his methods changed, wouldn't he go back and test things again, after the UCLA study regarding cycloastragenol showed different results, to try and figure out why his lab equipment didn't catch it? I certainly would, and then figure out if we needed to retest all materials...

Look Louis...the guy is probably a saint, but I have seen confidentiality agreements presented to me when we were in dire straights... that I declined to sign because they hamstring you so much, you appear like the devil's puppet with all your strings tangled up in someone else's hands.

If he did sign one (I am not sure, but for arguments sake assume that he did...), then It was his own choice to sign such agreements in the first place, so don't blame the agreement my friend... that is an easy way to toss responsibility away. Now, I didn't think I needed to remind you of that, but there it is.

Cheers
A

You make good points Anthony. Bill Andrews was photographed sleeping on a wooden bench in his office in the last interview of his (check out his website to see for yourself, in the media section).

The guy is obviously sad and broken. He gave the world the telomerase discovery, and the world gave him scant back.

Master forumulator at Multi level marketers Product B have got poor Bill under their wing. At this point, Bill would be ready to say anything to talk down cyclo and talk up product B.

Can we blame Bill for what's he done? Not really. Can we respect product B and its makers for what they are doing? I don't know. Maybe Anthony will tell us ... before Maria B :-)

Thankfully we have Revgenetics ... to give us some idea of what the hell is going on!!

[Methos000]

Robert89, Resveratrol and other ingredients in product b inhibit telomerase. I won't have my initial findings for another week to see if product b activates telomerase in human cells.

A

So, is Product B the real deal?

Edited by Methos000, 19 October 2011 - 09:49 PM.

[Anthony_Loera]

Great question... let me call the California lab in a bit to see if they have any preliminary results...

A

[Anthony_Loera]

Ok, now for the quick update...from the California lab:

The cells have been treated, and will be sent to the phosphoimager for analysis soon.

Cheers
A

[Methos000]

Go, phosphoimager, go!

Seriously, thanks for the update Anthony.

Edited by Methos000, 20 October 2011 - 08:42 PM.

[Louis]

The idea that compounds in product B (such as curcumin, resveratrol, green tea, etc.) inhibit telomerase is nonsense.

Bill Andrews has addressed this question in a publicly available June 2011 interview.

You can find the transcript and audio of that interview here:
http://100isnew50.com/?sta1
(You must enter a name and email to view it.)

I will quote directly from the transcript:

Q: "Hi Bill, are there any supplements that you recommend not taking because you've discovered that they actually reduce telomerase expression in your lab screens?"

A: "There are none that I know of that aren't safe. Of course you don't want to take gasoline or something like that. There's been a few publications suggesting that there are supplements that can interfere with telomerase activity. We have checked every one of them in our labs here, and we have not been able to find that any of them have any significant effect on telomerase activity."

The bottom line is that many papers in the telomerase literature are unreliable. They are incorrect papers that never should have been accepted for publication in the first place. Only a handful of labs in the world posess the capability to accurately make these measurements: Sierra Sciences is one of them. Many labs are making these measurements incorrectly and unreliably.

In my opinion, it's very foolish to avoid taking these compounds if you're also taking a telomerase activator. They have very strong anti-cancer properties. The question of whether or not telomerase activation increases/decreases the risk for cancer is still very much being debated. I've seen some crazy ideas posted on this site: for example, that foods rich in dietary polyphenols should be restricted because they inhibit telomerase. This is nonsense.