Bioremediation meets biomedicine: therapeutic translation of microbial catabolism to the lysosome

7-Ketocholesterol in disease and aging

7-Ketocholesterol (7KC) is a toxic oxysterol that is associated with many diseases and disabilities of aging, as well as several orphan diseases. 7KC is the most common product of a reaction between cholesterol and oxygen radicals and is the most concentrated oxysterol found in the blood and arterial plaques of coronary artery disease patients as well as various other disease tissues and cell types. Unlike cholesterol, 7KC consistently shows cytotoxicity to cells and its physiological function in humans or other complex organisms is unknown. Oxysterols, particularly 7KC, have also been shown to diffuse through membranes where they affect receptor and enzymatic function. Here, we will explore the known and proposed mechanisms of pathologies that are associated with 7KC, as well speculate about the future of 7KC as a diagnostic and therapeutic target in medicine.

Medical bioremediation of age-related diseases

Catabolic insufficiency in humans leads to the gradual accumulation of a number of pathogenic compounds associated with age-related diseases, including atherosclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, and macular degeneration. Removal of these compounds is a widely researched therapeutic option, but the use of antibodies and endogenous human enzymes has failed to produce effective treatments, and may pose risks to cellular homeostasis. Another alternative is "medical bioremediation," the use of microbial enzymes to augment missing catabolic functions. The microbial genetic diversity in most natural environments provides a resource that can be mined for enzymes capable of degrading just about any energy-rich organic compound. This review discusses targets for biodegradation, the identification of candidate microbial enzymes, and enzyme-delivery methods.

Alzheimer's, atherosclerosis, and aggregates: a role for bacterial degradation

Several of the most prevalent and severe age-related diseases, notably Alzheimer's disease and atherosclerosis, feature the accumulation of non-degradable aggregates within the lysosomes of disease-affected cells. At an early point in disease progression, the breakdown of lysosomal contents by the resident catabolic enzymes stops working properly. A return of lysosomal enzymatic activity to pre-disease levels may restore aggregate elimination. In this review, a method of bioremediation-derived lysosomal enzyme enhancement is proposed, featuring the cellular introduction of microbial-isolated enzymes, or xenoenzymes. The benefits and challenges of using xenoenzymes to break down aggregates are discussed. As the size of our elderly population grows, the incidence of age-related diseases will increase, necessitating the exploration of radical, but potentially powerful, therapeutic strategies.

Catabolic Insufficiency and Aging

Cellular degradative processes, which include lysosomal (autophagic) and proteasomal degradation, as well as the activity of cytosolic and mitochondrial proteases, provide for a continuous turnover of damaged and obsolete biomolecules and organelles. Inherent insufficiency of these degradative processes results in progressive accumulation within long-lived postmitotic cells of biological "garbage" ("waste" material), such as indigestible protein aggregates, defective mitochondria, and lipofuscin (age pigment), an intralysosomal, polymeric, undegradable material. Intracellular "garbage" is neither completely catabolized, nor exocytosed to any considerable extent. Heavy lipofuscin loading of lysosomes, typical of old age, seems to pronouncedly decrease autophagic potential. As postulated in the mitochondrial-lysosomal axis theory of aging, this occurs on account of the transport of newly synthesized lysosomal enzymes to lipofuscin-loaded lysosomes rather than to active lysosomes/late endosomes, making the enzyme content of autophagolysosomes insufficient for proper degradation. Consequently, the turnover of mitochondria progressively declines, resulting in decreased ATP synthesis and enhanced formation of reactive oxygen species, inducing further mitochondrial damage and additional lipofuscin formation. With advancing age, lipofuscin-loaded lysosomes and defective mitochondria occupy increasingly larger parts of long-lived postmitotic cells, leaving less and less capability for normal turnover and ATP production, finally resulting in cell death.

Appropriating microbial catabolism: A proposal to treat and prevent neurodegeneration

Intraneuronal, largely proteinaceous aggregates accumulate in all major neurodegenerative disorders. Lysosomal degradation of proteinaceous and other material declines early in such diseases. This suggests that intraneuronal aggregates consist of material which is normally broken down in the lysosome and thus accumulates when lysosomal degradation fails. This is plausible even though those aggregates are generally non-lysosomal, because lysosomal uptake may be affected. Thus, restoring lysosomal function might eliminate them--and without increasing the concentration of the soluble monomers or oligomers of which they are formed. This approach is therefore unlikely to be harmful and may well be beneficial. How might lysosomes be rejuvenated? Since lysosomal dysfunction is likely to be caused by intralysosomal material that is resistant to lysosomal degradation, normal function might be recovered by augmenting that function to cause the toxin to be degraded. Here, I describe how such augmentation might be achieved with microbial enzymes. Soil microbes display astonishing catabolic diversity, something exploited for decades in the bioremediation industry. Environments enriched in human remains impose selective pressure on the microbial population to evolve the ability to degrade any recalcitrant, energy-rich human material. Thus, microbes may exist that can degrade these lysosomal toxins. If so, it should be possible to isolate the genes responsible and modify them for therapeutic activity in the mammalian lysosome.

Cellular responses to protein accumulation involve autophagy and lysosomal enzyme activation

Protein oligomerization and aggregation are key events in age-related neurodegenerative disorders, causing neuronal disturbances including microtubule destabilization, transport failure and loss of synaptic integrity that precede cell death. The abnormal buildup of proteins can overload digestive systems and this, in turn, activates lysosomes in different disease states and stimulates the inducible class of lysosomal protein degradation, macroautophagy. These responses were studied in a hippocampal slice model well known for amyloidogenic species, tau aggregates, and ubiquitinated proteins in response to chloroquine-mediated disruption of degradative processes. Chloroquine was found to cause a pronounced appearance of prelysosomal autophagic vacuoles in pyramidal neurons. The vacuoles and dense bodies were concentrated in the basal pole of neurons and in dystrophic neurites. In hippocampal slice cultures treated with Abeta(142), ultrastructural changes were also induced. Autophagic responses may be an attempt to compensate for protein accumulation, however, they were not sufficient to prevent axonopathy indicated by swellings, transport deficits, and reduced expression of synaptic components. Additional chloroquine effects included activation of cathepsin D and other lysosomal hydrolases. Abeta(142) produced similar lysosomal activation, and the effects of Abeta(142) and chloroquine were not additive, suggesting a common mechanism. Activated levels of cathepsin D were enhanced with the lysosomal modulator Z-Phe-Ala-diazomethylketone (PADK). PADK-mediated lysosomal enhancement corresponded with the restoration of synaptic markers, in association with stabilization of microtubules and transport capability. To show that PADK can modulate the lysosomal system in vivo, IP injections were administered over a 5-day period, resulting in a dose-dependent increase in lysosomal hydrolases. The findings indicate that degradative responses can be modulated to promote synaptic maintenance.

Oxidative stress and lysosomes: CNS-related consequences and implications for lysosomal enhancement strategies and induction of autophagy

The central nervous system is notable for its level of oxygen utilization and ATP synthesis, resulting in a distinct susceptibility to oxidative stress. Generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) can occur with mitochondrial respiration as well as during other aspects of cellular homeostasis maintained through a balance between biosynthesis and catabolism. Altered catabolic processes often promote oxidative stress, and the autophagy-lysosome pathway stands out as being both affected by and contributing to the resulting stress. ROS production is increased by aging, excitotoxicity, and aberrant protein processing, just a few of the events that also influence lysosomal degradative mechanisms. Oxidative damage leads to very different outcomes, such as compromise of lysosome integrity as well as potential compensatory responses involving amplification of lysosomal enzymes and induced autophagy. Lysosomal activation occurs with brain aging, is a characteristic feature of Alzheimer's disease, and has been suggested to be an avenue for preventing protein accumulation pathology. This review provides examples from the literature to discuss the role of lysosomes in oxidative damage, the brain's distinct vulnerability, and issues regarding the enhancement of lysosomal capacity and autophagic processes.

Oxidative stress, accumulation of biological 'garbage', and aging

Normal metabolism is associated with unavoidable mild oxidative stress resulting in biomolecular damage that cannot be totally repaired or removed by cellular degradative systems, including lysosomes, proteasomes, and cytosolic and mitochondrial proteases. Consequently, irreversibly damaged and functionally defective structures (biological 'garbage') accumulate within long-lived postmitotic cells, such as cardiac myocytes and neurons, leading to progressive loss of adaptability and increased probability of death and characterizing a process called aging, or senescence. Intralysosomal 'garbage' is represented by lipofuscin (age pigment), an undegradable autophagocytosed material, while extralysosomal 'garbage' involves oxidatively modified cytosolic proteins, altered biomembranes, defective mitochondria and other organelles. In aged postmitotic cells, heavily lipofuscin-loaded lysosomes perform poorly, resulting in the enhanced accumulation of defective mitochondria, which in turn produce more reactive oxygen species causing additional damage (the mitochondrial-lysosomal axis theory). Potential anti-aging strategies may involve not only overall reduction of oxidative stress, but also the use of intralysosomal iron chelators hampering Fenton-type chemistry as well as the stimulation of cellular degradative systems.

Medical bioremediation: prospects for the application of microbial catabolic diversity to aging and several major age-related diseases

Several major diseases of old age, including atherosclerosis, macular degeneration and neurodegenerative diseases are associated with the intracellular accumulation of substances that impair cellular function and viability. Moreover, the accumulation of lipofuscin, a substance that may have similarly deleterious effects, is one of the most universal markers of aging in postmitotic cells. Reversing this accumulation may thus be valuable, but has proven challenging, doubtless because substances resistant to cellular catabolism are inherently hard to degrade. We suggest a radically new approach: augmenting humans' natural catabolic machinery with microbial enzymes. Many recalcitrant organic molecules are naturally degraded in the soil. Since the soil in certain environments - graveyards, for example - is enriched in human remains but does not accumulate these substances, it presumably harbours microbes that degrade them. The enzymes responsible could be identified and engineered to metabolise these substances in vivo. Here, we survey a range of such substances, their putative roles in age-related diseases and the possible benefits of their removal. We discuss how microbes capable of degrading them can be isolated, characterised and their relevant enzymes engineered for this purpose and ways to avoid potential side-effects.

Thermodynamics and Information in Aging: Why Aging Is Not a Mystery and How We Will Be Able to Make Rational Interventions

Currently, the aging research field lacks consensus in its focus and methodology. Foundational principles, such as the evolutionary origins and physiological definition of aging, remain controversial. The aim of this paper is to resolve these issues. By applying the concepts of thermodynamics and information in an evolutionary context, the aging phenotype can be derived from first principles. Life uses information storage to maintain its distance from thermodynamic equilibrium. Since it is impossible to make any process 100% efficient, a selective force (i.e., natural selection) is needed to maintain the information's viability. Natural selection operates upon generations, and for reasons discussed subsequently, the somatic body cannot implement an analogous selective process. The aging phenotype we see can be derived from this model along with a number of insights that will enhance our ability to make intelligent and rational interventions.

Lipofuscin and Aging: A Matter of Toxic Waste

Lipofuscin is membrane-bound cellular waste that can be neither degraded nor ejected from the cell but can only be diluted through cell division and subsequent growth. The fate of postmitotic cells is to accumulate lipofuscin, which as an "aging pigment" has been considered a reliable biomarker for the age of cells such as neurons and, by extension, their hosts. In the aging human brain, deposits of lipofuscin are not uniformly distributed but are concentrated in specific regions of functional interest. The prevailing thought is that the major source of lipofuscin is incomplete lysosomal degradation of damaged mitochondria. Accumulating evidence suggests that lipofuscin is not benign but can impair the functioning of seemingly unrelated cellular systems, including the ubiquitin/proteasome pathway. A damaging feedback loop of lysosomal and proteasomal inhibition may occur as lipofuscin accumulates, leading to what has been appropriately named a "garbage catastrophe." Reversing this catastrophe presents a formidable challenge.

Escape Velocity: Why the Prospect of Extreme Human Life Extension Matters Now

Should we be considering the social and economic ramifications of a society where life-span could be limitless?

Regenerative Medicine: Antagonic-Stress® Therapy in Distress and Aging. I. Preclinical Synthesis-2003

Repetitive and cumulative distress (acute and/or chronic, psychic and/or biologic) and aging processes (impairment phenomena, agglomerated, and accumulated with the passing of life and senescence periods), as well as distress <==> aging reciprocal amplification-accelerating-aggravation relationships require strong and rational (etiopathogenic) therapeutic interventions. Therefore, the drug, Antagonic-Stress (AS)--a new integrative therapy, with specific synergistic formula, being patented worldwide--becomes an important solution in distress, senescence, and their related pathologies. In acute (contention) stress, AS treatment significantly decreased rat mortality, number and surface of stomach ulcerations, nonesterified fatty acids (NEFAs), and increased superoxide dismutase (SOD) from blood. In chronic psychic stress, live nerve cells selectively isolated from rat cerebral cortex were highly protected by the administration of AS. In addition, antistress and antiaging homeostatic actions of AS were demonstrated in accelerated senescence (aging + distress) at multiple brain levels: on functional anabolism [increase in total ribonucleic acids (RNA), total proteins (TP), and water-soluble proteins (WSP)]; on functional catabolism [decrease in water-insoluble proteins (WIP)]; on structural anabolism (increased regeneration of free ribosomes, rough endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, and Nissl bodies); on structural catabolism (lipofuscinolysis and ceroidolysis, neurono-glial transfer of lipopigment continuously processed and dissoluted, and finally capillary elimination). Preclinical research with AS demonstrated important regenerative processes in the key organs (liver, heart, and brain), which mostly suffer due to both distress and senescence.

Wake-up call

Theoretical biologist Aubrey de Grey thinks aging is an uncivilized phenomenon that neither he nor anyone else should have to put up with. A computer scientist by training, he got converted to the field of biology in part by asking his geneticist wife about her work. Although he doesn't do benchwork himself, by poring over the literature and formulating new--and often controversial--ideas, he is prodding gerontologists toward the development of medicines to reverse aging.

Challenging but essential targets for genuine anti-ageing drugs

Contrary to what one might conclude from the popular press, anti-ageing drugs do not yet exist, in the sense in which the term 'drug' is normally used. Since a drug is assumed to be effective against its target human pathology and since the vast majority of deaths in the developed world are from ageing-related causes, it is inappropriate to describe something as an anti-ageing drug unless one has good reason to believe that it will appreciably extend the life expectancy of those in the developed world who receive it. A drug that rejuvenates aspects of the aged body but does not increase life expectancy is an antifrailty drug, not an anti-ageing one. This distinction is critical for decision makers in the drug discovery sphere because, while the market for antifrailty drugs (even unproven ones) is large, that for genuine anti-ageing drugs - which, as the author explains, are now foreseeable - will certainly be far larger. In this article, the author surveys the main aspects of age-related degeneration that are believed to be essential targets for genuine anti-ageing drugs - that is, without whose amelioration human life expectancy probably cannot be greatly increased - and some promising strategies for the design of such drugs.

An engineer's approach to the development of real anti-aging medicine

In this Viewpoint, I list the various age-related molecular and cellular changes that are thought to limit mammalian life-span, and I outline a problem-solving approach to reversing these detrimental changes. This approach should help to prevent the development of these age-related changes into life-threatening pathologies and possibly, in due course, allow a large increase in healthy human life expectancy.