NYC Mayor Eric Adams is eyeing up a 2024 White House bid as an anti-woke Democrat if Joe Biden decides not to run for a second term, it is claimed.  

Adams, 61, – who once referred to himself as the ‘Biden of Brooklyn’ – has ‘repeatedly’ told confidantes that he is considering running for the highest office and thinks he could ‘win,’ sources told the New York Post. 

‘Eric has told me repeatedly that he thinks that he has a platform to run for national office, for president in 2024,’ a source close to the mayor told the Post. ‘He thinks New York is a national platform [and] he thinks the national party has gotten too far to the left and he thinks he has a platform to win.’ 

A Brooklyn Democratic official, who was not identified, told the Post Adam’s advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin was ‘running point’ on the matter and he’d only stake his claim on the presidency if Biden, 79, declined to run again. 

There have been conflicting reports about whether Biden will seek a second term. He is already the oldest president to ever hold office, and his year-and-a-half in office has been marred with what critics claim are cognitive slips.

Ahead of the 2020 election, Biden himself had reportedly conceded he’d be a single-term president who hoped to reunite the US in the wake of Donald Trump’s divisive presidency.

But there is no obvious Democrat candidate to succeed him, with Vice President Kamala Harris’s personal approval ratings stubbornly low, and Biden is now said to be touting a 2024 run. 

While only five months into his first term in office, Adams has pleased many centrist Democrats – and conservatives – by avoiding progressive or extreme stances on economic and social issues.  

However, Adam’s advisor Evan Thies dismissed rumors, saying: ‘The mayor has not had any conversations with anyone about running for president. He is 100 percent focused on lowering crime and improving the economy in New York, and bringing this city back.’

The mayor does seem to have some backing, though, as CEO of Tusk Strategies Chris Coffey told the New York Post: ‘He is one of the best-known black elected officials in the country. The play works if Adams makes progress on crime and the president decides not to run. I think he would be crazy not to consider it.’ 

Even a GOP lawmaker told the Post he thought the Big Apple mayor could have a chance if he solved the crime riddling the City That Never Sleeps.  

The unidentified lawmaker said: ‘I said you really have to consider that you are young enough where you will have a life after the mayoralty and if you solve the crime problem there would be a lot of interest in a big city Democrat, African American with progressive values but who mediated the crime problem in a major city.’ 

Adams had been faced with rising crime rates as the city plunges into a wave of violence, leaving citizens on edge. 

Although crime rates are starting to slow down, overall violent crime is still up 40 percent across all five boroughs. Shootings, stabbings, and gun violence has run rampant through the streets – even prompting Adams to wear an ‘end gun violence’ suit jacket to the Met Gala earlier this month. 

He has blamed many of the problems he faces on former Mayor Bill de Blasio, condemned as the city’s wokest-ever leader.  

With Adams and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s lax bail reform, career criminals have been running the streets, breaking into businesses, and terrorizing citizens. 

Despite Adams’ confidence, New Yorkers have declining faith him, new polls are showing. Crime is 49 percent of citizens’ biggest concerns, followed by affordable housing and homelessness. 

The Bronx and Staten Island citizens rated him the worst at 61 and 71 percent, respectively. And his overall approval in the city sits at 43 percent approving and 37 percent disapproving, the New York Post reported. 

In addition, 86 percent of New Yorkers want more transit police in the subway system, but despite the promise of adding more officers to the system, most stations go empty. The former transit cop, himself, even encouraged citizens to send his office pictures of officers who are too busy on their phones or chatting with coworkers to keep a vigilant eye out for crime. 

If Adams does stake his bid for presidency, he will be following in the footsteps of his predecessors, such as Bill de Blasio, Michael Bloomberg, and Rudy Giuliani.

However, no NYC mayor has ever made it into the White House. 

But it seems the current mayor has already been making moves to be viewed as a national leader, as he’s been seen making his way across the country at events. 

He’s recently been seen Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California earlier this month and at a cryptocurrency conference in Miami and side-by-side with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to protest gun violence in March.  

Artificial intelligence technology helped researchers identify a trio of chemicals that target faulty cells linked to age-related health issues, including certain cancers and Alzheimer’s disease.

The algorithm comb through a library of more than 4,300 chemical compounds and identified 21 drug candidates that could prompt cell senescence.

This is a phenomenon in which faulty cells stop multiplying but do not die off as they should and continue to release chemicals that can trigger inflammation.

Of those 21 candidates, the scientists zeroed in on three compounds – ginkgetin, oleandrin, and periplocin – which were able to remove defective cells without harming healthy ones when tested on human cells.

AI is increasingly becoming a fixture in medical and scientific research, able to sift through mountains of dense data far faster than a human ever could to aid in the diagnosis of and treatment for diseases.

The team led by researchers from the University of Edinburgh said their machine-learning technology led to several hundred-fold reductions in the cost of screening for effective ‘senolytic’ drugs.

‘Senolytic’ drugs induce death of senescent cells and improve health in humans.

Dr Diego Oyarzún, a co-author of the study, said: ‘This study demonstrates that AI can be incredibly effective in helping us identify new drug candidates, particularly at early stages of drug discovery and for diseases with complex biology or few known molecular targets.’

Cellular senescence occurs in a wide range of health conditions associated with getting older, including vision decline, osteoarthritis, a chronic lung disease known as Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, certain cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, and atherosclerosis, a cardiovascular condition that develops when sticky plaques build up in the arteries. 

Cell senescence is a marker of an aging immune system. 

It refers to a state of the cell cycle when cells cannot grow and replicate but don’t die either as part of a natural process known as apoptosis.

Instead, the senescent cells remain active within the body and release harmful substances that can cause inflammation and harm to nearby healthy cells, similar to how a moldy piece of melon would contaminate the entire fruit salad.

Because cell senescence entails a halt in the replication of cells, the process is believed to have a suppressive effect on tumors. 

At the same time, senescence can promote cancer development by altering the environment around the cell.

The researchers said: ‘Besides their role in cancer and aging, the senescent program has been linked to adverse effects in a broad range of conditions, including osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, pulmonary fibrosis, SARS-CoV-2 infection, hepatic steatosis, and neurodegeneration.’

Only one therapy, a combination of Dasatinib plus Quercetin, has been shown in clinical trials to reduce the volume of senescent cells in mice.

Among the three compounds the researchers identified as able to eliminate senescent cells, oleandrin proved more potent than cardiac glycosides, the best-performing family of senolytic drugs.

The three compounds identified in the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, are natural products found in traditional herbal medicines.

Dr Vanessa Smer-Barreto, a co-author, said: ‘This work was borne out of an intensive collaboration between data scientists, chemists and biologists.

‘Harnessing the strengths of this interdisciplinary mix, we were able to build robust models and save screening costs by using only published data for model training. I hope this work will open new opportunities to accelerate the application of this exciting technology.’