Two research teams argue that a cocktail of proteins that reprogram adult cells into versatile stem cells can turn back the clock for entire organisms—perhaps one day humans.
A decade after Kyoto University biologist Shinya Yamanaka won a share of a Nobel Prize for discovering a cocktail of proteins that reprogram adult cells into versatile stem cells, two teams argue the proteins can turn back the clock for entire organisms—perhaps one day humans. One group at a biotech used gene therapy to deliver some of the so-called Yamanaka factors into old mice, and modestly extended their life span.
Several groups had already found genetically engineered mice that begin expressing Yamanaka factors in adulthood show reversal of certain aging symptoms. To explore an approach that might lead to a more practical treatment for people, San Diego–based company Rejuvenate Bio injected elderly mice with adeno-associated viruses carrying genes for three of the factors, collectively known as OSK.
“I would say it is provocative—possibly a breakthrough,” says Steven Austad of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, who studies the biology of aging. “But it will need to be replicated and the mechanism explored before we can say for sure.”, is from a team led by Harvard Medical School geneticist David Sinclair, who has backed several controversial “antiaging” interventions over the past 2 decades.
To see whether the epigenetic degradation was reversible, the researchers injected some of these elderly seeming mice with AAVs carrying OSK genes, which Sinclair’s group recently reported could reverse loss of vision in aging rodents. Analyses of the mice’s muscles, kidneys, and retinas suggest the cocktail reversed some of the epigenetic changes induced by the DNA breaks.
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